This comes from DR. Tube, an expert for amplifiers.............
http://www.drtube.com/guitamp.htm#ElkElk amplifiers were manufactured by the japanese Miyuki Ind. Co. who started out in 1953 making amplifiers. The looks certainly were inspired by the Fender amplifiers of the day, but the circuits were different though. The original brand name was Echo. In the early 60's Miyuki started making pro quality guitars under the brand name of Elk and later changed the brand name of the amplifiers to Elk as well. In the transistion period the "new" Elk logo had a small Echo beneath it.
Miyuki also used the Luxor and Royal brand names for some of their amps in Europe.
In 1969 there was a big fire in the factory, burning many amps and guitars. Quite a shock for the people who worked there.
The later Elk amps had solid state preamps and tube power amps to become completely solid state amps in the end.
I've been researching the history of Elk for some time now. It looks like that Miyuki stopped manufacturing the Elk amps at some point in time (probably early 1970's) and that Gakki took the brand name over. That is probably the same Gakki as in Hoshino Gakki the manufacturer of Ibanez amps and guitars. If you look at page 19 of the 1974 Ibanez Accessories Catalog you can see the Ibanez Stage Master line of amps. These are identical to the Elk amps of the time. These amps l
