Who will be the next trainwreck?

[selloutrr]

I'm curious if anyone has a prediction who the next trainwreck " magical " amp Maker will be. Not from tw but an up and coming small builder that is doing something truly special with tone. Just curious which little guys are making a note worthy buzz.

[dr. who]

JM

[dartanion]

JM

[ckpop]

I think the days of the "magical" amp maker are over. There are too many amps compaines out there. I looked in the latest Vintage guitar, premier guitar magazines and every single page had amps I never ever heard of. Everyone wants to be in the business. There are as many amp builders out there that reminds me of people who try to audition for American Idol. What do we get ? instead of the Real talent we get Adam Lambert.
No I'm not jaded but the business has changed and there are too many choices for players. Just like the record industry fell apart and went from the days of Don Kirshners rock concert to what we have now. Those circles that exposed some great amp builders are not there anymore. Great amp builders from the past started from the inner circle and thats how they built there reputation. Just my opinion

[redshark]

I totally disagree with this. Amps like a TW or Dumble just CAN'T be duplicated using massproduction practices.

[Cliff Schecht]

Now THAT I disagree with. I think KF would disagree with that as well. The idea behind the Trainwreck's is that Ken voices them specifically for the building techniques he uses. The Komet amps are a good example, they use Teflon wiring and so KF voiced the amps to accommodate for this.

If you were to go with PCB construction, then you need to voice the amp to accommodate for that style of construction. One of my favorite amps, the Mesa Boogie MarkIIC+, uses a big ol' fat PCB at the heart of the amp and it is IMO one of the best sounding production amps made. PCB construction is just another means to an end and if you understand how to properly design a PCB, it can sound just as good (if not better) than a PTP or turret board based amplifier and be just as reliable to boot. If I was mass producing an amplifier, PCB construction would inevitably be the way to go.

And yes, I also believe that solid state amplifiers can be made to sound fantastic .

[ckpop]

Exactly I Agree, you can't mass produce TW or Dumbles type amps.
The time it takes to really build an amp correctly at this level you will have a hard time paying the bills.

[ckpop]

Yes Cliff you do make a point with the Komet and MKIIC+ but there is a difference. Are you talking a really good amp like the amps you mention or a level above that in the Dumble, TW category. You have to ask how big of an operation vs time vs overhead costs that play into mass production.
The First Mesa Boogie dual Recto's made sound nothing like the later ones after serious production. The Komet is good but I have a customer sell his to buy a TW I made because the amps were night and day next to each other.
It's Mercedes vs lamborghini. I'm sure another amp will take off but the guy who builds because he wants to be a "amp star" is likley not to suceed either. That is 90% of the market.

[Cliff Schecht]

True, to really nail the sound of an amplifier you have to endlessly tweak it to perfection. This obviously isn't possible with a production amp and so you settle with good enough. Even using 1% components everywhere, some amps are going to sound better/worse/different than others when A/B'ed. Mercedes vs. Lamborghini is a great example, both are great but one is definitely in another league and costs accordingly.

I'd love to hear some Expresses A/B'ed, I'm sure they'll all sound great but each one has its own unique voice. It's just the nature of the beast..

There is a lot of competition nowadays in the amp market but unfortunately not a lot of innovation. Most people seem to either be copiers or tweakers, there aren't a lot of people that I would call true designers that come up with original/innovative designs. And even the original designs tend to borrow heavily from their predecessors. I can admit that my original designs are not much more than taking past designs and modifying them for my needs, although I have done some oddballs that ended up sounding great in their own right. My favorite example is my first design, two 6AU6's pushing an 807. It has a pretty terrible clean sound but for leads it sounds really, really good and has a certain "bloom" that I'm yet to hear in any other amp.

[ckpop]

Keep up the idea of inovation, Like song writer's have been taking ideas from others for years but it's what they do with it that makes it thier own.
Amps are like painting we all have the same colors but one is a can be a picasso and the other be dogs sitting around a table playing poker LOL

[bancika]

Randall Smith from Mesa Boogie tries to create hype around him and surprisingly many people are buying it. My favorite line

For example, the great top end of the Dual Rectifier has an aggressive bite but avoids the harshness by the way two very important traces are laid out on the board. One trace is on the top and the other runs right beneath it on the bottom side of the board. Thus the very small--but significant-amount of capacitance coupling these two together through the board performs a subtle filtering kind of negative feedback in a critical region where the harmonics can be made to line up just right.

[Cliff Schecht]

I'd love to see his measurements proving that the negative feedback from the capacitance of traces between FR4 is actually making a piss of a difference.. We are talking about values in the femtoFarad range for audio circuits. When he talks about lining up the harmonics just right, I start to think of phasing and the affect this has on the amps transient response (i.e. how it rings) which is one of a few tests that can be used to characterize any time-variant system.

[ckpop]

The Reason for the success of the Dual Recto was partly this.........
The sound of the music industry was changing the 80's were over and grunge took off, For the heavy type player a channel switching amps that was Rock solid, channel switching and covered sloppy playing because they didn't have the chops. The key part of the tone was the amount of gain and low end that went beyond a stock Marshall. The amps are not very colorful now but the earlier one's were better. Randell happened to come out with this amp just at the right time and then everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
This in no way puts down Randell Smiths work because he is a true designer but timing sometime can be a big part.

[KeithStevens]

Anybody heard an Allesandro amp recently? I met him a long time ago when he was first getting started. I've talked to him and bought a few things over the year (he answers his own phone). He seems really into it--last time he was telling me that he's making chassis out of pure copper because he thinks it works better. His Beagle seems like an interesting 18W design.

Personally, I'd love to play through some of the amps I see builds of here. Rjguitars and Hall Amps (among others) seem to have so much pride of workmanship in them. In the end, I think that was what Kenny was all about. How many people are near Philly? Maybe we need a convention!

[ckpop]

Allesandro has been around awhile, Just in my opinion his approach to building is a bit Hi-fi for my taste and seems to be for many others. It's the Higher grade part makes better tone philsophy which does not always ring true.