FEBRUARY 10, 2016

WINTER NAMM WRAP UP
Winter NAMM 2016 has come and gone. We met lots of people and made a ton of new friends. In a word, it was "amazing." We launched two new amplifiers, the Citizen Gain from 3RD POWER, and the Extra Spanky from our Wooly Coats line. Both amps received a ton of positive feedback and have become instant best-sellers for us as both really nailed-it for tone and features that players want and need.

SONGWRITING AND HIGH-GAIN AMPS
it's all been done before, and done really well - for decades and decades. And like music, every once in awhile, someone writes a song from among the same 12 notes we all have access to, and for some reason it's amazing. And just like songwriting, I believe amp designing can be a work of art too.

The Citizen Gain is the 20th amplifier I've designed. Everything I've learned these past 7 years has gone into creating this new amplifier. With HybridMASTER, Citizen Loop and Dual Mode Reverb, this new amp dips deep into historical vintage Marshall tones and comes all the way forward to modern higher-gain tones. This amp has three response modes for the preamp, 3 tone stacks for the EQ section. Hendrix to Van Halen, Dio to Whitesnake, Soundgarden to Alice in Chains, as well as Eric Johnson to GNR... It's all in there if you have the right guitar and the chops to pull it off. This amp feels great in your hands at any volume. The tone blooms by the time you've even hit 2 watts on the HybridMASTER. The Dual Mode Reverb (Accutronics spring reverb, large pan, all tube drive and recovery) adds the type of ambience we hear on most of our favorite recordings. The simple control strip gives you easy access to the tools you need to bring out the best tones of your guitar (or guitar collection). The dynamic range of the Citizen Gain will instantly reveal the difference between a $500 guitar and a $5,000 guitar.

The Citizen Gain demonstrates that if you keep at something for long enough, you have a chance to really do something special. I'll leave it to the market to decide if I've done something special or not. But I will say this: designing the Citizen Gain was very much a journey through the soundtrack of my personal and musical life. If you've ever been to a concert and pumped your fist, flashed the "rock" symbol with your fingers, screamed "dude, did you hear that!?!" with astonishment and enthusiasm to your friends after every lick your hero played - well, then you play guitar for the same reason I do - and I designed this amp for you and the rest of us.

Cheers,

Jamie

You can read more about the Citizen Gain here.

JULY 17, 2015

SUMMER NAMM, THE DUAL CITIZEN & NEW DISTRIBUTION IDEAS
Summer NAMM in Nashville, TN, was a great show for us. We launched a new amplifier, the Dual Citizen. This amplifier combines vintage British chime and spanky American cleans, and it enjoyed a lot of attention. Reverb.com dubbed it the best amplifier at the show. Of course we appreciate the recognition but I want to take a moment to thank our peers in the amplifier market. If it weren't for them, guitar players wouldn't have so many wonderful choices and options to choose from when creating their sound.

This show marked our sixth year displaying at NAMM. We started out with triangle cabs and a high-gain, 100w amplifier. Like all of our new MKII amplifiers and the new Wooly Coats line, it too delighted attendees and helped set us on our path of innovation. Over these past six years, I've designed more than a dozen amplifiers, received two patents and built this company to inspire our customers with tone and treat them with a golden-standard of service.

2015 has seen us tweak how we distribute our products, choosing to work with independent retailers world-wide. To our existing dealers, I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for your support and belief, we can't succeed without you. We are so fortunate to be working with such a great group. To potential new dealers, please contact me to discuss your local market needs and see how we might do great things together.

In our local market of Nashville, TN, we recognized a need to cater directly to the professional guitarist. We have remodeled our shop to include a showroom where artists can audition our equipment, try multiple configurations as well as learn first hand how we make our beautiful hand-made amplifiers. This arangement also gives me access to the artists (and them to me) so that we can directly go over their needs and better solve their problems. You just never know what can happen. In fact, the Dual Citizen came to be after building custom amplifiers for Michael Britt of Lonestar and Daniel Macal of Sidewalk Prophets. If we hadn't had direct access to each other, this amplifier might never have happened.