While I was growing up and playing music in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, certain guitar amps dominated among my peers. 
In High School, Brand snobbery ran fast and thick and “new” was an essential criteria. It was as if there were gear police always watching and ready to humiliate a non gear compliant young musician.
Most of my musical peers were from upper middle class families and their parents doled out the cash to indulge their kids fanaticism and quiet the requisite teenage nagging.
Fender dominated in first place and the garages, Rec centers and school stages were cluttered with Twins, Deluxes, Supers and Bandmasters. I saw very few Marshall or Voxes. Occasionally I would see an Ampeg, Standall, Silvertone or Gibson. The only imports were an occasional Teisco Chessman or a St. George Piggyback.
All was new and shiny. The old amps were what Uncle Don hauled out when he was drunk and played some country on his very uncool old Valco and L-5. In the pawn shops you could trip over Supros, Valcos and Magnatones and totally ignore them.
The first time I ever heard the Blues played live was at the Santa Monica Pier. An elderly black man had set up his Valco, a wooden crate and was playing an Epiphone Wilshire. He’d preach a bit of his own fire and brimstone gospel, then continue playing the blues. His tone was exquisite to my ears, that octal tube tone hooked me for life.
David has this to say about his undertaking:
“A little bit about myself and how I got here.
Way back in the early sixties folk music years before the Beatles hit the shores of America we lived in a very different world, pre psychedelic, pre Vietnam, before Watergate and Woodstock. Cars and gas were cheap as were most other things relative to their proportional share of our incomes. Life was good!
So I bought a cheap acoustic guitar (Harmony) and started learning songs by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, early Dylan, Bias, and Collins, songs popular for our generation at that time. Then came my electric guitar years, assistant roady for a couple of our high school garage bands, from which a few would make the pro cut into the the big time, like Timothy Schmit (Eagles) and Ed Robels (Ambrosa).
Before long I was working for Carico Lights, a subcontractor for Bill Graham, and doing psychedelic light shows for the SF Bay areas Dead, Quicksilver, Big Brother, Airplane and the likes. In the fall of 67 and a quick hitch hike out to Greenwich Village I found myself doing light shows for the Electric Circus, AKA the DOM/Bohemian (Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground). I was front row for some of the biggest selling musical names of the time.
But it was not the big hip top of the bill names that left their mark, it was all those way down on the billing opening acts that impressed me the most. Names like Lighting Hopkins, Sonny & Terry, Big Mamma Thorton, Bo Diddly, Mississippi, John Hurt, Blind Lemon and dozens of others. They had a different style and that different bluesy tone unlike all the big name bands, I got hooked, I wanted that blues tone sound!
Now what did my Grandfather have to do with all this?
When I couldn't duplicate that bluesy tone on my Fender amp it was my Grandpa Ralph who pointed out that the bluesy tone was created because those small cheap tube amp circuits broke up and distorted with just a small amount of drive! I started shopping my amps from junk stores from then on. He taught me to fix about anything electronic, and later I even got the ham radio license (NO6M), sort of following in his footsteps.
But the junk store amp supply is running out and old amps seem very overpriced. I decided to start building replicas of the best small amps of the past (now called vintage). These are the amps that Leo Fender copied for his first amps from back in 1946-47, but he wanted to change the sound, and he did, and with that change we lost a bit of important music history. (Fender focused on television for ideas while those going before him looked back at radio design for their influence).
Today when I think of vintage guitar amps, I don't think of old Fenders, I think about the amplifiers of my Grandfathers generation and how they influenced Leo Fender way back in the 40's. Vintage to me is not another copy of an old Fender amp, the world has quite enough of those. Vintage to me is all the non Fender amps circa 1947.
My goal is to preserve a bit of that 40's era blues tone look and feel, paying attention to the pre 50's non Fender vintage tube circuits and cabinet designs! To make it affordable and fun. My simple reproduction Valco amp/cab combos meet those goals!
Sincerely, David Barnes”
I spoke with David and hope to bring his creations to the Islands in the near future. We also discussed the old silkscreened Hawaiian motif amp grills found on old Valcos, Oahus and Supros and he is open to experimentation. Check out his site and the Guitar Player Video.
Blessings from The Garden Isle
T.Dogg @ Guitars Kauai
