History of Ampsandsound

To be honest it’s a massive distraction from my work life, which is why my wife allows for it. I work in 2 of the highest acuity settings for mental health and am a front line provider of mental health services. (The two setting are a prison in California and a large community hospital’s emergency department). Over the course of my life, I’d drink too much and worked too much and I find the latter to be a vastly more healthy behavior.

The idea of Ampsandsound as a company is a way for me to not be continuously losing money to support my hobby. I really enjoy the learning, building, and trying. Each time I’d build a tube amp, I’d generally only change one part at a time and I copy ideas of the best builders I can find. I brought on a business partner to help shoulder some of the workload and to have a comrade in arms.

Transforming a hobby which lost money into a business is difficult and adding a partner with equal voice, is a bit harder. Documenting everything for transparency and figuring out how to make it scalable harder still.

All that said there is a super big pride of ownership I have. I aspire to have Ampsandsound known for some musically reliable amps and speakers. Many of us can only afford one system. I’ve been there a few times and I hope Ampsandsound is the one to keep.

I’d like to sell 20 amps next year. Two per month would be great. Parts for each amp are around $700-1000 before any labor. Its hard to believe that 15%-20% of parts cost is shipping. The chassis is about 3 hours of woodwork, the mechanical assembly is 1.5-2 hours. Soldering the PCB about 1-2 hours, and final wiring is 2-3 hours and 1 hour of bench testing. The amps get played for about 10 hours on a set of speakers for good measure. Once a final listen is done, we’re ready for shipping. Shipping is another unknown that we are working to grasp better. Anyway, long and short is that I like building and love the idea of others using.

After some reflecting during my 2+ hour drive to work I’d like 1 other thing: A small warehouse ~600Sq. ft with enough room for some boxes with amps, speakers, and an amazing listening space, 15ft ceiling and 20×15 with 2 cigar chairs, and a cooler for soda.

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