In 1973 at the age of 13 I played my first professional gig. Shortly after that I bought my first Fender amp–a 1969 Fender Twin Reverb with Electrovoice Coffee Can Magnet SRO speakers. I’ve bought and sold many Fender amps since then but I still have my first Twin. It didn’t take long for me to discover the self-service tube tester at my local drug store which sparked a life-long fascination with tube amplifiers. As my Fender amps developed problems-as tube amps are know to do– I accepted each challenge along the way and figured out on my own how to fix the problem myself. I learned all that I could about tube amplifier design and spent a lot of time reading the 1954 Radiotron Designers Handbook–the bible of the audio industry. I came to understand that distortion was what gave tube amplifiers their charm and made one sound different from another. I discovered that the most desirable amplifiers have a mixture of a few different kinds of distortion, each one pleasing to the ears of discerning guitar players. In my quest to understand all that I could about tube guitar amplifier distortion, I created my own philosophy. I wanted to understand the truth about which distortions were ‘good’ and which were ‘bad’, so I fashioned circuits that would emphasize each type of distortion. Then I played and listened. A lot. Over and over and over until I learned the truth about each type of distortion and knew what I believed.

In 2004 I started Bluetron and set out to improve on the Fender amps of the 1960s. As an amp builder, Leo Fender is one of my heroes, so I knew improving on his designs would be a challenge. With the lessons I had taught myself over thirty years of playing, fixing and modding Fender amps, I set out to build an amplifier that had much more of the good kinds of distortion and a whole lot less of the bad. I started with a Fender Super Reverb (well actually five late-sixties models) and began to make circuit modifications and component substitutions. My good friend and most-excellent blues man, Tommy Stillwell, helped me with the early listening analysis. His experience and perspective were invaluable. In appreciation for his efforts and input, I gave Tommy the first Bluetron Blueverb prototype, which he proceed to gig with until just recently. He’s now gigging with a Bluetron Bluedrive that I traded him for the prototype.