Maker of high-end amplifiers is playing to a small audience

Blame it on the Beatles.

As garage bands sprouted like dandelions during the British invasion, guitar amplifier makers found themselves unable to keep up with surging demand. So they took shortcuts that sped up the manufacturing process but changed the way amps sounded -- making vintage models from the late 1950s and early ‘60s prized collectibles.

With supplies of these relics dwindling, a wave of amp manufacturers has emerged to serve guitarists willing to pay premium prices for classic sounds. Los Angeles, as a center of the music industry, boasts a concentration of these boutique amp builders. Their handcrafted gems often cost $3,000 and up, three or four times what a mass-produced model might run.

“There’s a lot of recording studios here, and a lot of guitar players who live here,” noted Phil Jamison, director of operations for Matchless Amplifiers in West Los Angeles.

Entrepreneurs focused on niche markets such as boutique amps, however, run an above-average risk of extinction, said Rita Gunther McGrath, an associate professor at Columbia University’s business school. They don’t have other lines of merchandise to fall back on, making it crucial that their primary product is top quality and outsells competitors.

“You’re so dependent on a fairly narrow customer market,” she said. A tough business? That’s not news to the amp builders.

“The old joke goes, ‘How do you make a small fortune in the amp business? Start with a big one,’ ” said Paul Rivera, who designed amps for industry giant Fender Musical Instruments Corp. before putting out gear bearing his own name in the late 1980s. “It’s only because we love this business that we’re in it. It’s not lucrative.”

Still, some see the boutique market as a path to broader success. One of these is 65Amps Corp. of North Hollywood, which was launched in 2004.

Founders Peter Stroud, the lead guitarist for Sheryl Crow’s band, and Dan Boul hope to use the design and manufacturing chops they’re acquiring now to someday produce lower-cost versions for the mass market.

Their leased workshop space is humble, but the company’s amp model called the London has gotten good buzz. Customers include rock stalwart Peter Frampton and up-and-comer Drew Shirley of the alternative band Switchfoot.

“I’m using it quite a bit,” Frampton said from Atlantic City, N.J., where he was performing. “If I had to take one amp to a session, and I wasn’t sure what I would be called on to play, I’d probably take that one.”

Richard Robinson, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, is a partner in 65Amps. He got involved in a specialty amplifier company called SWR in the 1980s, when he was working as an entertainment lawyer. SWR was eventually purchased by Fender.

“It’s possible that we could take our manufacturing experience and expertise to produce a lower-priced amp” for the mass market, Robinson said of 65Amps, adding: “We’re not there yet.”

The company takes its name from 1965, when old-school amps still dominated the showroom floors of music stores.

“Up until 1964, every amp was a handmade, boutique amp,” Boul said at the company’s workshop.

To make amps that sound like the old ones, 65Amps and its rivals typically rig the electrical connections by hand in a process known as point-to-point wiring. They scour old military stockpiles and former Eastern bloc nations for vintage vacuum tubes, capacitors and resistors.

“There’s really no secret to building these amps,” Boul said. “To make them sound like they did back in the ‘60s, you have to build them like they did back then.”

The company has its roots in Stroud’s search for an amp that would produce a big sound but not overwhelm his bandmates on stage. He turned to his old pal Boul, an amp tinkerer, for advice.

The two had met two decades ago at the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, remaining friends even as their lives took different paths -- Stroud as a professional musician, Boul as an information technology specialist.

Stroud wanted something that sounded like the legendary 18-watt Marshall, a pint-sized, snarling beast of an amp. Boul came up with the idea to create a second channel that would recall the classic Vox AC-30, famously used by the Beatles.

The two friends teamed up on a prototype and Stroud took it out on tour. Soon musician friends wanted amps of their own. “We made the Mississippi River the dividing line,” said Stroud, who lives in Atlanta. “Anything east of the Mississippi I would build, and anything to the west, Dan would build.”

Thinking the amp might have wider appeal, the pair obtained $10,000 in seed money from a friend to build 10 amps. Last year, they rented a small booth at a convention in Anaheim to display their wares to music store owners from around the country.

Boul and Stroud left the show with orders for 150 amps -- and realized they weren’t prepared to build that many.

“We made a lot of classic freshman mistakes,” Boul said. “Manufacturing is such a sophisticated skill set. I’ve had a lot of business experience, but not a lot of manufacturing experience. If I’m short a capacitor, I can’t make an amp.”

Eventually the partners recruited Mike Franceschini, a veteran of several small amplifier companies, to smooth out the manufacturing process and oversee the final assembly and testing of amplifiers.

65Amps did about $300,000 in sales last year, Boul said, and he expects to double that this year.

At True Tone Music in Santa Monica, store owner Ken Daniels says he’s inundated by requests from boutique amp makers to sell their products. He said he agreed to stock 65Amps’ London and a new model, the Marquis, only after concluding they had exceptional qualities.

“Their stuff is magnificently built,” he said of 65Amps.

But success is never certain: “It’s a small, small market to begin with -- even the guys who are making it, aren’t getting rich,” Daniels said.

Boul concedes his company has a ways to go, and he hasn’t quit his day job at a health insurance company. But for him, 65Amps is a no-lose proposition.

“We’re paying all of our bills, paying all of our vendors and putting a little cash in our pockets,” he said.