Hasta La Gadget!

LOS ANGELES — You can’t swing a Strat these days without hitting a boutique tube amp with sweet tone. It seems every day someone comes out of his workshop carrying a new rig and spouting buzzwords like handmade and hand-wired.

They’re all following a path blazed by Matchless.

The guys at Matchless all but launched the boutique amplifier craze back in ’89. They were hand-wiring amps long after the big guys had turned to faster, cheaper methods and long before the little guys started appearing with the regularity of hot licks in a B.B. King tune.

“Phil paved the way for a lot of these boutique amp makers,” said luthier James Trussart, referring to Matchless honcho Phil Jamison. “He was out in front.”

He still is, in no small part because Matchless has never wavered from its mission to build road-worthy rigs for gigging musicians like Adam Franklin and Bolts of Melody (pictured), who got turned on to them by his manager.

“They’re very reliable, great-sounding amps,” said Franklin’s manager, Stephen Judge, owner of Second Motion Entertainment. “From a sound perspective, they can be loud and crunchy, or clean, pure with a chimey sound.”

Judge was so impressed by the amps that he set up another band he manages, The Church, with a setup and bought a Matchless DC-30 to have on hand at the office.

“I’ve always thought they were great amplifiers. I’ve got so many artists that just love the sound of those amplifiers.”