{"id":39597,"date":"2018-12-09T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/meet-southeast-alaskas-amp-wizard\/"},"modified":"2018-12-10T16:34:49","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T01:34:49","slug":"meet-southeast-alaskas-amp-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home2\/meet-southeast-alaskas-amp-wizard\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Southeast Alaska&#8217;s Amp Wizard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/54-BpM48kVk\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Reber Stein set out to learn how to play guitar, but instead discovered how to make amplifiers.<\/p>\n<p>More than a decade ago, Stein bought a guitar and an amp in an effort to learn how to play. When something went wrong with Stein&rsquo;s amp, he had to send it out of state for repairs. The costly and time-intensive process encouraged Stein to discover how he could handle future problems on his own.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I sat down to crack the code of what an amplifier was made of,&rdquo; Stein told the Capital City Weekly, while showing off a portion of his collection of custom-made amps.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Stein, a Douglas resident, who also works on amplifiers in his Sitka workshop, isn&rsquo;t much of a guitar player, but he has made dozens of tube amps.<\/p>\n<p>Tube amps are amplifiers that make use of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?client=safari&#038;rls=en&#038;q=how+tube+amps+work&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=1\" target=\"_blank\">vacuum tubes to amplify signals and project the sounds of instruments<\/a>. They were the dominant form of amplifier throughout the &rsquo;50s and &rsquo;60s, but were later replaced by solid state amps, which ditched the glass tubes that give tube amps their name.<\/p>\n<p>The glowing glass tubes inside the amps tend to attract moth-like attention, Stein said, but the appeal goes beyond aesthetics. Many musicians and audiophiles also swear by the &ldquo;warm&rdquo; tones of the antique, analogue audio tech.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I think each ear is different, but they all still seem to prefer the tube amp,&rdquo; said Dave Galanin, A former Sitka resident who makes music under the name <a href=\"http:\/\/rpm.fm\/artist\/strummin-dog\/\" target=\"_blank\">Strummin Dog.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Galanin, who has been playing guitar for the past 49 years, said he&rsquo;s particularly partial to the amps Stein makes, which are often inspired by classic Fender amplifiers from the 1950s.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve more or less become a test pilot for a lot of his creations,&rdquo;Galanin said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how he does it, but he brings the magic out of it. I call him the Amp Wizard.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"neFMT neFMT_Subhead\"><strong>D-I-Why? <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Stein doesn&rsquo;t play guitar, tube amps are a niche piece of equipment that take great care to create and the work that goes into each amp makes them essentially priceless.<\/p>\n<p>Stein is driven to create the amps by pasion, curiosity and reverence for the old-school equpment that borders on mysticism.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Guitars are pretty straightforward, amps less so,&rdquo; Stein said. &ldquo;They are a classroom of invisible forces. Whether it&rsquo;s voltage or electromagnetic forces or induction, there&rsquo;s all sorts of invisible actions taking place.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Amplifiers to me seem to be the intersection of folklore and physics,&rdquo; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, Stein said, it&rsquo;s rewarding to to enable musician friends to express their voices.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone involved in making music needs to be a musician, Stein said. Recording engineers, producers and those who make equipment play a role,too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fenderforum.com\/forum.html?db=&#038;topic_number=676662\" target=\"_blank\">Amp builders for major companies used to put their names on masking tape inside the equipment<\/a>. In some circles, amps made by particular builders are still extremely coveted.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I exist in this ecology of musicians and musicianship,&rdquo; Stein said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s always gratifying to see the amplifiers used.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"neFMT neFMT_Subhead\"><strong>Amping up<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Stein described himself as relatively handy and curious before he started working on tube amps, but when he bought his first amp, he didn&rsquo;t have an inkling he would be building things like it.<\/p>\n<p>Once curiosity took hold, Stein simply went with it.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t discouraged from learning,&rdquo; Stein said. &ldquo;My interest has historically been in how stuff works. There are warnings about working on amplifiers, and they&rsquo;re true. They can be dangerous because there&rsquo;s high voltage inside of them.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>However, making amps doesn&rsquo;t require particularly specialized tools, Stein said, and he typically works with folks who provide cabinets for the insides of the amplifiers.<\/p>\n<p>Acquiring parts presents its own challenges because the vacuum tubes used in the amps can be rare and expensive depending on when and where they&rsquo;re made.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The tubes themselves are a wild card,&rdquo; Stein said.<\/p>\n<p>Tube production in the U.S. tapered down in the &rsquo;60s, so most of the tubes he buys come from Russia, China and the Czech Republic. Stein said most companies have a premium line and a more affordable line of tubes.<\/p>\n<p>Buying vintage tubes is also an option, but the old tubes tend to be pricey, and Stein said he generally elects to use newer tubes.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;If I&rsquo;m using old tubes, I don&rsquo;t know where they&rsquo;ve been or how hard they were used,&rdquo; Stein said.<\/p>\n<p>The tubes are generally stable, Stein said, but they are glass and won&rsquo;t stand up to being dropped or treated with abandon.<\/p>\n<p>&rdquo;Guys who leave their amps in the car overnight find they don&rsquo;t always work the same way,&rdquo; Stein said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Labors of love<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While Stein&rsquo;s been making amps for about a decade, he said the bulk of his amps were made over the past five years.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve probably built 15 to 16 in the last few years,&rdquo; Stein said. &ldquo;Most of what I did in the beginning was learning.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>That acquisition of knowledge is still a work in progress.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I learn something new every time I open up an amp,&rdquo; Stein said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s still so much to discover.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Still, with what he already knows, Stein can turn out a tube amp over a three-day weekend. Stein qualified that the timetable only applies, &ldquo;assuming it&rsquo;s not asking for anything special.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The relative speediness means that Stein knows what he&rsquo;s doing, not that making the amps is particularly easy.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Even after 10 years of tinkering with this, to do it right is to be very methodical about it,&rdquo; Stein said.<\/p>\n<p>For that reason, Stein said it&rsquo;s difficult to attach a monetary to his amps, which have generally been destined for close friends.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;For me it&rsquo;s almost always a labor of love,&rdquo; Stein said. &ldquo;Plus, people interested in amplifiers of this complexity can mostly build them themselves.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>However, Stein said changing that could be one of his long-term goals for tube amps.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;My project may be to be better organized and share the work with more people than close friends,&rdquo; Stein said. &ldquo;Maybe I&rsquo;ll learn to play at some point.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>\u2022 Contact arts and culture reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tube amps: Where physics meets folklore.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":39598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[73,116,175],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-39597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","tag-ccw","tag-ccw-features","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39597"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=39597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}