History

Who We Are, What We Did, Where We Are Going….

Pedals.

We love them, we need them, can’t live without them-no. (Okay, maybe quoting David Lee Roth to introduce your company isn’t the best idea, but it certainly is not the worst.)

Pedals.

Those grand and glorious little boxes that add so much to our day to day existence. We can never have enough, and that is a good thing.

Pedals

Those instruments of mirth and joy that transcend the ordinary and take us to a place far beyond what we ever thought we could reach. Tone Valhalla. Yes indeed.

The endless quest for the perfect tone brings us back time and time again to – (Get ready for it) pedals.

It is this obsessive nature and endless dedication to tone that brought iconic amp guru and all-around cool guy James Brown, he of the Peavey 5150 fame, to design and build what many consider to be the best Overdrive/Fuzz/Distortion pedals ever made.

I would agree, that is why I bought the company from James, but more on that later…..

James Brown is a good man, a smart man, a man who knows what he wants and how to go about getting it. James Brown does not compromise. The project is over when James is happy with the result. And not before. Never before. If you are looking at this page (and I assume you would be) you will notice James with a few guys who have been known to play guitar occasionally. This is the rarified world Mr. Brown frequents.

James does not build “clones” or knockoffs. James builds with only the best components. James builds in America. Not really difficult concepts, but the good stuff in life (and pedals) rarely is. It takes time, dedication, and an undying quest for excellence.

And thus, the legacy of Amptweaker.

Amptweaker is not a company that sits around a large sterile conference room figuring out how best to put some crappy knobs on a new design thus saving a whopping $.00002 per unit. It is a company on a perpetual quest to create the most tonally perfect, user friendly effect pedals to be played and enjoyed by as many people as possible.

We design, engineer, and create the things we like to play.

And we play a lot here in the office, probably more than we will ever admit to publicly. (Yes, I am writing this on our website but am seriously banking on nobody ever reading it, if you are reading this and feel compelled to respond, drop me a line at Jack@amptweaker.com and let me know how much you enjoyed it or if serious psychiatric help is in order.) Like you, we turn it up and let it fly and when the feeling is just right, we know we have arrived at the desired location, also known as “Toneville”.

From the folks who design, to the crew in the packing and shipping department to the office staff, each and every one of us has a monastic focus on delivering the best possible experience to our customers. Because at the end of the day, we are just like you- we have families, pets, eat waaay too much Popeye’s Fried Chicken, and we like to be taken care of when we buy a product.

As an aside, if you ever decide to buy a pedal company, there are some unspoken rules:

1. Be weird. It helps.
2. Enjoy music! It helps.
3. Love good pedals! Even if you did not design them. Let their greatness inspire you.
4. Do not take yourself too seriously! You have not cured cancer or a pandemic.
5. Enjoy every minute of your life. There are no guarantees for tomorrow.

Keep checking back periodically as we will be posting some great pedal configurations and uses thought up by the folks here at the shop and our dedicated group of loyal friends who have been using Amptweaker gear for years. We can’t do it without you, and we know it.

This is not the end; this is the beginning of the second act of a company that wants to do one thing very, very well and hopes you agree.

Pedals.

Jack Thompson
President, Owner, Whatever