An Interview with Mr. Steve Carr of Carr Amplifiers

How did you first get into building amplifiers?

Well, that is a good place to start. I played guitar for many years, I actually started playing bass in bands in high school. I then switched to guitar in College, I was pretty much always in a band since the age of 14. I always had an interest in gear, though at first I certainly didn’t know anything about it. There was a period of time where I was trying to make a living at music, but it didn’t actually pan out. But during that time I befriended a local repair guy who had a little shop. Previous to that he actually worked at IBM repairing their mainframes and he had this primitive cellphone/beeper thing that anytime it went off he would have to leave. But there would be weeks that would go by when he had no work. So he set up this little tube shop doing repair and I would hang out with him and try to learn what I could.  He suggested that I just build an amp, that’s how he learned. Just get a schematic and figure out what it means, find parts, and make something. So, that is really where it started for me, building a kind of copy of a Fender Tweed Champ. At that time in the mid 90’s there were some places that you could get parts, but the internet was not what it is now, and certainly there were not all the companies where you could easily get transformers, chassis – back then it was difficult to find sources for these things. So that ended up being a great education, it was helpful that it was hard. And I built this thing and it didn’t work and I was feeling like kind of a failure but I got to poking at it and got it going and from that point forward I just couldn’t stop thinking about capacitors, resistors, tubes, and circuits.  

Do you have a formal Electronics background, like an Electrical Engineering degree?

Not really, I went to college a couple different times, but I never finished. The first time was for Aerospace Engineering at Purdue. I had about three years of that, then on to Physics at UNC for another three years, so I have some background in general electronics that you would get at a college level engineering course. But that is not really applicable to the tube circuits, except for perhaps teaching a rigorous way about thinking about things. I learned by reading old textbooks and reading over schematics, I would look at schematics early on and not really understand what the things meant exactly, but as I built things and continued to focus on these classic schematics it became clearer and clearer, light bulbs would go off, and eventually I had a good understanding of it. That is the nice thing about tube amps and tube HiFi: there can be such a wide parameter of circuit bodies where the thing will actually work, with solid state it is much more precise and you have to have very narrow parameters for it to work. That is why tubes are so much fun and maybe that’s why in the 50’s kids and others were experimenting with them – it is an easy medium to work in.

What is your favorite amplifier outside of the Carr line?

Well, right before I started hanging out with the (local repair) guy I had been using a 50 Watt non master volume Marshall that he actually modified some for me. It was a 75 or 76 – I really loved the sound of that amp. Shortly after that a friend of mine had got an early Fender Deluxe Reverb and I really fell in love with that amp in particular and went and got one for myself back when they were actually really cheap. So the Deluxe really would have been my favorite amp followed closely by that Marshall, but if I had to pick one it would be the Blackface Deluxe Reverb that I still have.

It seems that all roads lead back to Fender…

Well, it is such an amazing platform, even for Marshall. Leo kept things simple, and that seems like such a great approach to sound – the simpler the better.  And they are really one of the easiest things to work on, even now. But, your question is a good one because it leads into the first Carr model the “Slant 6V” that came out in 1998 and that was really an attempt to meld those two sounds: that Black Face and the 50 watt Marshall, and the Slant 6 is two channels.

So was it with that design (The Slant 6V) that you formed the Carr Amplifier Company?

Well, the company came about in such a slow and organic way, I was doing repair and mods for other people and I had this idea and wanted to see if one, I could do it, and two, I thought it would be useful for myself.  The collage of the Deluxe and the Marshall I built after a lot of tweeking. I liked it and I was using it live, so I decided why not try and make another one of these and make it look like a real product and took it down to a guitar store in Raleigh called “Indoor Storm” and they ordered two of them from me, so I was about as happy as I could be. And that’s really where it started since I didn’t know if I could sell one or if it was a good idea or what. But they bought the two and after they sold one of those to a customer, that was really the beginning and after that they ordered six more which was just incredible for me and an amazing leap of faith on their part. That really set the wheels in motion and after that I found a barn that I rented for a long time and it kind of slowly went from there.

What are your goals in terms of tone when you are creating a new amplifier?

Well, that is a tricky one, I guess there are a lot of people doing boutique amps and it certainly is a fun thing to do and everyone has there own sonic background and playing background. For me, clean sounds are just so important, almost all amplifiers have some amount of clean tone that they can give to you, even our Hammer Head that is primarily a distortion amplifier, has some really interesting clean sounds. For one, I want to get really pretty, dynamic, and very open and honest clean sound so you can really hear the guitar. And an interactive feel so when you change how you pick I really want that to be brought through. In a sense amplifying it allows you to have a more musical approach so the feel is very important in a clean sound. The overdrives are kind of interesting, you know, I think that the amp’s heritage is heavily based in Fender and tweeked versions of Fender and trying to make that (Fender) sound more open and dynamic. But as far as overdrive, even though I mentioned that Marshall I liked so much, and that is formative in my thinking and enjoyment, I feel like I’ve taken a little more liberty with the overdrive sounds that I have with the cleans in a sense. But with the overdrive, I kind of like a mild to medium overdrive that again has a lot of openness, it has sort of a power tube overdrive character rather than preamp, even if it is from the preamp. The difference is less compression, and if you pick lighter, it will clean up some, and if you dig in harder you will get a more aggressive sound.

Something like amplifiers with only a volume knob where you turn up full up and ride your guitars volume and adjust your pick attack?

In a sense, our Mercury Amp that has a built in attenuator and three boost settings primarily gets all of its distortion from the power tube and it is that kind of thinking where you just crank the amp. Now, there is a lot you need to do to make that happen. For example going back to Fender, if you crank a Fender the clean sound has so much low end that it can get kind of loose and indistinct so a lot of times for distortion sounds you need to find a balance there. In a way you want to lean out the sound so that when you crank it the bass and sound will still be tight and everything will remain focused but at the same time if you back off of the volume you don’t want it to be so thin that it’s not satisfying. That method of rolling the guitar volume back is a really great one, but I have found that one of the big challenges is to have an amp that will do everything, in other words, if it has a really gorgeous clean sound that is very full and pretty, it is hard to make that same exact circuit transition into a really good distortion with out having some adjustments in there so that it will make those transitions well. EL84 amps seem to do a lot of what you’re talking about, and that seems to be the Trainwreck thing. We have not used a lot of EL84s not because I don’t like the tube, but when I started there were so many people doing them that I figured we would do something that wasn’t happening. And I believe that it helped us because the 84 has become so wildly popular and a lot of people are doing that and it makes it tough to make your mark. It may be something that I do eventually but try to come at it from a different angle.

With all of the newer style amps out there that offer hundreds of different sounds for a very low price point where does Carr Amplifiers fit in to the market?

It’s funny, sometimes if you have some limitations that allow you to work on other things, for example: the song or the way you are playing. If you are just going from hundreds of different sounds to sounds to sounds it almost seems like those sounds are the important thing not necessarily what you are playing. If you are limited in some ways by your sonic palette you can explore the guitar more and find more sounds in how you play, and to me that is more satisfying. But you do have to achieve a certain level of playing before that will be open to you. There are a lot of people who go that route; I remember when I was first starting out I had to buy the cheapest thing I could find. I remember that I had a handful of pedals and it all sounded pretty good, I bought one of these all in one effects units and it was neat and I was liking it and programming little thing, then one day something happened and it stopped working so I pulled out my old pedal board with only four pedals and it sounded so much better, so much more open, I just couldn’t believe it.     

I have found that for me and for many of our customers if you start with a great clean platform and use a handful of quality pedals often it is so much more musical because you have all of that open rich tone from the amp and the touch sensitivity and you only need to add a few pedals. You will end up with a huge tonal pallet and then you can just concentrate on playing. Some of the modeling stuff sounds pretty good and is convenient, but the thing they seem to lack in my opinion is that touch sensitivity and that interactive feeling. I just don’t find it very inspiring and doesn’t make you want to play it at length.

How hard is it for you to maintain the aesthetic of point to point in the face of success? Meaning, how are you able to maintain quality in an expanding business.

It goes back to your earlier question about goals and the business model we work in. Doing what we do is different than the way a large company would operate with maximizing volume and profit. See, I do this because I like it and I am so lucky that I get to do it. There is a lot of work involved and clerical stuff that I don’t really like to do but it is still wonderful to do this. For me it is about the pleasure of building things, putting your hands on it. We have a small group that does this, we have a group of three guys who build the amps, a person doing test and then our own wood working shop, but everybody takes a lot of pride and enjoys doing it. I don’t know if we would ever want to get too much bigger than we are because not only could we potentially loose quality, but it just might not be fun anymore. I know that it might sound silly, but I have talked to other guys like Tom Anderson, and most say that around 10 people is the max you can have while keeping a family style atmosphere where you know everything that is going on and everyone is on the same page. People who have gone beyond the ten people have expressed regret and often want to get back to that smaller group. So our goal is not to maximize profit, and not to say, hey, our name is out there let’s have these made in China because it will cost a fraction of what we pay to make them. That is not one of my interests. For me, if we can make a decent living at this then we are happy, and the greatest enjoyment is if customers are enjoying them and providing for my guys who work for me, and just the pleasure of building a quality product.  So I think it is fundamentally different than a large company where sometimes the quality is not even part of the equation.

I believe that people who love to play the guitar see their amps and guitars as more than just a thing; these are important parts of their life, something they care about a great deal.

That is very true and it may be a little bit more of like what America was 50 years ago before we had so many cheap imports. Everything was built by your neighbors basically, and quality and pride seemed to be so much more central. What you ended up with was something that was not disposable, something that would last for years and years.  It became important for you and a part of your life. I have heard from customers that their amp is something that they are going to pass down to their kids and that is very gratifying to hear. But again, we just really enjoy doing it, that is the only way we would want to do it. Our amps are expensive, but I believe that they are a great value.

What is your take on the whole NOS vs. current production tube debate?

Well, we use all new tubes because we want consistency and reliability and great tone. I have listened to a lot of new tubes and I selected the ones that I felt worked best in our amps. I think that since about the mid 90’s tube quality has really improved – the modern tubes that is. The quality has dramatically improved and there are so many more choices than there were, so we are in pretty good shape. There are some NOS tubes that sound better, there is no question, but I am really satisfied with the current production ones - that is what I use in my stuff. It is fun to try NOS, certainly but those tubes are not getting any younger and there are fewer and fewer of them. And NOS tubes can have problems too; we get calls often about DOA NOS tubes that cost a bundle. NOS tubes can have the same issues as modern tubes. To me, that is an after market thing. We are going to make the amp reliable and sound great and once you get it, if you want to mess around with some tubes, that is a fun thing to do. I sort of do the same with speakers. I have tried to find great sounding speakers that will make sense in the amp and allow us to sell the amp for a good price, after that people sometimes like to go for a certain sound and that is fine and a fun thing to do. But I work with a number of companies for all kinds of parts and after this long I really end up focusing on those who do what they say they will and can deliver what they promise on time and consistent. That is so important because you would hate to have a situation where this one sounded great and then this one, something is weird with it. We use Eminence because they have been extremely consistent speaker-wise and are just an amazing company to deal with. For tubes we will use whatever sounds good in a particular amp. We use a lot of new sensors like EHX, Tung-Sol, JJ, and some Groove Tubes 12AX7s. But it seems that a lot of the great NOS tubes are already gone and you have to use a lot of caution with the vendor when you are buying those. Make sure you can return them if there is a problem. See, if you are gigging a lot you will want to stick with modern tubes because you want to have something that you can readily get. If you are gigging you are putting a lot of time on your tubes and sometimes in a live situation with drums and what not some of the subtleties will be lost, you’re just not going to hear them. So I think it is better than to stick with dependable tubes that you know in terms of sound and tone and the overall feel of the amp.

Do you see Amplifiers that are sub 15 watts as a new market? It seems that there are more and more of the 15 watt and under amps making an appearance.

Our Mercury Amplifier that came out back in January of 2003 seems like a long time ago. But that amp was the result, at least the beginning of the design was the result, of a recommendation by one of our dealers, “Will Cutt Guitars” in Kentucky.  Eric, the Head of Sales there, was saying that he thought people would really like a very low powered but full bodied 1 x 12 combo. At the time I wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea or something that people would really want to buy, but with his encouragement we went ahead and began to develop the amp. And that has been our best selling amp since then. These days there are a lot more even lower power amps out there now like 5 watts and our Raleigh is only 3 watts. The smaller amps are great for home use because you are barely able to turn up a 50 watt amp at home, and that doesn’t allow you to really get into the flavor of the amp. Our 8 watt Mercury has a built in attenuator so you can crank the amp up to get that output tube distortion and then set a listening level. And the funny thing is that 8 Watts is still a lot of amp, the Mercury is what I use when I play live. As an aside there was a study done on the way the human ear hears; it is exponential, so to have something that sounds twice as loud as an 8 watt Mercury you would need an amp that has 10 times the power, so in that case an 80 watt amplifier would sound twice as loud. So something half as loud would then be .8 watts. So that gives you some perspective in that an 8 watt amp is a lot closer to a 50 watt amp than you think, so far as how loud it is going to sound. Low watt amps just seem so much more usable, even in a live situation. You can have the amp working hard and still not blow everybody out and at home you certainly don’t need 50 or 100 watts. What you will get with a little more power, like say a 30 watt amp, is a tone that is a little more controlled and a fuller low end. But I am a big fan of the lower watt amplifiers. One of the great things is when you have the power section of an amp really work, one of the great things about power tube distortion is it seems to have a lot more dynamic spring and a range from clean to overdrive that is very sensitive to the pick than say pre amp distortion. And for that reason when you have a lower power amp at home it is just that much more satisfying and it sounds like a big amp, only small.

So, what is next for Carr amplifiers?

Well I am always working on something new, and since we have been showing at the winter NAMM show I have tried to have something new there every year. As a matter of fact I am working on something right now, it is a little top secret, but we are working on something that is a great value, Especially seeing the current state of the economy. It will be in a 15 -18 watt package with some channel switching and a really swank look. Like the Raleigh, only bigger, and it will be a downright bargain for what it is.  

I tell you what; I will send you a picture of me sitting here beside the prototype just to stoke your curiosity a little!