Matamp
| LLC | |
| Founded | 1958 |
| Founder | Mat Mathias |
| Headquarters | United Kingdom |
| Products | Amplifiers, speaker cabinets |
| Website | www |
Matamp is a British electric guitar amplifier manufacturing company, best known for its handwired amplifier heads and speaker cabinets. It was established in 1964 by Mat Mathias.
Matamp founder, Mat Mathias, started the company RadioCraft as early 1945. What started as an interest ultimately developed into a fully-fledged business building amplifiers for the burgeoning music scene in the early sixties. Behind his wife’s retail shop, selling accessories to young musicians, Mat’s workshop/manufacturing facility also extended into a fully fledged recording studio complete with disc cutters for young bands to record and cut their own demos. This resulted in the formation of MAT Records. His customers would come and see him, tell him what they wanted, and he would build it and/or record it. Patterns would emerge, and trends soon changed into product lines.
Long-term friend and hi-fi amplifier designer Tony Emerson joined with Mat in the early 1960s, shortly after the name MATAMP (Mat and Tony amplifiers) was coined. As word got around Matamp would soon be working with such musical luminaries as Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac (who Mathias joined on their US tour in the late 60’s) and recording early demos with the likes of Graham Gouldman who would go on to form 10cc.
After Emerson’s departure and development work with Fleetwood Mac, the company moved on to form a partnership with Cliff Cooper who owned a music shop called simply ‘Orange’, and as such started producing Orange Matamp from the Huddersfield workshop. In 1971, Orange Matamp outsold Marshall, and gave Cliff Cooper a taste of volume sales. However; Mat was not prepared to forego quality standards in favour of mass-production, and so Orange amps moved away from the company that designed the originals
Matamp is famous for its collaboration with Orange Amps in the 1960s.
Their mixing console Matamp Stereo Supernova was named one of the world's best mixers by Mixmag in a 2012 list and features on the cover of the 2013 compilation album 12"/80s/Club Classics.
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