Matchless Amplifiers
| Private | |
| Industry | Amplification |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Founder | Rick Perrotta |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, United States |
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Key people
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Mark Sampson, Steve Goodale and Chris Perrotta |
| Products | Amplifiers |
| Website | matchlessamplifiers |
Matchless Amplifiers is a Los Angeles-based company which designs and makes electric guitar amplifiers, specializing in class-A tube circuitry.
Rick Perrotta started Matchless while living in Hollywood, California in 1989. He, along with partners Mark Sampson, Steve Goodale and Chris Perrotta were the initial force behind the company, often working on Rick's kitchen table. When Rick and Mark started working on their first prototype amp, the C-30, they wanted it to sound significantly better than the amplifiers that were currently being mass-produced. They also wanted their amps to take the rigors of the road and remain completely reliable for musicians who played night after night.
Chris explains "A lot of work went into those early prototypes. Mark and Rick worked tirelessly perfecting the amp's pre-amplifier section and tone circuits. They were very passionate about it. They'd spend hours reverse-engineering older transformers by unraveling them and counting every turn of wire. They'd experiment with different speaker combinations and speaker modifications."
As part of their research, they'd solicit working musicians to play through the prototypes. By listening to their feedback, they'd incorporate those desirable changes into the amp design. Rick explains "During that time, some of the components were getting very difficult to find because the whole industry had embraced semiconductors and was going away from the older vacuum tube technology. Most of the well known tube manufacturers had either shut down production or sold off their tooling to other countries. We had to hunt down and purchase NOS (new old stock) tubes that were warehoused in small lots across the country. We also had to import tubes from other countries. Often, those tubes had a very high rejection rate and didn't make the grade, many had to be scrapped out. We had difficulties finding other components as well, like large carbon-composition resistors. Even commercially available transformers didn't seem to do the trick. In the end, we had to have them hand wound in small batches by a private company. The transformers were by far the heaviest and most costly part of the amp; they needed to be because they were the heart of it. It wasn't just about the amp's power, it was also about delivering punchy, clear, complex voicing. Naturally, the amps were very labor intensive to construct. Just one DC-30 amp took over 13 hours to complete. Because the amplifiers were so costly to make, we didn't know if customers would actually buy them. After all, it was like taking a step backwards into an older "garage technology" and then asking more money for it."
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