At the time, Dumble was living in a house owned by Jackson Browne and Cross headed up there to pay for the custom relay box. “I really couldn’t afford to mess around with pedals at that time,” says Cross. An oversized cord went to a blue two-space rack unit that housed mechanical relays to control which amp was engaged. Each guitar only had a middle and bridge pickup and was outfitted with a heavy-duty switch-imagine the massive switches on the back of vintage Fender amps. The solution was based around a pair of Japan-made Strats that were modified by Valley Arts. Naturally, Cross needed a way to switch between sounds easily. Cross and Dumble decided on two KT88-loaded heads (a first for Dumble at the time) with matching 2x12 cabinets in orange suede for a clean sound and an Overdrive Special with a 4x12 cab for a lead sound. One of the early users of his amps was singer/songwriter Christopher Cross, who was brought in by Bonnie Raitt. JoBo, meanwhile, posted "Rest in Peace Alexander", and called Dumble "a genius and a one of a kind".His off-the-grid lifestyle forced Dumble to frequently look at alternate payment arrangements with clients. I was invited to his house a few years back and he showed me a lot of his collection, including the first amp he ever built that he let me play through. Orianthi and Joe Bonamassa were among the first to pay tribute on social media in the wake of Dumble's passing. You're always thinking of new ways to do it." That's the toughest thing about staying with one thing. “Always make sure that it works and looks perfect,” he continued, “The actual techniques I use to get the sound that I go after have evolved extensively. I've always been aware that whatever I make has to be crafted with the best intentions. Of his amp-making philosophy, Dumble once told Guitar Player in a rare interview, “I try to be flexible. And he plugs me in to a variety of amps and he listens to what I am trying to get out of the amplifier he closes his eyes and hears the way that I am playing it, and he anticipates what it is I am trying to get the amp to do, and then he goes and builds an amp around that.” "I go to his house and I sit for hours and hours and he just listens to me play. "And I think that’s why in the early days you had that whole thing about when built people amplifiers he wouldn’t want people to sell them because that amplifier was built around that specific person’s style of playing. "Like, I want a certain sound to come from it and I want it to feedback on a certain note, it just does it instead of me really having to try and manipulate it out of the amp. "He has got these amplifiers built to specifically respond to the way that I play, so they effortlessly do the things that I am intending them to do," Shepherd observed. Shepherd – who hides Dumble circuits in his Fender cabinets – spoke to Total Guitar last year about Howard's ingenuity, and said it was the designer's surgical approach to tone-tweaking that made Dumble amps so great. In recent times, his amps have been used by the likes of John Mayer and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, the latter of whom responded to the news of Dumble’s passing by saying, “He was a bona fide genius and I don’t use that term lightly."Ī post shared by Kenny Wayne Shepherd photo posted by on I consider him a really close friend I mean, like family.” “I think it might have something to do with the really warm relationship we both have. “I’ve always been very proud of that,” he added. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2017, Ford said Dumble “told me he’d got the idea to build the Overdrive Special from listening to me play through a '60s piggyback Fender Bassman and cabinet”. In fact, it was his friendship with Ford that ultimately inspired the creation of the two-channel Overdrive Special. Dumble’s clientele would expand exponentially over the next decade, and soon featured Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robben Ford. The Dumbleland, Overdrive Special and Steel String Singer are arguably Dumble’s three most well-known – and rarest – models, though amps such as the Phoenix and Dumbleator were also personally designed by the mythical gear maker at various points across his career.ĭumble started officially producing amps in the mid-’60s, and by the end of the ‘70s his client list boasted the likes of David Lindley, Jackson Browne, Lowell George and Bonnie Raitt.
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