At one point in time things were built to last right here in the U.S.A. Here at Square Amps we are committed to preserving the American spirit of hand crafted guitar amplifiers built from authentic vintage wooden tube radios from the 1930’s-1940’s. In addition to hand crafting tube amplifiers from vintage radios we also design and build our own line of vintage inspired heads. Each amp has it’s own unique personality and tells a story all it’s own through the patina of yesteryear. With our ever expanding line of unique music gear, we are also working on some interesting drive pedal designs!
Square Amps is a one man shop consisting of myself (Matt) building, repairing and designing all things Square Amps. My passion for building guitar amps sparked while playing with my grandpa’s old CB radios when I was a kid. Being able to listen and talk to people all over town while sitting in my room mystified me, I was hooked on radio. As years went by and my fascination with radio grew I began to get into shortwave radio and analog scanning. I would find shortwave radios from junk shops, take them apart, modify them then climb trees with an antenna and sit for hours just listening to whatever I could hear.
Music has always played a huge role throughout my life in many facets and I have both my parents and grandparents to thank for that. My grandparents had a camp three hours from where they lived where we would go fishing a few times a year and on those trips is where I fell in love with rock&roll. We would lose our local radio station about 30 minutes into the trip so my grandparents would play tapes of 40’s-60’s music. Through the tape deck in a Dodge Ram I was turned onto all the greats Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, George Jones. My favorite was Fats, I really wore those tapes out.
At 13 I learned to play guitar and found myself with a strat and a small practice amp making all kinds of interesting noise. Once I learned how to play I needed a better amp so I went to my local music shop where I found a beat up Peavey Delta Blues for a good deal. I plugged in, turned it to 10 slammed an E chord shook the building and rattled the windows…I was hooked on the tube guitar amp sound and became infatuated with what was going on inside those glowing magic glass envelopes.