This steampunk Custom guitar amp has quite the origin story. I was probably around 20 years old, going to school for music education. The lady that lived in the apartment above me saw me coming and going carrying my saxophone case and asked if any of my musician friends would be interested in buying her late husband’s guitar and amp. Neither worked, and the amp was in pretty bad shape. We struck a deal for $50.00 for both. At the time, I had no idea what it would take to get them working, but as a music student, learning the guitar was on the list of things to do, and working construction for my summer job had me excited about the possibility of building a custom cabinet to move the amp components into. It took me over 20 years to decide what I wanted to do with it, but I finally found the vision and resources to turn it into something special.
The original amp components are a 1950’s era Supro 5w amp with an odd 10″x6″ oval speaker. After researching, this speaker size seems to be rare, and only a handful of Supro amps were made with this speaker. With the rare-sized speaker, I decided to accent it with a segmented ring to trim it out.
The ring is made of walnut and accented with bands of Paduk wood. The speaker is caged in a custom copper cage where I added a blue patination using various salts and acids. The cabinet is made of walnut, and the controls are mounted on a copper plate with a similar patina. To visually tie the speaker cabinet to the control box, I added an oval window to the side and positioned the power indicator light, adding a soft glow. Then I added a similar round window to the side of the control box, and all openings were outfitted with a copper grid. Finally, one of my favorite parts was to show off the fact that it was originally a vintage tube guitar amp. I mounted the amplifier tubes on the top of the control box and protected them with rings of copper that had the same patination as the rest of the copper.
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