Alexander and me...

[Funkalicousgroove]

If you all want to pitch in and send Alexander a gift I am in for $100 USD,

It's not that I feel I owe him, but I think he could use the dough

[Max]

If you all want to pitch in and send Alexander a gift I am in for $100 USD,

It's not that I feel I owe him, but I think he could use the dough

Hi Funkalicousgroove,

Next time you talk to Robben Ford, you could ask him, what he would recommend concerning the transfer of the dough and then you could post Robben's recommendations.

If someone wants to take the other road:

http://www.milagrofoundation.org/Donations/default.asp

In the menue you find "Donations".

There you find a form, where you can fill in a name:

"Donation In Honour Of":......................

Cheers to all

Max

[Tubetwang]

I think everyone jumped ship

[Structo]

<crickets>


He may even be insulted by a cash donation to him personally.

Be realistic, there's a group of people that reverse engineered his amps and are making them. I'm not really talking about the one offs.
Talking about the guys that make production runs of these knockoffs, then to turn around and say, by the way Alexander, we wanted to show our gratitude with this check........

Hey I'm not taking sides here, just playing the devils advocate.

[butwhatif]

Realistically, a few guys tried perhaps in vain to duplicate something they felt the need to do. And got a lot of enjoyment out of doing it.
I think the guy wants to be left alone. If he wanted someone to gratify him with anything, there'd be signs of it from his end. It's stressful to be pelted with a bunch of strangers' attention. My .02

[Rob]

I think it would be interesting to send him a clone as a gift and see what he thinks.

[Structo]

BAWAHAWAHWA!

[Hotrod Ford]

I am kind of surprised that a few D style Pro builders maybe not realizing that without the major interest for Dumbles amps they would most likely not be doing what they are doing today ( me included ) getting succses and the attention for building great sounding amps etc , I mean many might of course work with and maybe even build amps but most likely not with the same magnitude and getting the same attention as now,

these designs (all of them basically) sound cool just in different ways, some circuit detailing stuff producing certain tone that a lot of people didnt even know about how to achieve this tone until the secrets started to got in the open, people were speculating about what inside the goo
I believe some of us definately owe him for learning so much cool ideas of by checking out his ideas,

the saying that no new tube amp circuits has been made in so and so many years is like saying a Ferrari is the same as a Model T Ford, both are combusting engine vehicles and both take you from A to B but still there are more to it no?
the details and small improvements make a huge difference I mean the tube unit as a amplifier in a circuit section might be the point if so , but not a fully detailed circuit,
( not trying to point out anyone ! but so many people insist in saying the same about its all the same basic tube amps nothing new yada yada)


I dont know if its a matter of compensating with money I would think that may be offensive to "force" money on him with the fact he really do not want anyone knocking his stuff off,
that is a though nut to crack how to compensate for somethin like that !

I personally dealt with him a few times in the past and found him a very nice and polite guy giving me advice on some certain stuff without me even asking for it !! I heard of others have had probs with him but I dont want to go into that ,
I can only speak for my self and a few friends who own and has owned various cool Dumble amps tru the years, never had any trouble,

anyway I still think he is the king of cool amp building,
we others are only the diciples and bearer of the (stolen) torch

Peace and love

[dBe]

Oh, lordy!!! Where to begin?

I personally believe that it would be presumptious as hell to offer HAD money. Smacks of trying to buy him off. I don't think that this can be or should be even attempted.

Mr. Dumble is obviously, and justifiably so, a proud individual. He has opened a sonic vault that had never seen the light of day until he did so. Sure, he built upon the Fender/Western Electric/RCA platforms, but he did so in such a way that we are all here talking about "the sound" and him.

The questions are:

How to pay homage to someone like HAD?

Sould we do so?

Why are we spending this much time and bandwidth on a topic that may have no good asnwers?

I, too, have a product that I'm very protective about. What it is and what it does is a can of worms that I don't wish to go into here, but because of my own personal experiences I can certainly identify with Mr. Dumble and his neverending situation. I also have nothing but admiration and a certain degree of sympathy for a person who is truly "the man, the myth, the legend."



Dave, who got hooked by the Lowell George sound

[Structo]

I certainly don't want to open a can of worms either and I am not an EE by any means.
But, I think guys have been modding the same bassman circuit that HAD used for years.

I think saying that there hasn't been anything new in 70 years is a bit naive, certainly with the availability of better components and knowledge over those years, improvements have been made.
Sure they are all variations of tried and true design, but putting those together for the betterment of tone has to be an advancement of guitar amp engineering.

It's just nowadays with internet forums and email we can better communicate those ideas and share information.
Used to be phone calls and visits to your favorite amp geek that provided inside knowledge of certain designs and tweaks. That and peering inside an amp that was modified.

Sure we owe HAD a debt of gratitude, but he probably isn't the type of guy to accept that since he was so protective of his work.
One only has to look at his user agreements and gooped circuits to realize that he really didn't want to share what he was doing.
I've read here and elsewhere of guys that say they know him or have contact with him in the past or currently visit him.

But, this is the internet and anybody can say anything.
These are just all words on a screen where a 13 year old can hide behind a computer monitor and have the bravado of a veteran.

Personally if I was someone like HAD I wouldn't worry too much about the guys that want to build one of these tone monsters for themselves.
It's the guys or companies that try to commercialize the circuits and make a profit of doing so that would bother me.
But, Randall Smith will probably step in and sue everybody that is doing that saying that he invented it all anyway.............

[Funkalicousgroove]

He only accepts gold, no joke.

[Structo]

Krugerrands?

[Funkalicousgroove]

Kruggerands or bullion I understand.

[Normster]

I won't even try to get into Mr. Dumble's motivations, but I don't think he has been harmed by any amp company. Insulted, ripped off, yes. But I doubt that "cloning" has done any more than drive up his reputation and demand. If he were to open the door to orders today, he would have a bigger backlog than any independent amp builder alive...regardless of the price he charged.

HAD has every right to protect his intellectual property. Every business does it. But it's hard work and requires diligence. We live in an age of information access and protecting trade secrets requires more than goop and contracts.

On the other hand, limiting the availability of a product just to maintain exclusivity doesn't win you a whole lot of market share. Sorry to sound like a heretic, but I think if there was truly a lot of demand for Dumble tone by a large market segment, the big amp companies would have very little trouble recreating the tone. So far they just haven't seen enough demand to warrant the investment.

[heisthl]

I know for a fact that the Fender Exec's have had meetings with HAD and no agreement came out of it. I don't know any specifics.