Dumble guitar amps – and tube amps that were modded by the late amp technician – are some of the most elusive, most expensive pieces of guitar gear that you could ever hope to get your hands on.
To buy a stock Dumble, you’ll have to be rather lucky (and have very deep pockets) as they don’t crop up very often, and when they do, they have eye-watering price tags. During the amp designer’s heyday, he also modded Fenders, Marshalls and more. These mods, too, came at a price.
Revered Nashville producer Dave Cobb, though, once managed to get Alexander Dumble to mod an amp for him for much, much, much less – when he traded one for a blender.
Cobb is no stranger to Dumbles – he has a few amps modded by the man himself in his studio – but amazingly he once managed to enlist Dumble’s modding services for a particularly prized guitar amp by giving him a humble kitchen gadget.
Not only that, the amp itself recently starred on the blockbuster debut record from Mirador – the new project headed up by Greta van Fleet’s Jake Kiszka and Ida Mae’s Chris Turpin, who ended up using the amp in question all over the album.
Discussing the gear behind the self-titled LP in the new issue of Guitarist, Kiszka reveals, “Dave Cobb is a guitar player as well and he has quite a significant collection of really beautiful and historic guitars that do very particular things.”
Cobb’s combos also saw plenty of action, with Turpin adding, “Dave had a Marshall Lead and Bass 20 that had been modded by Dumble and Dave had paid him [Alexander Dumble] with a Nutribullet! I used that through a 112 or a 115 Supro cab, a newer one.”
To put that into perspective, at the time of writing you can pick up a Nutribullet from Amazon for around $64. That’s one helluva deal to get your amp modded by Dumble – especially when Cobb himself has gone on record in the past alluding to how pricey Dumble amps actually are.
Specific gear choices were at the heart of crafting the Mirador sound. During an interview with Guitar World, Turpin discussed the lengths he went to in order to find a guitar that could serve as the perfect foil to Kiszka's Number One SG.
Cobb’s gear collection – and his Nutribullet Marshall – wasn’t the only thing that influenced the sound of Mirador’s album. In his role as producer, Cobb also instructed Kiszka and Turpin to crank their rigs in order to fully harness the vibe of a “guitar album”.
“I should point out that the sheer volume of the guitars on this record is another difference,” Kiszka recently told Guitar World. “Dave Cobb was like, ‘Look, this is a guitar record by two guitar players. People are expecting to hear guitar, so we're going to turn them way up.’”
The new issue of Guitarist – which features interviews with Zakk Wylde, Brent Mason and more – is available now from Magazines Direct.
