steamboatampworks

Steamboat Amps celebrates 9 years in business with a new partnership and charity fundraising event February 8th, 2018 Sponsored by Sugarhill Studios, St Arnold's Brewery, Moving Sidewalk and Nite Owls Print Shop. Let us know you are interested on Facebook! Houston, TX -- Jacob "Captain Jake" Rynearson started Steamboat Amps in January of [...]

We were recently featured in VoyageHouston! Here is the article: Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Rynearson. Thanks for sharing your story with us Jacob. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there. In 2006 I started working for Hawkins Amplification under an apprenticeship building and repairing guitar [...]

Recently I acquired a Mini Max bandsaw.  I was originally looking for a saw in the 14" wheel size range, but this 18" behemoth popped up at just the right time for a fair price.  Luckily, the owner kept the 1980's saw in great condition and it only needed some minor cleaning and set up, [...]

Ever since I began repairing tube amps, nearly ten years ago, I've been up to my eyeballs in vintage Fenders.  In that time, I've seen nearly every iteration of Fender's amplifier legacy - from Champ amps to Twin Reverbs, Musicmasters to the insane 400PS.  I remember the first time I ever saw a blonde Fender, [...]

This year I was commissioned to design custom speakers for an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.  Artist Phillip Worthington's Shadow Monsters is an interactive multimedia work which utilizes audience participation, video and audio.  The unique challenges of this project were to incorporate three separate sound systems in the MFAH's glorious Cullinan Hall, [...]

Last year we had a customer bring us a classic 1970's Marshall 8x10.  The cab was in pretty poor shape - even the finger joints were starting to loose.  At Steamboat we stripped her down, patched up the damaged areas, and replaced all of the tolex, grill cloth, piping and handles.   Finally we re-wired the [...]

For years myself and several friends have been experimenting with different guitar building techniques.  We've explored the typical "parts" guitar projects, where the guitar is assembled from all pre-built parts, and then later moved on to more advanced guitar building techniques implementing one-piece mahogany bodies, bolt-on style necks from a variety of wood species and [...]

What is it about the electric guitar that transcends our culture? Is it the look - an instrument strung over the player's shoulder like a battle axe? Is it the player - a grimacing, rebellious showman flailing on the strings while sliding across the stage? Or is it the sound?  As loud as your electric [...]

Here's a custom order long in the making.  Here's a description of this amp in a series of haikus: A guitarist needs Tools of the trade; an input Output, and in'tween Effects and Channels Scrambling trammels and room sound Master volume, noise Tone stack, Tone stack two Forced feedback, pentode output Adjustable bias [...]