Looking at the Past, Present and Future of Verellen Amps

If you frequent punk and/or hardcore shows on a relatively regular basis, chances are you’ve encountered a Verellen amp. Even the least gear-minded of you would’ve noticed the beautifully stained, hand-built wooden enclosures topped off with the company name burned directly into the wood. Since 2007, Verellen Amplifiers have completely cornered the market on guitar and bass heads that were both aesthetically pleasing and tonally sound. Ben Verellen, founder of Verellen Amplifiers, has been a major contributor to the hardcore/metal scene for years, playing in bands like Harkonen, Helms Alee and These Arms Are Snakes. Through a series of back and forth correspondences, Ben shared with us the history of the company and where he sees Verellen headed in the future.

Noisey: When did you begin building amps? What were the first steps that led you to this trade?
Ben Verellen: I built my first amp at the start of my senior year in college at University of Washington as an electrical engineering student after nearly 8 years studying.

How long were you working on amps before the idea of building them yourself came about?
The first amp I every really studied was the first one I built. I came at it trying to apply all of the theoretical stuff I’d been studying to real circuitry. I guess that’s not the way most people find their way into this stuff. I think I was nervous to get my hands dirty until I really had an idea of what was going on.

Care to share with us what this first Verellen was like? Is this an amp that made it to Verellen’s lineup, or did you eventually abandon the design?
It was about the simplest functional audio amplifier you could build. Single ended (only one power tube), one preamp tube with no tone circuitry, wired together point to point in a little shell duct taped together. Ugly, but it passed signal. No, I wouldn’t make another of those, at least not without some tweaks.

If memory serves, the Meatsmoke was the introductory amp, correct? I can’t remember if the Loucks and the Coop were released at the same time or shortly after. If I am correct, why did you decide to first build a head aimed towards bassists? It seems that the boutique world focuses more on guitarists, so was this a way to enter into the “market” distinctly?
The first year, I made amps for whoever would cover cost of parts and let me have a shot at it. So there were no models for a while, just custom one off projects. We still do more custom projects than anything. Bass is my native instrument, and I was always fascinated with overdriven bass from my very beginnings of playing music. It’s one of my favorite sounds, and one of the first mysteries I wanted to get my head around.

So when you take on custom projects, do you find people are looking for you to make the amp of their dreams, or are they looking more for a reliable source to build them basically a clone of a vintage amp no longer easily attainable? Also, have any custom builds turned out to become Verellen models later on?
A combination of the two. As some vintage amps become more desirable and expensive, the option of having us build one brand new with warranty for less money begins to make sense to people. The Model V is one that we adapted from the original Sunn Model T circuit. That’s a pretty popular one.

Verellen seemed to grow exponentially from the beginning, allowing you to raise the base prices pretty early on. Were you expecting such a rise in popularity so quick?
The price rise had nothing to do with curbing workload due to a hike in interest. We just realized that on an amp-by-amp basis, we weren’t charging enough to justify what we were spending on parts and the time we were putting in. We could have adjusted the product’s parts quality or the time spent, but we decided to go the other way and correct the price. It’s actually been a pretty slow growth thing with a lot of hard years in there.

I don’t think the average person has any sort of idea the cost of time that goes into building a head from scratch. On average how long does it take for you to complete a project? Do custom builds take longer?
We’ve finally begun to have most of the machining and printing done out of house at the metal fab shop, which helps save a lot of time. If it’s something we’ve done a lot before, we can complete test and finish an amp within a few days. But it turns out the phone rings, and people stop in, and “can you look at my broken ampeg V4?” and etc.. etc… so it’s pretty hard to nail down an accurate build time. Custom stuff can add a lot of time between machining, printing, design, building, testing, going back to sort out any issues, etc…

Besides the Big Spider and the 5 amps available, you have recently begun distributing two pre-amplifiers based off The Meatsmoke and The Skyhammer. This is an exciting update, because now people can have the Verellen sound at a much smaller cost. What was the original factor that led to the decision to sell the pre-amps? Why did you choose these two amps in particular?
That was the idea. In response to the fear that our stuff would be too expensive, we wanted to offer a more affordable something, but not sacrifice quality, so we decided to part off and sell the preamp ½ of the recipe of the amps a la carte. Meatsmoke and Skyhammer seemed to be the most opposed of the lot, so we went with those.

I’ve always been wary of pre-amplifiers myself, I am a bare bones player so the less gear the better, but that all changed when I heard the Lumbar recording. These guys record the guitar tone by plugging the Verellen pre-amplifier straight into garage band, and it sounds immaculate. Has the release of this record been a factor in interest for the preamps?
Aaron did a great job with that record. And it was really cool because it definitely validated the concept to hear him put it to use so well. That Lumbar record and Scott Kelly from Neurosis using the Meatsmoke preamp pedal live are two rad endorsements of those preamps in my mind.

Besides looking absolutely stunning, do you think there is an advantage to having the gear be stained wood, as opposed to tolex? I found my Verellen matched my Emperor Cab almost perfectly in color, was this a happy accident or did you find yourself working with the idea in mind that many people might be matching your gear with theirs?
I think that early on, we made some amps for buddies who had emperor cabs, and they wanted us to match, so that kind of steered some of the stains we use. I think that wood stain ages with a little more class than tolex. When tolex rips up it looks really shoddy, but finished wood, can be refurbished and looks like a classy antique piece of furniture. I think there are some benefits to tolex as well, that’s why we offer that as an option.

Currently, there are numerous big names in the metal and punk scene using Verellen gear. Can you think of one name in particular that still shocks you, someone whose interest in your amps still gets you excited?
Ah… so many of them get me all psyched! I’m making a guitar amp for Mark from Undertow. Undertow was the first concert I ever attended and steered me in a whole different direction as a kid. That blows my mind. Blonde Redhead, Sunny Day Real Estate, Integrity, Weezer, Unbroken, Young Widows, and Coliseum are a few that come to mind. There’s a pretty good list of childhood musical heroes playing something.

Aside from your own gear, would you mind giving me a perspective on other available gear that you have a preference for?
I’m a fan of the mostly clean and loud instrument amps of the 70’s. The Fender Bassmans, Sunn 2000s, Model T… but that’s just when I think about my Helms Alee setup. That vibe of amp makes a great pallet for pedals and magic things happen at the brink of power amp breakup.

This is cliché, but essential: What is next for Verellen? Can you give us an insight on the next big release, or do you plan on taking it easy for a bit?
I’m working between amp builds on a basic line of HiFi home stereo tube amp designs with really nice tube phono preamps, power amps and headphone amps. It’s a whole ‘nother exciting can of worms.

Killer. Are these going to be marketed through Verellen, or is it going to be a separate endeavor? Any idea when they may see the light of day?
Not sure, likely through Verellen, hoping by year’s end. I really want to fine tune the design.

Finally, do you think any new models will be debuting anytime soon, or are you satisfied with what you have released and ready to explore the new territories more than continually developing new models?
Sure, we’re always doing new custom designs. I never know whether or not to distinguish something we’ve done as a “new model” or to just post it on the web when it’s done and see if it sticks.

Joseph Yanick is on Twitter, of course. - @joeyanick