SamboraBlog

Business is booming for amp maker

BY ANDREA UHDE : The Herald-Sun
auhde@heraldsun.com
Dec 17, 2004 : 7:30 pm ET

PITTSBORO -- Pittsboro may be a quiet country town, but it creates a lot of noise.

The intensity is enough to power a Bruce Springsteen concert -- at least -- and it springs from a tiny building neighboring the town library.

Blame noisemaker Steve Carr. He's the mastermind behind a growing breed of guitar amplifiers sold throughout the country -- and now even parts of the globe -- that's made from scratch in his Pittsboro workshop.

Between a barbershop and the library, Carr's team drills, carves and tests the boxes of noise bejeweled with the signature "Carr" label.

The amplifiers sell for $1,500 to $3,000 each at about 40 dealers located everywhere from Raleigh to Japan. They power the sound of Springsteen sideman Nils Lofgren, Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Jon Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora. And soon, Peter Frampton may plug into the trend too.

Carr's sold 1,500 amplifiers in his six years of business, but his trade has boomed in the last year. That's when the magazine reviews started coming through -- and the stars followed.

Carr always loved guitars. A member of several bands and now a guitarist for The Breaks, the spiky-haired Chatham County man grew a natural interest in the technical side of music. He'd studied aerospace engineering and physics, but they didn't quench his musical side.

"I had been looking for a career to try besides being a rock star," Carr recalled.

In 1999, Carr started his business near Cole Park Plaza in northern Chatham County, paying $350 a month for a barn in the woods with no insulation, electricity or water.

"It was a bit of a leap," Carr remembered. "The parts of these were pretty expensive. It was a bit frightening."

But he quit his job as a server at a ritzy Chapel Hill restaurant, borrowed some money, and got to work, with help from a friend.

Raleigh dealer Indoor Storm latched onto the creations immediately. Musicians scooped up Carr's first two amplifiers within a month, Carr said.

"It was really kind of shocking," he said.

Within the year, Carr traveled the country by van to find more dealers who would partner with his "boutique" business. He tried to hook music reviews in guitar magazines. It worked.

"It was a slow process, but it started working," Carr said. "I was pretty lucky to always hit the friendly people. That was the real springboard, the magazine reviews."

In February 2000, he found a space off U.S. 64 West, near the library, and grabbed it.

"Pittsboro's a great place to have this," Carr said. "The rent is cheap, and it's a pretty easy place to live in."

Now, he has 13 employees who make about 10 amplifiers a week. Each amp takes about 24 hours to build, since everything is handmade, he said.

"There's a lot more personality in a handmade amp," Carr said. "There's a lot more randomness to it in a way that's very musical."

Customers range from local rock band The Nevers to music-business stars like Jorma Kaukonen, the founder and former guitarist for Jefferson Airplane.

The amplifiers are "great sounding and doing everything I want it to do," Kaukonen wrote from the road.

Within the last three months, Carr has started exporting the amps to places like France, Italy and the Netherlands. A dealer from Japan visited the workspace and bought 35 amps to sell, he said.

"It's kind of weird," Carr said. "Initially, I thought if I could sell 10 of them -- that was my original goal. It all happened at once."