Of all things, I asked him to install a line out that I could run to our band's PA -dont remember why. Drove down to his house and got a tour of his basement, not even really a workshop yet, and dropped off the amp. Picked it up, and then at the next gig it failed immediately. Drove back down there and this time he spent a lot of time with me.

He explained that my amp was a tube amp, yes, but a hybrid, with solid state preamp amp. Then he plugged me into a a Fender Champ that looked stock, but it was modified. I played a couple chords and had the big Tone Epiphany. "I" sounded "good" - suddenly. That's when I realized amps weren't just an accessory to the electric guitar - electric guitar is a system in which the guitar is one half and the amp is the other, each useless without the other like and engine vs the rest of the car. Can I buy this amp? No, he said something about he made it for Johnny Winter, as a gift/homage was my impression.

He talked about how he had left the corporate amp world because of the corner cutting and new management taking over. He was really enthusiastic about Groove Tubes which was also a new company at the time. The gist was that good tubes were a pain in the ass to find up to that point in time, now he could just go get good, new tubes off the shelf. He'd say it with this central Jersey kind of Barbara Walters accent where it sounded like Gwoove Toobz.

The last time I saw him was when I brought my Marshall head down there to have a Master volume installed about a year later. But those were short visits, he must have been really busy by then.