What's the deal with Dumble amps?

Oh, well I was thinking that, but that didn't make sense to me. Why would they put a distortion effect in an amp? That's just me asking myself, you don't really have to answer if you don't want.

Maybe what lies beneath the goop?!? Every Dumble I have seen has had different wiring than the last one. In fact sometimes very different. That explains why some amps where "good" and some amps were "bad". There probably is no such thing as a "Dumble" just a range of amps with the same generic design made by the same person. Evidently the "production" ones were the ones that Dumble cared for the least and evidently sound pretty average. With John Mayer, he seems to have been the biggest purchaser so has probably seen more Dumbles than anyone else. He said he only found one that he liked and the rest were average. So, it is quite a lottery with Dumble amps. $50K may be a lot to spend if it is not "the one".. Here is what lies beneath the goop on one Dumble:

I am guessing that, at the time, the circuits to overdrive an amp had not been refined that much. A circuit like a Tube Screamer, that will drive the power tubes harder will help a musician to achieve distortion at varying volume levels to suit their need. Fargen amps did something like this with the JW-40 amp by having Analogman design and build in a discreet circuit into the amp itself and he calls it a 'lead boost circuit'. He is supposed to be coming out with this circuit in a pedal form at some point but so far it has not been released. It is an interesting idea and I would say advanced at the time.

Dumble started in the sixties. He made amps for the Beach Boys.

Why would they put a distortion effect in an amp? Well, reverb and tremolo are both "effects" and people are very happy to have those built into the amp. If a distortion effect was added you would probably cover most things that people want. Vox were the first ones to put a fuzz circuit into an amp: they did so in 1966 in their solid state Series 7 amps. These amps-with-a-fuzz-circuit produced some of the most sought after fuzz sounds today.

Mr Picard, your posts are so awesome every time. Hero! OT: even if 50k was peanuts to me I would never ever spend it on ONE amp. Think about what other amps you can get for 50k & do the math.

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