Bullet-proof Modelling Amplifier

For touring or gigging guitar and bass players, it’s a constant challenge to keep their fragile amplifiers from breaking down. Every tour, artists take backup amplifiers, spare parts and highly-skilled technical road crew with them, in order to avoid stopping the show for equipment failure. This is especially true if you’re a headline act.

The main problem these musicians face is a lack of redundancy in the design of their equipment, which leads to single points of failure and susceptibility to breakdowns at the worst possible moment during the show. Today, their best option is to condition their power supplies externally and have people on-stage to make quick changes to backups when equipment fails, but of course, they inevitably disrupt the production values of the show’s presentation and they double the amount of equipment they must carry, most of which lies idle. With increased touring commitments, more complex productions and rising shipping costs, the problem will only get worse over time.

If only there was a better way to failover automatically, then customers could play shows, secure in the knowledge that component failures are automatically handled, which would lead to uninterrupted performances and confident presentation. With thousands of fans paying high ticket prices for live shows, there is a clear opportunity to meaningfully impact a huge number of people.

A light-weight, ruggedised amplifier, purpose-designed for touring, would include integral power-conditioning, redundant speaker and power amplifier components, dual, parallel signal paths, additional fuses and surge protection, hardening against radio frequency interference and automatic failover, through supervisory monitoring, to alert crew of failures, but switch signal paths instantaneously, without interrupting the show. In situations where on-stage speakers are not required, the device could be reduced to a rack-mounted or floor-mounted signal processor. Modelling in digital signal processing is far more reliable than vacuum tube technology and the tone produced is more than acceptable, if the modelling is accurate. Component modularity and ease of swap-out of failed components would be a feature of the design.

The benefits are that guitarists and bass players don’t have to worry about interruptions to their performance, their shipping costs and set-up/tear-down times reduce, the urgency of repairing failed components is obviated (i.e. not during the show) and sonic quality is maintained. For bands unable to pay for technical road crew, they can tour unsupported, with assurance that their amplification won’t let them down. Similar redundant, automated-failover design techniques can be applied to their sound reinforcement and on-stage monitoring solutions as well.

For the company producing these amplification solutions, pricing can be at a premium, since the savings in logistics, reputation and disrupted shows are very high in value. With the collapse in recorded music sales, touring bands are going to continue to spend increasing amounts of time on the road. Providers of fully redundant, fast failover live sound products would earn a reputation for reliability quite quickly and become the solution of choice for touring acts. There is no new technology to invent, since redundancy is an architectural property. The risk for the first to provide these amplifiers is that other companies would seek to provide ruggedised solutions too, once they are proven in use.

When your career depends on the reliability of your tools, as is the case with touring musicians, the benefit of having bullet-proof equipment cannot be overestimated. Digital modelling allows multiple sound characters to be available instantly, without needing to tour with separate amplifiers.

References

https://reverb.com/uk/news/why-do-so-many-touring-guitarists-use-two-amps

https://www.kemper-amps.com/profiler/overview

About the author

Michael Topic is a freelance Product Manager and musician, with over thirty years experience delivering products that didn’t exist before. He welcomes contract enquiries to define new, competitive products, design them and deliver them. His speciality is software-based products.

Disclaimer

The hypothetical design ideas discussed are intended to demonstrate possibilities in product design. They are not intended to imply anything whatsoever about past or present employers, nor to infringe on any intellectual property.

About the “Possible Future Designs” Series

This occasional series of articles examines the many ways in which product management discipline can be applied to a variety of markets, to propose and examine innovative, new product opportunities.

Organisations wishing to pursue any of the ideas discussed are encouraged to contact the author to discuss potential research and development collaboration.