~ Carol-Ann Amplifiers ~

Carol-Ann Custom Amplifiers, LLC is a full time boutique guitar amplifier manufacturer located in Pelham, NH, USA.

Carol-Ann is owned by Alan Phillips, who is originally from England and came to the US in 2002. He is a masters degree qualified electronics engineer as well as having been a working guitar player for over 25 years. Alan's love of electronics and guitar started at a very early age. He learned to play guitar at age 8 and by the time he was 13 he had built his first tube amplifier out of a modified Decca record player.

Back in the early '80s, Alan was an apprentice instrument engineer from age 16 and it was this grounding in industrial engineering plus the many years of experience in industry coupled with his guitar playing that made him a very popular repair guy back in his hometown area in England. As an apprentice, Alan studied at a college that was funded by the British Ministry of Defense and because the technology was still used at the time in defense, tube circuits were a very big part of the curriculum.

Over the course of the next 20 years Alan repaired, modified and built a lot of amplifiers and there aren't too many models that haven't come across his bench.

In 2005 he finally decided to make it a full time occupation and set up a repair shop in Massachusetts. Very quickly he was commissioned to build amplifiers for some famous players such as Joe Bonamassa, Eric Johnson, David Grissom and Johnny A. The business quickly stopped being a repair shop and became a full time boutique amplifier manufacturer and has been ever since, now with a very impressive roster of respected boutique dealers and players alike.

As a guitar player who plays out live with a band every week, the main focus of Alan's designs are amplifiers designed to operate in today's live playing environments. Therefore, a number of the designs are multi-channel models, something that is a lot less common in the boutique world. Despite the power rating or model, one thing that is common throughout the entire range is a master volume circuit that can tame even a 100W down to bedroom levels if need be without losing that sweet harmonic complexity, width and fullness.

All Carol-Ann amplifiers are hand built with passion by Alan using traditional as well as modern construction techniques coupled with the best quality components available. All the amplifiers are constructed on a heavy gague steel chassis and the footprint of the amplifiers is made as small as possible so they can easily fit on the tightest stages.

To ensure both reliability and tonal perfection, each and every amp built by Carol-Ann, once burned in, is gig tested by Alan in a real live band situation. This takes the whole subject of quality control to an entirely different level.