TrainWreck and Thunderfunk

Trainwreck is an amp you have either never heard of or know them notoriously.  Trainwreck has become the only challenger in recent memory to the highly sought after "Dumble" amps in the 30-50,000 dollar amp range.  So what are Trainwreck amps and why are they so rare?

Trainwreck was a series of amps put together by Ken Fischer, an amp tech out of New Jersey.  From the very beginning Ken had a lot of health problems, culminating in a life cut short in 2006 and a production line cut short at only a little over 100 amps.  Ken's designs are exercises in simplicity.  When you look at modern Marshalls or newer Dumbles, you will see vast arrays of electronics, wired with many filters, creating these crazy complex marvels of modern technology.  Ken's designs were the opposite of that.  When you look at a Trainwreck on paper, you may go "that's it?".  Just like baking, sometimes its the care and thought that goes in to a work, instead of the amount of ingredients.  Ken's designs were unique, new, and while some say influenced by Vox, were his own.  The "purity" of the signal path leads to touch dynamics and a "quickness" to the amps that other designs lack.  I am generally a "new tech or you're a cave man" type of person, but there is this word called "elegance" and if you can put elegance in your simplistic designs, there's art there that I appreciate.

How does this get to Dave Funk's spin on the A.M.P. 420, the Thunderfunk?  Well Dave was an amp tech, one of only two amp repair workers approved by Ken to work on the Trainwrecks.  In fact, when Ken was at his worst physically, he asked Dave to make two amps that were sold as Trainwreck amps, which are well documented, and verified due to the low numbers of Trainwrecks in existence.  Ken named each of his amps a girl's name instead of using a serial number, and so it is easy to track and keep records.

When I hear people compliment a Trainwreck on youtube or in a print review, I hear so many familiar things.  I hear about how fast the signal goes from playing on the guitar to hearing through the amp, and how it changes how you can play.  I have had the same thing happen with my Thunderfunk.  After playing it for months I got out the old Trace Elliot while I was demoing some compression pedals a friend let me barrow.  There was lag in the signal, the Trace Elliot, a tone machine of the rock gods, was "slow", and I never expected this to happen.  So when I read about the Trainwrecks, the lightbulb in my head went off.  Quite recently I was reading the forum on Freedom Stompboxes, and someone in another country wanted to make a Thunderfunk clone since they could not import one.  Several people said "wow, that looks really simple, should be no problem if you know what you're doing".  Again, the same thing said about Ken's Trainwrecks.

I find Dave's work really awesome, and the whole story behind all his pedigrees to be interesting to read.  The whole Aoucstic 360 story, the entire drama filled life of the Amp BH420 legacy, to the birth of the Thunderfunk as a sort of very complex yet very simplified amp making it among the top bass amps in existence.

Thanks to Dave's own website, http://www.thunderfunk.com/, the Trainwreck Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainwreck_Circuits, and Talkbass.com for all the info.