Matamp


Matamp is a British electric guitar amplifier manufacturing company, best known for its handwired amplifier heads and speaker cabinets. It was established in 1964 by Mat Mathias.

History

Matamp founder, Mat Mathias, started the company RadioCraft by 1946. What started as an interest ultimately developed into a fully-fledged business building amplifiers for the burgeoning music scene in the early sixties. Behind his wife’s retail shop, selling accessories to young musicians, Mathias’s workshop/manufacturing facility also extended into a fully fledged recording studio complete with disc cutters for young bands to record and cut their own demos. This resulted in the formation of MAT Records. His customers would come and see him, tell him what they wanted, and he would build it and/or record it. Patterns would emerge, and trends soon changed into product lines.
Long-term friend and hi-fi amplifier designer Tony Emerson joined with Mat in the early 1960s, shortly after the name MATAMP was coined. As word got around Matamp would soon be working with such musical luminaries as Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac and recording early demos with the likes of Graham Gouldman who would go on to form 10cc.
After Emerson’s departure and Matamp's subsequent development work with Fleetwood Mac, Matamp formed a partnership with Cliff Cooper. Cooper owned the Orange music store and the new partnership began producing Orange Matamp amps from Mathias's Huddersfield workshop. In 1971 Orange Matamp outsold Marshall, giving Cooper a taste of high volume sales. However Mathias was not prepared to forego quality standards in favour of mass-production, so the Orange Matamp partnership was dissolved. Orange Amps went on to be a major international amplification company so Matamp has also become widely recognised due to this early collaboration with Orange.
Their mixing console Matamp Stereo Supernova was named one of the world's best mixers by Mixmag in a 2012 list. and features on the cover of the 2013 compilation album 12"/80s/Club Classics.

Current Products

Bass amplifiers