My name is Craig Collins. I'm Originally from North Carolina but left at an early age to travel the world as an Air Force brat(Germany/Italy etc.). I later joined the Navy in 1983 and retired in September 2003 after much, much more travel and logging over 7000 flight hours as an In-Flight Aviation Electronics Technician on EC-130G/Q, E-6A, and E-6B TACAMO platforms. My introduction to tubes and tube amplifiers was not the norm as there just happened to be a 200 Kilowatt water cooled five tube, tube amplifier on board.....not such a secret anymore since its replacement with a solid state unit in the late 90's. For you Tube Tech savy readers, that's 10.2 Kilo volt plate power and 23 amps of plate current for two power tubes running in class AB2. It took a huge variable inductor network to match wire impedance depending on operational length. It also took eight huge 90KVA generators to power the aircraft and it's mission avionics equipment which also included two huge spools of trailing wire antenna, the larger of which was roughly 27,000 feet long(actual length still classified)which were utilized for communicating with submerged nuclear missle submarines. In the cold war days there were two of these aircraft airborne over each ocean 24/7 and four on alert to take their place if need be in a matter of only a few minutes. The current mission has six on alert and logistically at least one if not two or three airborne at any given time while controlling all forward deployed nuclear assets and launch control silos. 20 years in the Navy and the only ship I've been on is the USS North Carolina which is a dry docked museum!
My electronics background and my passion for guitar crossed paths in 1989 when I could not get a blues tone that I was happy with no matter what I seemed to plug in to. At that time the Internet was not the wonderful source of information that it has become and it took some digging (and experimenting!)on my part to become knowledgeable about guitar amp circuits.
My first amp project was blackfacing a 79 twin reverb. I figured while I was in there I would loose the master volume, make it a single channel, single input, with a 4 knob tube reverb (dwell, mix, treble, bass) where channel one used to be. From then on I never got to play unless I had just repaired something and needed to check it out.
Since moving to Oklahoma from Hawaii(culture shock!), while stationed at Tinker AFB, I did a stint(when Uncle Sam would let me) with Terry and Phil at Church Electronics (once located in the back of Granny's Music Mall). It was then that I knew I had to start building great amps for great players. I know what it feels like to get inspired by a certain tone, to not want to stop playing because you can't wipe the smile off of your face. I saw that reaction there daily.
My goal is to meet the demands of the most demanding players. If you are having trouble finding a good sound or just want to make your current sound better, I look forward to working with you to get YOUR tone, whatever it may be.
Sincerely,
C. T. Collins
One of my other interests when I can find the time - Red River Classic Oct 2010
Placed 5 of 13 Novice Middle Weight(189lbs)
and 4 of 9 Mens Over 40
In my first show
378lbs for 8 reps, not bad for an old man.
Another rapidly growing hobby....the wine....not the football.
