Ten years ago, Joe Bonamassa did a surprising thing. His trio of Dumble guitar amps had been vital tools in sculpting his tone — along with Marshall and Van Weelden amplifiers — but he felt it was time to switch things up with his tube amps.
“Two years ago, I mothballed that whole cliché of the rig I’m most associated with,” he explained to Total Guitar in 2016. “The two Marshalls and the two Van Weeldens and the Dumbles and the effects board and everything.
“I sold all my Dumbles. I had three at one point and I sold them all. One I traded for a ’59 Les Paul, which I get way more joy from.”
Bonamassa filled the vacancies with a collection of Fender Tweeds, and that seemed to be the end of his lust for Dumbles.
Except for one.
For 15 years, Bonamassa had searched high and low for the Dumble Overdrive Special Reverb owned by Little Feat guitarist Lowell George. The amp hadn't been played since the night before George's death in June 1979, when he used it for a performance at Lisner Auditorium in Washington.
Bonamassa's search famously came to an end earlier this year when he found and purchased the coveted piece of gear, which he calls “the crown jewel” of his amp collection.
But as it turns out, the allure of Alexander Dumble’s creations had returned to him much sooner.
“I got into the Tweeds for a long time,” he tells The Zak Kuhn Show, “and I got tired of using too complicated of a rig to achieve the same result as plugging straight in.”
Bonamassa says he began buying Dumbles once again in 2020. “I repurchased a couple at that point,” he says. “I built this three-piece rig for when we were going to do those shows that could only have 25 percent of people.”
It didn’t long before he added more.
“I brought back the old amp shanty from years ago,” he continues, “and I plugged them all in — same wiring, same pedalboard, same everything. I said, ‘Man, I've been missing the boat.’ So they're back, and now I have eight of them.”
It’s a mystery why he ever sold them. After all, Bonamassa’s home, Nerdville, is so full of vintage gear that it can rightly be called a museum. It wouldn’t have been unusual for him to keep the Dumbles in his collection.
But as he explains, those amps represented “a lot of money sitting around.”
“It’s an expensive hobby,” the guitarist says, noting that the ’59 Les Paul he purchased with the funds from those Dumble sales more than justifies his decision.
And besides, he says with a sigh, “Collectors do weird things.”
Whatever the case, he has no regrets about his purchase of Lowell George’s amp head and matching cab. Watch for that “pretty special piece of rock and roll history” to be featured on his fall tour dates.
Bonamassa isn’t the only electric guitarist still stuck on Dumbles. Fellow blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd tells Total Guitar in its November 2024 issue he can’t live without the 11 amps Alexander Dumble custom-built for him.
“From the first amplifier to the last, they elevated my playing and creativity,” he says. “It freed up so much energy for me to express myself. I didn't realize how much energy I was using with my previous amplifiers to try and get them to do the things I wanted them to do.”
In related news, Joe Bonamassa has unveiled his 12th Epiphone signature guitar, with his latest Les Paul sporting a rare colorway and an unlikely pickup choice.
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