I met him at a guitar show as he had a booth. My buddy and myself both told him in lockstep that his first book turned us into the Ampaholic's we both are. We spoke with him for 2 days like we were friends for life. So he tells us his story … that he was working in the Hollywood Guitar Center and decided and I quote " Hey I know everything about Tubes so I think I'll open up a tube company " then he goes " Six months later, " I really don't know anything about tubes ". Laughed his ass off so hard that his stash fell out of his fanny pack onto to the booth table! Showed and told us everything. And he said he had purchased some GE tooling and gave me 4 of the prototype GE 6L6's .
Later that night I took out a blackface Fender Twin, pulled out the RCA Blackplates and put in the prototype's 6L6's and compared both sets with the fire mit so we could swap em out fast, with a new matched quad of original GE 6L6's and well, they passed the test, but the originals had a little more magic to them. We had a lot of fun that weekend, to say the least. Rest In Peace Aspen, you were a brother to all the Ampaholics out there.
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