I & I - 2011, Qupperneq 10

Sonic RetRo
10 I&I
“We at Redwing Amps view the tube guitar amplifier
as an instrument. dave Hunter, the author of The
Guitar Amplifier Handbook, hit the nail square on
the head when he said: ‘Tube amps are not rocket science, they
are much more complicated than that.’ Playing them involves
personal taste, feelings, emotions and other factors […]. A good
amp reacts to a musician’s playing dynamics and preserves
the signature sound of the guitar,” the makers of the Redwing
amplifiers proudly state on their website. They are currently
developing hand-wired guitar amplifiers, which were inspired by
the blackface and brownface American circuits from the 1960s.
The amplifiers have been tested by a number of musicians,
including blues guitarist Vasti Jackson during the Reykjavík
Blues Festival in April 2011, Nels Cline of Wilco who played with
the Plastic Ono Band in Iceland in October 2010, and established
Icelandic guitarist Gudmundur Pétursson.
“Gudmundur Pétursson, a renown Icelandic guitarist, hardly
uses anything else,” says Thröstur Vídisson, who founded Red-
wing with Sigurdur Karl Ágústsson and Júlíus Valsson. “dikta
used Redwing amps during the Iceland Airwaves festival and
Börkur Hrafn Birgisson uses them with his brother dadi during
recordings in Stúdíó Sýrland—he was the first to compliment
us.”
Vídisson, a guitarist himself, has been making his own ampli-
fiers as a hobby for 15 years, but the product’s real development
started in 2009. “We did it with our own money in our free time
and own everything debt-free,” he stressed. In 2010 Redwing
received the Encouragement Prize from the Icelandic universi-
ties’ House of Ideas Workshop, and a grant from the Innovation
Center Iceland the same year towards designing the product’s
look and a prototype.
“Redwing amplifiers will have their own special look,” Vídisson
told news website smugan.is at the time. Not only do they want
to make Redwing amplifiers in Iceland, but also use as much
Icelandic material in the production as possible. “We have also
been coming up with our own technique, making amendments
and finding our sound […] and have put a lot of effort into de-
veloping the business idea.” Given how warmly musicians have
welcomed the product, Vídisson and his associates are now pre-
paring its official launch. Fashion goes in circles, they say, and
now it looks as if the sound of the 60s and 70s might be back in
soon. redwingamps.com
By Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir.
Icelandic start-up company Redwing designs
hand-wired vintage amplifiers.
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Photo by Júlíus Valsson.