SINCE 1972, portable Pignose amplifiers have been seen on the street, backstage, in dorm rooms, bedrooms, at the beach and at mountain campsites around the world. It’s also the “Swiss army knife” of recording studios.
ABOUT PIGNOSE
The Legendary Pignose has established itself as an industry staple, and in recent years, self-powered mini guitars had been added to the line. Pignose engineers each of it’s new models to live up to the reputation of the Legendary Pignose: Tough, Great Sounding, Reliable, Cool Looking and Affordable.
The Pignose Story According to Richard Edlund:
(The original Pignose inventor)
“Wayne (Kimbell) and I were partners doing graphics and photography for the Rock & Roll trade from about ’68-’69. I saw a 5 watt amplifier at Pacific Radio and the idea hit me right there. I made the first one in an English Leather cedar men’s cologne box. My friend Warren Zevon (I shot his first album cover) was recording his second album at Wally Heider’s studio with Peaveys turned up to 11 to get feedback, he was making enemies in nearby sessions. I said “try the Pignose.”
He fell in love with it and finished all of his album sessions with it.
Wayne Kimbell (Left) / Richard Edlund (Right)
The name Pignose?
Well, we got ahold of some powerful hash and got into mixed metaphors…
Wayne got (producer/director) Steve Binder interested in promoting it;
he paid for the Copyright attorney and gave us enough to make about 65 Pignoses at that time we were living in our storefront studio on Melrose Avenue in East Hollywood.
We created “the legend” by giving away all of those original rubber-nosed amps to the top rock guitarists
–naturally they all loved ’em.
Celebrities in the past…
* The original prototype w/rubber nose knob
and more …
I moved to San Francisco, for one year I made experimental films and drove those motorized cable cars giving city tours.
Wayne called me from L.A. with the news–he’d talked Jimmy Guercio (Chicago creator/producer) to fund the start-up of Pignose Industries, Inc. I came back to join him. We built the company, re-designed the original model 7-100, set up a production line, and got Martin Guitars to put it out to the market. We gave away tens of thousands of 1 1/2 inch diameter red, blue and black on mylar Pignose stickers; everywhere you went you’d see them stuck on everything.
The first year, we made over 50,000 amps.”
– Richard Edlund –