The epitome of a restless designer/tinkerer, Mark Sampson has co-founded four guitar-amplifier companies, two of which – Matchless and Bad Cat – are indelible figures in the trade whose original builds draw perpetual interest from collectors, especially the Matchless DC-30 and SC-30, which are prime examples of boutique amps.
Sampson started Bad Cat in 2000 with Rick Perrotta, James Heidrich, and Joe Allrich. His departure five years later was less than amicable, but the decades that followed saw both parties flourish.
In the run-up to this year’s winter NAMM show, Bad Cat announced it was reuniting with Sampson on a new design called the Era 30. We spoke with him just prior, as he dealt with challenges outside the shop; ping-ponging between Mason City, Iowa, and Cleveland while settling his father’s estate, he was also in regular communication with two of his adult children who were minding his L.A. home as the Pallisades Fire approached from three sides.
“They were in a tough spot,” he said. “We’ve lived through fires and I knew they could handle it, but when we talked, I heard the cracking in their voices.”
Fortunately, the fire did not reach the house.
What spurred your return to Bad Cat?
Well, John Thompson, who has owned the company since 2011, tried for awhile to get hold of me before [L.A. guitarist/producer/songwriter] Joel Whitley connected us. I was perfectly happy working as a consultant and engineer in recording studios, but John offered everything I wanted if I came back – royalties, ownership of the designs, and the ability to keep working for other people and projects, because I love working in studios. In fact, I’m right now working on a patent for two condenser mics and I don’t want to have to set that aside or get too strung out by dealing with the business end of making amps.
I also didn’t want to be involved in the work of bringing an amp to the manufacturing level, because it’s one thing to build a prototype that works well, but it’s another to make the drawings and employ people for a production line. John and the crew at Bad Cat now are also much more in-tune with the internet and modern marketing. Getting up to speed on all that isn’t what I wanted to do again.
Anyway, John mentioned that it was about to be 25 years since Joe Allrich and I started Bad Cat, so he wondered if I’d be interested in a 25th-anniversary amp. I pondered it for a while then asked, “What do you really want? Something with one knob, five knobs, 10 knobs?” I wanted to be in sync with his thinking. He said, “You could do an updated version of the original Black Cat 30 with an active effects loop…” and they’ve named it the Mark Sampson Era 30. I built a prototype and let them take it from there. They’ve made a half a dozen and the workmanship is great; I was impressed.
What is its configuration?
It has four EL84s with a 5AR4 rectifier tube, four 12AX7s, and an EF86. It’s a little different; it’s got one input jack that feeds both channels with a relay switch between them controlled with a silent footswitch that has LED channel indicators. You can also bypass the relay and feed both channels at the same time.
And the control layout?
The EF86 channel has a passive rotary Depth switch for low-frequency roll-down, and, like a tweed Fender, a high-frequency roll-down; it’s a simple Tone control. The other channel is sort of a Top Boost AC30, with Volume, Bass, Treble, and Gain. It has an active effects loop that is hardwire-bypassed, which is one of the things I insisted on and will never get away from because I like the pure sound of an amp with no pedals in the middle or in front of it. I want to just hear the amp, especially for recording; in that world, all the extras just get in the way and add noise. You’re better off tracking clean and dry and then doing whatever effects post-recording.
In terms of function, what sets it apart?
Well, each channel has its own Volume, and the channels are no longer out of phase, so you can blend and mix them to your heart’s content without worrying about phase. Also, there’s an overall Master volume so you can play it in a bedroom with each channel set to the gain and distortion you want, then set the overall volume down if you need to. Each channel Volume is pre phase inverter, and the overall Master is post phase inverter, so you can overdrive the phase inverter a bit and get shading of distortion and gain.
While working on the circuit, we eliminated a lot of the mechanical problems with EF86 tubes rattling because of how their grids are made, which is important.
Have you and John talked about other amps?
I’m working on others for him based on existing models that just didn’t sound amazing to me, but there are no firm plans.
What does your ear want to hear that most amps don’t offer?
Well, I always want to hear as much harmonic content as possible and a pure, clean tone that adds space around the note. On top of that, it’s got to sound good whether it’s really clean or well-distorted.
There’s a lot of listening and some compromising when I’m developing an amp. I spend days at my workbench, soldering iron in one hand, a guitar across my lap, just trying things in the circuit.
In the world of amp builders, there’s a good bit of lore surrouding you and the companies you’ve founded. Does it affect you?
Well, I make it a point not to read about myself online because half of it is exaggerated in one direction, the other half in the other, and I don’t have time to correct it all. Not only that, but it’s too self-serving for me to try. People are going to say what they want to say, and I just let it go.
John Jorgenson and I had a lot of conversations about it, and he reminded me of the old Hollywood adage, “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right,” and there is something to be said for that.
I’ve been building things since the mid ’80s, so I have nearly 40 years of designs to go on and it’s hard to keep up with what the public thinks. All I know is I don’t want to get in tit-for-tat arguments with somebody I don’t know.
What do you remember most fondly about your time at Matchless?
Well, Matchless was, of course, my first success story, and Rick Perrotta was there most of the time. In 1991, we spent every penny we had – all of our personal wages and savings – to get to winter NAMM. Before the show, we’d sent an amp to Guitar Player for a shoot-out, and on the second day we were buried in people and couldn’t figure out why. Well, it turned out they’d brought that issue to the show, and we’d won the shoot-out. We didn’t know anything about it; they never contacted us for notes or comments or anything, they just gave the amp back and we figured we’d get some publicity from it.
I spent three days hand-selecting tubes for that amp so it would be primo, and I assumed every builder would do the same, but apparently no one else did. We found out later that some of the amps didn’t even work (laughs).
I remember a guy running around the show with a decibel meter. He’d stopped at our booth a few times, and his last warning to us was, “If I come back again, the police are coming with me and we’re throwing you out.” But we’d spent everything to get there and had to make the most of it, so we just kept on going. We brought six amps and sold all of them.
Who ended up with the amp that won the shoot-out?
I don’t know. I have a book somewhere that lists the first 50 or 100 amps and who they were sold to. Eventually, though, we realized that keeping track didn’t do us any good.
What was the biggest highlight from the original Bad Cat?
Watching the business plan that Joe Allrich and I created become a successful company. We spent two weeks creating it, and it worked almost perfectly right out of the gate. We were a year and a half removed from Matchless, and Bad Cat gave me the opportunity to work on development and design ideas. We knew who our key dealers were going to be, how much product they could take, cash flow, and what the market would tolerate, price-wise. We had detailed expertise.
How about Sonic Machine Factory and Star?
My involvement with Sonic Machine Factory actually started just before Bad Cat, which was a point of contention with James Heidrich, who owned Bad Cat. I had to remind him that I had time and money invested in the work I’d done with Rick Hamel, who is a brilliant engineer who designed SIB pedals and had consulted for a bunch of pedal builders.
We ran SMF for a few years, but it was never real big. We tried to find a slot in the market between the hand-wired amps and circuit-board amps, where we’d split the price point. But it turned out we were too high for circuit board amps and there was no way we could lower costs far enough to make it work. I don’t know how many are out there, but I would guess around 1,000 total, which is pretty low.
At Star, I was working again with Joe Allrich and a third partner. It was fun and bittersweet at the same time because Bad Cat didn’t want me to leave and we had a big fight about it, but we were making amps at SMF and SIB and had a company ready to handle distribution. But again, it never made enough money, and when our money guy had to leave for health reasons, it left Joe and I to do our jobs and oversee accounting, which was too much. One day we both said, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and we started selling inventory. I still own the Star trademark and use it for specialty projects where someone wants five or 10 of the same amp. It’s a special spot in the market.
This interview first appeared in the March ’25 issue of Vintage Guitar.
