Simenon Amplification is a guitar amplifier and effects designer and builder in the very south of the Netherlands.
Of-course the most important factor is the guitar player and only then the amp, but without the proper tools even the best musician will not perform as good as he or she can. A good sound inspires any musician and helps to convey the emotion in the music.
A good sounding amp makes you play much longer than you intended to and makes you come back for more. That is what I am after!
Philosophy
Tone, flexibility, reliability, durability.
I am Harrie Simenon, a guitar player and electronic. Being a musician and a technician as well is a great help designing guitar amps, as I don’t need to translate between the emotion of music and the technical jargon of electronics. I am designing the ultimate amplifiers I always wanted for myself.
I want my amps to be played forever and never end up as waste.
They need to sound great and keep their tone over the years, or else musicians would discard them.
That is why I took years designing the circuitry; playing, testing, adjusting, tweaking, calculating and playing again.
They also need to be reliable and durable or they might die and be discarded.
This is why I use high quality and over-rated parts and am very generous with cooling as all that prolongs life and increases reliability.
They need to be repairable into the far future. If not, they will be discarded if they ever break down.
I took tone, flexibility, reliability and durability into consideration and to my own suprise I ended up with analog solid state technology. Ik know this is not a popular technology for a guitar amp.
If you believe only tube amps can make great musical tools, do not look any further as there are NO tubes inside any of my amps.
I do not use any tubes in my amps nor do I emulate them.
If you like to know my opinion about the solid state vs tube discussion and the more detailed reasons why I do not use tubes, look here.
There is also a reason my amps are analog and not digital, using only parts that can be replaced even in a distant future as they are all elementary building blocks. No special or hard to find parts have been used.
Some more complex analog parts have a short market life and digital parts are often outdated within a few years and need programming as well, making it hard to keep them running into the future. And no digital technology can ever be more direct than analog…