Ascent To Popularity
Once satisfied with his design, Crooks started attending local concerts in order to spread the word about his amplifiers and get musicians to test them. The first one of these musicians was the late "Speedy" West. West, a steel guitarist, was asked by Crooks, while at Cliffie Stone's "Hometown Jamboree" show, to try out his guitar amp. He liked it and ordered the very first Standel amplifier that same night.
Bob then took his amp to the Town Hall Party dance in Compton, California, where Merle Travis and Joe Maphis would be playing. They ordered the second and fourth Standel amplifiers.
Standel amplifiers would benefit from a relative rise in popularity among professional musicians, although at a small scale. Only 64 amplifiers appear on "The Butcher List" (Bob's handwritten chart of amplifiers and clients). Due to the high cost of building these amplifiers, (the JBL alone was $90, about 2–3 months rent in those days) they were used mostly by session musicians, as their high prices made them difficult to attain for an amateur or hobbyist (price being about double that of a standard production amplifier).
By 1963, Standel introduced hybrid amplification and by 1965 developed a full line of all solid-state amplifiers. In order to protect the designs from reverse engineering, Crooks coated the amplifier's modules in color-coded epoxy resin from 1963 to 1969. With the exception of the Red Tremolo module (which usually fails), 95% of these circuits continue to function after 45–50 years of use. For those needing repair, the Standel website (www.standelamps.com) post all known epoxy module schematics to aid technicians in keeping these amplifiers in service.
Famous quotes containing the words ascent and/or popularity:
“We are adapted to infinity. We are hard to please, and love nothing which ends: and in nature is no end; but every thing, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)