Choosing the right guitar amp is just as important as choosing the right guitar, especially once you build up your chops and establish a sense of your own style.
Some amps just feel right. Others make you feel like you have never played the instrument before. And then there are those that make you see the electric guitar in a totally different light. That’s how Mark Tremonti, riffer-in-chief for Creed and Alter Bridge, fell head over heals for Dumble tube amps.
We’re in a hotel in west London, discussing the finer points of what it is like to actually record in 5150 Studios, the purpose-built LA recording studio of Eddie Van Halen’s now owned by his son, Wolfgang. Alter Bridge just tracked their new self-titled album there, which is out on 9 January 2026. And, inevitably, the conversation turns to amps. Tremonti is famously a Dumble devotee.
Speaking to AMS in 2024, he said it’s like… like this big, warm hug. “You plug into a great Dumble and it is this awe-inspiring warm feeling you get,” he says. “Dumbles, to me, are the best amps ever made.”
But it’s not just how they make Tremonti feel; it’s how they make him play, too. Choosing an amp is as much about that connection as it is about the sound itself. Dumbles? People debate if there really is a quote/unquote Dumble sound, and yet what they can agree on is that the dynamics are godly, and the note response super-fast.
Tremonti can’t get enough of that.
“I like a very quick attack. And a lot of people have said that about the Dumbles is that it’s uncomfortable because it’s such a quick response, but the quicker the better for me,” he says. “I love it, and the reason why I like Dumbles is that it makes me play differently.”
Tremonti says the Dumbles encourage him to take a moment and breathe with his playing. They’re not shred amplifiers.
“If I sit down with a Dumble, the last thing I’m going to do is do any kind of fast techniques,” he says. “I just want to express with a Dumble. You want the amp to sound good, so you are playing chord voicings, doublestops, things that bring out the best tones out of the amplifier – it’s not the shreddy techniques.”
It’a about letting the note breathe, too.
“It’s the bloom. It’s an addiction,” he says. “I love it. Dumbles are definitely my addiction, and they’ve gotten so pricey it’s tough. The only reason why I can keep on buying and selling is because I can trade one.”
Tremonti blames Paul Reed Smith for giving him the Dumble bug, which is ironic given that Smith designed and manufactures Tremonti’s signature amps, the MT100 and its lower-wattage sibling, the MT15. It was a 50-watter. Tremonti will never forget it – not least that Smith did promise to give him it and yet it slipped through his fingers.
Not all of them have been to Tremonti’s taste. His sold his first Dumble after finding it “too bright and hard and stiff”. His favourite is a prototype Overdrive Deluxe that’s believed to a prototype.
His friend, amp tech and Dumble expert Brandon Montgomery, had a client who was willing to sell it to Tremonti and it ended up all over his latest solo album, The End Will Show Us How.
“It’s an Overdrive Deluxe, not an Overdrive Special,” said Tremonti, speaking to MusicRadar in 2024. “So when it was in the mail I was like, yeah, it’ll be cool. It’s just a cool thing to have. I love everything Dumble but when I got it, it blew me away. What it's best for is like an over-driven percussive [sound]… I got a lot of use out of it. Anything that’s not full-bore, high-gain and anything that’s not clean I used that Dumble amp, and it’s just beautiful – I love it.”
And everything else was the MT100. The moral of the story is try before you buy, and try as many different amps as you can get your hands on. The one that sounds right? It will invariably feel right, too. Or maybe get a feel for them all in an amp modeller.
Alter Bridge's self-titled album is available for pre-order via Napalm Records, shipping 9 January. The band just shared the latest single from it, Playing Aces, which you can check out above.
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