The 1000th Lil King Reverb Amp

And the history of the first commercially available Princeton Reverb replica

What all started back in early 2004, a few months after I started Headstrong, has now led to a milestone I guess I knew I’d reach at some point, but now seems like a bit of a dream.

This week I will be building the 1000th Lil King Amp!

To say I am proud of this is an understatement…But if you’ve dealt with me in the past, you know I am not too big on hype or blowing my own horn, but I feel this milestone warrants a little more than an instagram post!

A little Headstrong History:

I started all of this with 5 Tweed Champs in the summer of 2003, they all sold fast…I built a few Tweed Deluxe aka Blue Lamp 112 amps, next thing I knew, I had a dealer, Indoor Storm! Eddie Berman gave me a shot!

The market was drastically different back then…But one thing was clear…I had to do more than Tweed amps…Victoria and Clarke were well established and there were many people on Ebay selling a Tweed Deluxe for less than I was paying for the parts in my Blue Lamp.

I worked closely with Mojotone in the early days as I was new to all of this and a really nice guy there named Andy Turner picked up the phone one day, I had exhausted one particular sales guy with my granular questioning so he sent me to Andy…I find out that he was one of the owners and we hit it off! He took me under his wing and gave me advice that is still in use to this day.

I am a loyal guy and over the years I could’ve cut Mojotone out of my supply chain to save money if I wanted, but I knew that without that valuable guidance and what they did for me early on, I wouldn’t be here!

He helped me sort issues over the phone, helped me with pricing, he told me he knew I was going to be successful and he gave me bulk pricing early on, knowing I would work my way up to that volume. I know right, I AM VERY lucky!

One day I mentioned to him about the Tweed market looking pretty flooded…we talked about some of the mid 60s stuff and the Princeton Reverb came up…I told him I’d played through some with 12” speakers that were great in small clubs etc…He said, a Princeton Reverb would take off…but he didn’t have access to a chassis to blueprint…well I had a friend who had one!

At that time they had kits for the Deluxe reverb and maybe a Super Reverb, but all the kits they had were mainly Tweed or Marshall, so this would also be a boon for them!

I sent that chassis over to Mojo, and I hounded them to get it done…I was and am impatient! He was very patient…He said when it’s done, they’d give me most of next year to launch before they would offer their kit version.

This was pretty huge!

So now, I had a chassis and all the newly manufactured parts…I built the first one in late 2004 and immediately sent it to the late, GREAT David Wilson at The ToneQuest Report, they’d been waiting for it, too!

That first amp went to Junior’s Music in Connecticut…It sold fast. As much as I wanted to keep the first one, I couldn’t afford it, I needed to sell it to buy more parts! I did get it back years later and it lives here with #500 and soon #1000!

I built more and set up more dealers, including Lark Street Music, and Killer Vintage, pillars of vintage gear sales for decades at this point. This gave me some real credibility, it allowed me to set up more dealers and the ball really started rolling!

By the end of 2005 I think I sold 25 or 30…This was HUGE for me, I also set myself up in that Mid 60s lane pretty nicely as well.

Up until 2023, I averaged 40 Lil King amps a year…Now it’s 2X that! A testament to, just keep going, you never know when things will explode. But there are downsides to being more popular of course, especially on the internet! Keyboard warriors abound!!

The, ”isn’t it just a kit” questions and comments inevitably came up after a few years… To this day misinformed and uninformed people alike still make these claims, yeah, Paul Simon uses a kit build as his main amp at his studio in Hill Country…Makes sense right? Marc Ford, JD Simo, Richard Thompson, Water Becker use kits…

This is all noise to me and as you get more popular, people want to either come for you or try to use your stuff for clicks, even if what they are saying is questionable at best!

I built this amp and company with help from great people that I am not cutting out of my supply chain for optics!

I still buy the chassis from Mojotone to this day, by the pallet!…I build several models on that chassis and it help make this company!

This is all to say that I have built a SOLID reputation for quality products and service, and an industry leading LIFETIME WARRANTY that stays the amp. If I make a mistake, I fix it, if there is an issue with an amp, you get me on the phone. I can’t fix what I don’t hear about, so if you let me know, I will do my best to make it right!

I want people to be able to sit down, plug in and loose themselves in tone! THAT is why I do this!

SO now you know the REAL history of the Lil King Reverb, no kits, just my two hands and help from many people, including a bunch of you reading this, along the way!

FYI….I am currently working on a new model with some of Andy’s guidance, so stay tuned for that later this year!