Category: Monthly Update

Long time, friends

Hey y’all.

Been a minute, eh? Lots has happened, so lets recap.

  1. I sold a handful of Dustbowls. Super happy to get them into the hands of some audio junkies.
  2. Sent some Dustbowl units out for review to some audio industry folks. The best feedback I got was from a member of U2’s sound crew: “Damn fine amplifier you’ve created”. Proud of that one.
  3. Found out that trying to do this full time is expensive. Definitely not a money making endeavor right now.
  4. Decided to join a small punk rock pirate ship of a tech company of great people working to make open source a better place.

Honestly, I’ve decided to go back to working full time in tech, but continue building audio gear for myself and do smaller, less full time, batches of amps for folks. Maybe someday I’ll give it a go at full time again, but it’s not the right time and not something I can do financially.

That all said, I’m going to pick up on posting the stuff I’m building myself and will still make Dustbowls and other amplifier for folks if they ask. You’ll need to get in touch with me at if you’d like one made.

In my recent “spare time”, I built this.

Forgive the non-professional photograph and goldfish cracker, but I’m happy with how it sounds and looks.

I don’t have a name for it necessarily, but it’s based on the AX84 High Octane, with a few mods. Just over 8W out and the cabinet is simple pine with a Celestion Vintage 30. Head and front panel is made from oak. Used some burlap I had laying around for the grills, with some scrap painted black behind the burlap. Looks pretty ok IMO.

Can get a nice clean tube tone as well as some pretty gnarly crunch. Perfect for the cheap Telecaster clone I’m using with it. A bit noisy, but it’s 100% due to the cheap single coil pickups on the tele and not the amp. Certainly been enjoying it as I try and remember how to play guitar.

Keep rocking, y’all.

Yerhot Audio September Update

Hello friends!

I trust that everyone is as safe as can be and has been enjoying some good music as we enter the fall season. It’s been a fairly crazy time here, opening an online store, building amplifiers, and seeing how to best do this whole business thing. Big thanks to everyone that has supported Yerhot Audio through kind words, buying an amplifier, t-shirt, or just sending the good vibes. Thank you so much.

I’m going to try and do monthly updates here in-between other posts. I’ve been slacking just due to having time, so bear with me.

Updates to the Dust Bowl

I’ve decided to pare down the options on the Dust Bowl to either selecting Mahogany or Red Oak skirt. In further testing, I found that the default Hammond transformers and chokes were superior in a number of important areas to the very large Edcore ones I was offering. In fact, the Edcore transformer and choke made it such that it was far too difficult to build without slight power supply noise being introduced. This is work-around-able, but not something I want to deal with on a consistent basis. Plus, those default Hammond 119D output transformers sound better (to my ears) and are more readily available than the XSM line matchers from Edcore. In order to maintain quality, it needed to happen. If you’d still like me to do a one-off get in touch and maybe we can work something out – john@yerhotaudio.com.

I’ve also eliminated the 12×12″ size option. This was only really viable with the large Edcore options as it just gave enough room to work with given the size of those components.

That means all Dust Bowls will be 10×12″ with a choice of wood. This should lead to better and more consistent quality. New pictures of the options are posted on the store page.

Reviews!

A few Dust Bowls have been shipped out to various folks for review – keep checking back for news on that. I’ve also had interest from music industry folks on testing them so demo units are going there as well.

If you run a reputable audio review website, zine, podcast, whatever and are interested in giving a Dust Bowl a listen, hit me up at john@yerhotaudio.com.

T-Shirts & Stickers

Wow, I almost sold out of our first run of shirts! New shirts will be in-stock in a week or so, with an additional smoke-grey option. A bunch of Yerhot Audio stickers will be arriving soon. They’re free with every order or almost-free alone, just pay shipping 🙂

Upcoming Products

I’m also busy working on the next Yerhot Audio amplifier, which will be a single-ended power amplifier targeting the wonderful KT88 power tube. I don’t want to give any details out yet and do not have a firm timeline for when it’ll be available to order, but keep checking back for more details and availability.

September Playlist

Finally, here is what I’ve been listening to this month:

Take care, keep rocking!

John