1.  I am still doing warranty work.  I promised a lifetime warranty on my products and I meant it.  I haven’t actually received any requests beyond the guy who reversed his preamp and power tubes and fried his board, but I just wanted to mention that I am still alive and do still have an address, a soldering iron, and a spare bedroom full of parts.

2.  Category 5 Amplification is still alive and well and going strong.  I designed all of their circuits and I still own a small interest in the business.  It’s a great company that makes great amps, and I’m proud to have been involved since the beginning.  I plan to be involved until the end (in the very, very distant future).

3.  Contrary to popular belief, s2amps did not die because it “went under.”  s2amps enjoyed the rare condition of being profitable from the beginning.  It was always profitable, became more profitable with each passing year, and stood to continue that growth.  It never replaced my corporate job income, but it always made modest money.

4.  I started tinkering with and building amps in 1999 (I had long been repairing amps for myself and others before that during my gigging years) and had built about 150 amps for other people under the radar before I felt I had to go legit.  I officially opened for business in 2004 when I thought I had enough experience and knowledge to offer something to the guitar community at large.  I also thought the IRS might catch up with my hobby eventually.  This was a garage and spare bedroom (not to mention spare time) endeavor for me until the beginning of 2008.  A typical day in the life for those years was to get up early and go to my day job as a software architect / development manager for a large corporation.  I typically got home around 4 in the afternoon and worked until 1 or 2 in the morning.  I worked 12+ hour days every weekend.  This situation was far from ideal, but I loved what I was doing and wanted to keep it going.  I made several hundred amps, preamps, pedals, and power amps and performed dozens of mods and hundreds of repairs during this time.

5.  By the time 2008 rolled around, I had decisions to make.  I quit my very lucrative day job to focus on building amplifiers.  Until this time, I had turned down more orders than I had taken.  But s2amps had really taken off and I felt I had to give it a go.  I built over 200 amps that first year by myself.  This was not a sustainable business model, but I figured I could find financing or an investor to help me make the leap from home business to real business without risking my own retirement.  That never materialized due in no small part to the recession.

6.  The recession itself didn’t really hurt me in terms of sales–at least not directly.  It didn’t help either as it cut into growth, but it didn’t take much away from my existing business.  I found the recession to have more of an impact on the middle tier of  boutique amps.  s2amps was always at the lower end.  My other altar ego, Category 5 is at the higher end.  Neither felt as much impact as the middle, where most amp companies were severely squeezed.

7.  My plan for growth depended on reputation to build name recognition.  That mission was accomplished through mods, repairs, rebuilds, tweed amps, custom amps, and hooking up with some middle-tier artists.  So far, so good.

8.  Once I had a viable brand I needed a product line for mass production.  Custom work can’t sustain a business into long-term profitability as there simply are not enough hours in a day.  This new product line was to be the ”Relic” series of amplifiers, which were developed all along the timeline from 2003 to 2008.  These were  amplifiers I was especially proud of.  The plan was to eschew direct business and compete with Dr Z and others in the dealer space with similar pricing and features, but with better circuits and components–or at least in my humble opinion.  This is where things began to go wrong.

9.  The idea behind Relic was simplicity.  With Category 5, I had already designed complex multichannel amps with the best components money could buy and with a price tag to match.  Category 5 amps are awesome and are some of the best amps made.  I accomplished every conceivable goal in that tier of the market.  Pros use them and love them.  Almost every album that comes out of Nashville is recorded with a Category 5 amp.  Almost every small to midsize label blues record is recorded with the same.  With the s2amps brand, I wanted to complement that with the other end of the spectrum.  I wanted to build simple, single channel amps with simple circuit paths and good components that could be profitably sold at the upper end of the low price point where regular Joes could afford them.  I spent a long time with pencil to paper and had mapped out a business plan that would lead to profitability with all the necessary ingredients.  This wasn’t my first entreprenuerial rodeo.  I knew what I was doing.  That said, certain things had to fall into place to make it work.

10.  Everyone who heard the Relic amps loved them.  The pros and hobbyists I know where blown away.  Dealers A/B’d them with the amps in their shops and thought they killed them (or they were blowing smoke up my…).  Everything was great.  Except they didn’t place orders.  This is where the recession killed my future business.  They all told me they would love to sign on, but they couldn’t justify bringing another brand in when they couldn’t move what they had on the floor.  I couldn’t move them through direct sales because there simply wasn’t enough exposure.  I couldn’t move them through dealers because they were hurting.  My only option was to hunker down for another 1 or 2 or 3 years and keep doing what I was doing and hope the economy turned around.

11.  I grew to dislike what I was doing.  They always say that a hobby is great until it becomes a job.  It became a job.  I eventually grew tired of the endless days with no free time and no weekends.  My family was missing me and I was missing them.  I never played my guitars anymore except to test amps.  I practically forgot how to play.  I started to sour on the business and started to wonder if I could hunker down for the necessary amount of time. 

12.  Meanwhile, investment capital dried up because of the recession, so there was no hope of growing the good and profitable business I already had.  I needed to move out of my house and into a small factory and take my part-time employees on full-time, but I was in that uneasy no-man’s land where I was too big for one thing and too small for the other thing and needed financing to bridge the two.  Financing was not available.  It would be me and the wilderness and the tax man…

13.  Then came the uncertainty of the business climate. It seems as though Washington has some special hatred for small businesses.  Taxes are going up.  Red tape is on the incline.  There is more bureaucracy on the horizon.  ROHS was only the beginning.  There are more regulations with which to comply seemingly every day.  I came to the conclusion that I would soon cease being a designer and builder and become a paper pusher.  My CPA was very happy about this.  I was not.  No savvy business person invests saved capital in such a climate.  The proper response is to wait for pro-business signs before investing cash reserves.  I couldn’t see putting cash on the line when the likely outcome is to see it vanish or see its fruits taxed into oblivion.  The current business climate punishes success.

14.  An opportunity I could not ignore landed in my lap.  I’ve been a bit of a hotshot software guy as long as I’ve been in software.  A small biometrics firm came along and offered me a top position, a top salary, and a dump truck full of stock to join them and help take them to the next level.  I weighed my options and decided.

15.  At my age (37), and after having watched my retirement tank over the past few years, and with a young family to think about, I decided I should spend these productive years earning as much income as I can and socking as much of it away as possible.  So I took the offer.  I couldn’t keep s2amps going and perform at the level of competence needed by these folks and give Category 5 what they need to succeed, so I had no choice but to shut s2amps down.

So here it lies–the victim of a perfect storm of circumstances all inclined toward its demise.  Or maybe just the victim of a series of wise decisions on my part.  In any case, thanks for the great years.  Thanks for letting me add around 5 or 600 amplifiers to the community.  Thanks for the good reviews and kind words.  I enjoyed it.  I still enjoy it through Category 5.  Maybe one day I’ll return to the amplifier business in earnest.  Or maybe I’ll spend my time getting good on the guitar again.

Cheers and kind regards.

Many thanks to all those friends and customers who supported and patronized us over the years.

We will be blowing out inventory in our eBay store in the weeks to come, so be sure to check there for some great deals.

Best Regards,

Steven Scott