Dr. Z on the Matchless DC30
While looking around for information about the original Matchless DC30, I stumbled across this quote from Dr. Z, originally published in ToneQuest:
[TQ] There are a lot of relatively small boutique amp manufacturers today, and Matchless, for example, became known for building supremely overbuilt amps, yet ultimately the company failed. What has enabled you to be successful?
[Dr. Z] I think the biggest problem that Matchless had that I’ve avoided is that as I’ve developed new amps, they’ve gotten better and better. The problem with Matchless was that their DC30 Series was a wonderful sounding amp, hands-down, but they subsequently failed to come up with anything that could match it. They spent a lot of time and money on R&D and they could never improve on the DC30. It was also a very labor-intensive amp that was extremely well-built, but that was one of the problems. Look inside of one of them—there were no shortcuts….
I have a lot of respect for Dr. Z amps and really like a lot of the models I’ve heard. I even though about buying a Route 66 before deciding on the Ceriatone kit so I’m kind of chuffed that he thinks the DC30 rocks. What’s the term? Validation, yep that’s it.