Peter Henriksen was a software engineer when his dad called and asked him to quit his job and help build guitar amps. Twenty years later, Henriksen Amplifiers makes one of the smallest, loudest clean amps you can buy, and Peter will tell you the hard part was never making it louder. It was making it small.

We met at the Great American Guitar Build Off in Denver, where our VIP group got a tour of his shop and people spent the expo playing through his amps. I sat down with him afterward.

An amp built because the right one did not exist

Peter grew up around electronics manufacturing. His dad built telecommunications gear in the 80s, making computers talk to each other before anyone had wireless, and he started building small PBX phone systems because the smallest one you could buy had 32 channels and he needed eight.

When his dad retired and got back into jazz guitar, he could not find an amp that sounded the way he wanted. So he built one. Then he built ten, sent them out, and the response was strong enough that he called Peter and asked him to come help start a company.

Peter liked writing software. He did not like doing it in a cubicle. The timing was right.

Learning the business the hard way

About a year and a half in, his dad got sick, and he passed away six months later. He never got to develop the product the way he wanted, and Peter was left to keep it going without ever having run a business.

His own description: what took him 20 years would take someone who knew what they were doing maybe three or four. He is still learning it. I think that is one of the most honest things a founder can say.

The Bud started as a box on a shelf

Their best seller is a tiny amp called the Bud, named after his dad. It started around 2013 or 2014, when Peter was cleaning out boxes of his dad’s things after a shop move and found a 6 inch speaker. A shipment of circuit boards for their heads showed up the same day, about the same size. On a slow afternoon he wondered if one would fit under the other.

He was not delicate about it. He took a chop saw to a chassis and rewired the pots to make it fit. It worked, and then it sat on his desk staring at him while he tried to figure out what it was for.

A better driver, Eminence’s 6.5 inch Beta, made a big difference. A friend took it out on a few gigs. A new hire helped grow the cabinet, add a tweeter, and redo the port math. Then they brought over a dozen guitars, and the last one was a dreadnought acoustic with a passive pickup. It sounded great, and that is the part that does not exist elsewhere. Amps are built for acoustic or for electric, and you rarely get one that is usable for both.

The engineer’s verdict was good news and bad news. Good news: it sounds great with acoustic guitar. Bad news: now it needs phantom powered XLR inputs, two channels, and separate reverbs. Peter set out to make a cheaper amp and ended up with a more expensive one. His point about the price is the line I keep coming back to: you are not buying amps by the pound. Big and loud is easy. Small and loud is hard.

Who it is actually for

Stages are moving to in ear monitors, and plenty of players never put an amp on stage at all. But Peter points out that maybe five percent of musicians ever play a real stage. Everyone else is at jam sessions, wine bars, and singer songwriter nights, and they still need amplification without hauling a PA.

A few things he has learned from customers:

• Want stereo? Buy two. Two small single channel amps can go anywhere you want them, and that beats any stereo combo.
• Horn players use them as monitors. Point the amp back at yourself, run a bell mic into it using the phantom power, and you can finally hear what you are playing.
• Bluegrass players found them in numbers he never expected. The goal is not to be part of your sound. It is to make your sound louder.
• Pedals work, but differently. Overdrives behave differently than they do into a tube amp, not better or worse. Modeling gear tends to work better, because tube amps were never designed for it.

What is coming

A relaunch of the original Jazz Amp, a stripped down amp that does one thing perfectly. His pitch: if you play jazz guitar, buy this and stop being a gear head. The two channel heads are coming back, and since they are class D they do not need a load, so they double as a DI. A bass amp is on the list, finally, after 20 years. And they are revisiting a hybrid tube preamp design aimed at fusion players.

His magic wand wish was not a product. It was a line of credit. You cannot build one of something. You build 500 a quarter, and that takes money up front.

Where to find Henriksen

They sell direct only at henriksenamplifiers.com, with a 30 day return policy so you can try one at home. They ship internationally too.

Thanks, Peter. This was one of my favorite conversations from the whole Build Off.

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One guy in a small shop on his father-in-law’s property in Lindsborg, Kansas. IT Director by day, maker by obsession. Equal parts problem solver, craftsman, and curious human. If you’re the kind of person who takes things apart to see how they work, or watches people who do, you’re in the right place.

Uncut shop sessions go up on YouTube and I stream on Twitch. Everything is @carverwoodworking. There is merch in the shop, or you can buy me a coffee.