当我们发现自己深入数字时代时，一只又一只又一只老式的放大器狗一只狗认为，如果知识没有传递给下一代，我们可能会完全理解对模拟电路的理解。不过，一个问题是：“学校中所有可用的电子课程都真正集中在数字上。如果将来有模拟电路课程的复兴，那就太酷了。”
But that’s not from your jaded old repairman down the back alley at Jimmy’s Thermionic Valve & Radio Service. These are the words ofColleen Fazio, a diehard 26-year-old analogue nut at the heart of the next generation of point-to-pointers. An experienced amp builder and repairperson working amid one of the world’s hottest music scenes, Fazio has some 35,000 YouTube subscribers and commonly earns more than 125,000 views for her instructional videos. What, are there even that many people interested enough in guitar amp repair to watch a video on the subject? Apparently so – and we amp nuts should be grateful that there are.
从基础开始
科琳·法齐奥（Colleen Fazio）对乐器的迷恋在伊利诺伊州出生和长大，就像许多孩子一样：在扮演这件事的叔叔的脚跟上。
她回忆说：“我的一位叔叔总是在他的房子周围躺着一些吉他。”“当我小时候，我一直想接他们并尝试玩它们，他意识到我对音乐有兴趣。因此，在我七岁的圣诞节里，他给我买了一把小小的原声吉他。
“I started taking guitar lessons, and my first teacher was classically trained so I started with classical guitar and learned how to read music and everything. I kept going with it until about middle school, when I was playing guitar in the jazz band for the sixth and seventh grade and then our bass player left to go to high school, so we needed a bass player. In jazz band, bass is way more important than guitar! So, my teacher asked if I would want to switch to bass and I gave it a try.
“It kind of was a natural change for me; I really enjoyed it. From that moment on I primarily became a bass player. All the bands I was in in high school and after I played the bass.”
Fazio graduated from high school at 18 not entirely sure what she’d do with herself – lived in Chicago for a time, playing in bands and following that path – and then at about the age of 19 she realised she was being inexorably drawn to the gear itself.
她告诉我们：“我对学习吉他技术或AMP Teching的了解很感兴趣，所以这是我开始探索两者的时候，最终我被吸引到AMP的时候，而不是从事吉他技术工作。部分原因是我的叔叔以前曾建立过放大器 - 他们是Vero放大器后面的家伙 - 所以总是在附近。我的一位叔叔教我如何焊接以及如何使用诸如割线器等基本工具等。当时这是一次学习经历。”
Once the amp bug took hold and she’d had some experience under her belt, much of it gained at the Illinois repair shop Deltronics under the tutelage of owner Mike Delvalle, Fazio took her skills to the West Coast to set up her own shop in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Atwater Village. She tells us the style of Vero models like the Chicago Zephyr and the 20th Century Limited – which were among the more hardcore vintage-retro designs when they arrived on the boutique scene more than 20 years ago – has influenced her own tastes, as much as she’s absorbed what she can of the skills that went into making them. Having built several of her own amps for sale she hopes to get back into the making and designing herself soon, but for now the tech work has been too demanding to allow much time for anything else.
“It’s cool being in LA because there’s so many musicians out here and a lot of people who collect, so I’m really able to see amps that I’ve never seen in person. It really is the hub. That’s pretty much why I came out here – just to be around as much gear as I possibly can.”
制造商的标记
Part of what she’s been enjoying is getting inside the history of all those old amps that guitarists are still using out there, many of which were manufactured by companies based just a stone’s throw – or now a bumper-to-bumper commute – from her own workshop.
“The first time I opened up a tweed Champ that was all original,” Fazio says, “and I saw all the beautiful orange capacitors and everything that just looks old and kind of screams ‘history’ to me, it was amazing. I love thinking about all the things the amp has been through. The last time this amp was opened up the world was a completely different place, you know? And now I open it up in 2021 and it’s so different, but the amp is still the same.”
Stemming from that, Fazio has observed a new fondness among her generation for things you can touch, hold, feel. The concrete objects of value that present a physical counterpoint to the analog and ephemeral that has come to dominate much of modern life. It’s much the same attitude that has informed today’s maker culture, and it has its offshoot in young guitarists who are discovering the value of otherwise archaic tube technology.
“我认为，许多建筑商，技术人员，甚至许多玩家都在了解更多有关使放大器起作用的东西以及使他们可靠和依此待此表的知识，人们肯定会认识到，大众制造商正在使放大器制造的放大器非常数字化，AMPSwill probably be obsolete in 10, 15, 20 years because they just won’t be fixable. So, I think a lot of people are taking pride in building things that are going to be able to last for 50, 60, 70 years just like an old Fender amp. I think that is really important.
“特别是，有很多播客和社交媒体团体都集中在复古放大器和复古装备上，人们希望更多地了解它们。而且我认为这太酷了，因为人们真的会为拥有这种设备而感到自豪。”
在她的工作台上的更迷人的工作中，有30年代末/40年代初吉布森EH-185 combo – “It was so cool because it came to me all-original and it was in very pristine shape” – and an unusual Premier 76 resplendent in that model’s mid-century aesthetic. But she also appreciates the value of the latter-day workhorses that continue to enable thousands of guitarists to get the job done, and is just as happy to help bring a late-70s silverfaceFender起死回生。
Fazio说：“那个挡泥板时代，我真的很喜欢他们如何保持所有手工与所有手工的东西的完整性。”“他们引入了许多很酷的功能。后来的一些银挡泥板具有增强开关，甚至在80年代后期，他们在第二个频道上具有额外的增益阶段，所有这些东西都非常酷。他们以挡泥板的方式做到了这一点，它尽可能简单，但听起来仍然很好。
“他们显然在80年代或90年代初开始切换到PCB，但即使是PCB放大器，大多数情况下也易于处理，并且可以持续一段时间。”
这是一段旅程
Fazio has launched into designing and building her own models with some success, and is eager to get back to that once her tech’ing demands ease up enough to allow it. As with many small-shop builders, she started out reworking circuits based on classic Fender models, but her love of simplicity and willingness to make small changes to effect significant sonic gains has helped her bring more creativity to the venture, too.
“I always recommend to people who are interested in building, ‘Build a Champ kit, or a Deluxe, or a Bassman…’ because that’s a great way to learn about how amps work and how they colour their tone and everything like that, so pretty much my builds have branched off that. I’ve kind of coloured my preamp in a different way, and I’m still in that R&D stage where I’m just figuring out things and deciding exactly what I like. I love clean tones, but I also love a little bit of crunch, so I would like to have a personal design that would offer both of those characteristics.
“我建造的最新放大器是一项定制工作，那是一个Silvertone克隆为客户。基本上，我刚刚摆脱了原始的Silvertone设计，我相信它是1484年，我建造了它，并对前置放大器进行了几个更改，以结合挡泥板和Silvertone特性，使其对我来说听起来不错，这真的很有趣，这真的很有趣。摆脱那些刚刚尝试和真实的旧设计确实没有错。我的意思是，总有升级的方法，我认为这就是创造力的来源。这是一段旅程。”
倒带三十年，二十年，甚至只有一个，而法齐奥的故事的头条很可能完全是关于她是一个年轻的女性在传统上是一个年长的男人领域的年轻女子。不过，正如我们在许多其他方面所看到的那样，它们是changin’的时代。
她告诉我们：“我很高兴地说，主要是每个人都非常尊重和令人鼓舞。”“我的意思是，每隔一段时间，我会收到厌恶女性的评论或其他评论，但这很好，这是可以预料的。但是实际上，每个人都非常酷，如此兴奋和鼓舞，我真的很高兴社区。每个人都非常棒，我对此感到非常高兴！”
因此，也许人类有一些希望，也许 - 也许 - 尽管如此 - 科琳·法齐奥（Colleen Fazio）在焊接者队伍中的热情接待是一些很小的信号，表明我们确实在性别平等方面的某个地方。
“我认为是这样，”她证实。“I think it’s more common to come across a woman doing what was traditionally a male-dominated thing, and it’s more accepted that it’s just ‘normal.’ I think it’s all about awareness, and everybody’s just kind of doing their thing, and it’s great. And there are more women in the technical side of the music industry starting to come up, which is really cool and exciting.”
跟随@fazioelectric在Instagram上以获取更多信息。