Rivera Amplifiers is an American manufacturer of
guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier (or amp) is an electronic device or system that strengthens the electrical signal from a pickup on an electric guitar, bass guitar, or acoustic guitar so that it can produce sound through one or more loudspeakers, which a ...
s. It was founded by Paul Rivera as a research and development firm in August 1976 in
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
.
Before moving into manufacturing amplifiers under his own name, Paul Rivera ran his own amplifier repair and modification shop, and then worked for
Fender Amplifiers
Fender amplifiers are a series of electric instrument amplifiers produced by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. The first guitar amplifiers attributed to Leo Fender were manufactured by the K&F Manufacturing Corporation (K&F) betwee ...
. There he acted as Marketing Director, specifying a whole range of amplifiers and designing some himself. These were the last range to be made by Fender before its owners, CBS, sold the company
[http://www.fender-amp.com/history.asp Fender Company History retrieved 2 October 2010] to its then management, and the last to be mass-produced by Fender with 'traditional' (non-PCB) methods. Rivera, like other amplifier builders such as
Soldano, began building Fender-based amplifiers to try to capture a piece of the market for hot-rodded multi-channel amplifiers dominated by
Mesa Boogie
Mesa/Boogie (also known as Mesa Engineering) is an American company in Petaluma, California, that manufactures amplifiers and other accessories for guitars and basses. It has been in operation since 1969.
Mesa was started by Randall Smith as a ...
.
References
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External links
Company Website
Instrument amplifiers
Manufacturing companies based in Los Angeles