George Alessandro, SG in hand, stands in front of his 1/2 AZZ v2 prototype, which runs through an exquisite pair of vintage Marshall 4x12s.
Standing in his workshop, I see the evidence of the legendary amp guru’s current puzzle, the AZZ line. Alessandro is working out the finer details of some updates on the 100-watt AZZ head. His 50-watt 1/2 AZZ—fractions designate the power of the model, with the 1/4 and 2/5 also available, and plans for a 1/8 in the works—is probably the most visible these days, accompanying Derek Trucks around the country onstage.
“George has been working on my amps for years,” Trucks says, “and has always been willing to experiment and help us chase down our sound.”
Like Leo Fender and Jimmy Bryant—or whichever builder/player pair you choose—these two masters of their crafts share a mutually beneficial relationship. “Trucks is one of the best examples of how, when I do my job right, I can literally watch the artist in real-time, the first time they’re playing it live, open up and go places I’ve never seen before,” Alessandro says.
Alessandro’s Tweedle A—a tweed-inspired combo named in homage to Dumble—sits at left, next to a custom-order tweed Deluxe build.
Photo by Nick Millevoi
The 1/2 AZZ is, in part, a result of their collaboration. The slide maestro, whose Super Reverbs have spent time on Alessandro’s bench, helped the builder guide the development of the amp. “He’s been a guinea pig for some of the designs—the ones that he needed,” Alessandro elaborates. “I was developing it around him. With the tier that [Tedeschi Trucks Band] are on right now, they’re trying to push the envelope. Developing the 1/2 AZZ for him, we were finding limitations of the platform. He helped me find a couple things that I, as a mortal human being, could never find. But for him, as one of the gods, it took us a while to find all the boundaries. If I can make it a limitless journey, then I did my job right.”
Hanging out in Alessandro’s Bucks County, Pennsylvania, workshop is an immersive thing, an opportunity to experience the whole story. Here, I get the chance to take the AZZ v2 for a spin. Loaded with four 5881s and running through a pair of vintage Marshall cabs, this thing is a true powerhouse.
Plugging into the amp using a pair of vintage SGs—to say something like “expertly set up” wouldn’t even tell the story; both of these things just really, really rip—my head is exploding. And that’s not because it’s loud, which, of course, it is. But this rig is extraordinarily dynamic and sensitive to every little pick and finger nuance I offer it. It’s a lithe beast, ready to amplify and accentuate anything I give it. And it’s quiet at idle, so I can sit here and intermittently chat while I pick lightly and have a normal conversation, and then dig in and I’m back at full volume, practically levitating on a bed of gain, always with a vibrant, full-bodied tone that makes me want to sell all my other amps and commit to this rig for life. If only I thought any gig I ever play would allow me to throw a full stack on their stage….
One corner of Alessandro’s workshop, where the 1/2 AZZ v2 is warming up near a pile of transformers.
Photo by Nick Millevoi
Next to the AZZ, I plug into Alessandro’s take on a tweed Deluxe. He figured that circuit out long ago, but he’s still excited about the classic designs. While he doesn’t typically build these, this one is a custom order from a client—I get the feeling he can’t say no to digging into an old circuit—and it’s loaded with the Eminence Eric Johnson EJ1250 that Alessandro co-designed. Just like a 5E3, it’s louder than it looks. And just like a 5E3, it does the saggy Neil Young thing everyone playing this circuit should aspire to. Basically, this sounds exactly like a 5E3, with—just maybe, because I’m not A/B-ing—a little more punch. In fact, I’d venture that this is probably how a new tweed Deluxe sounded back in the ’50s.
So, that thing he told me up at the top, about losing interest once he’s built an amp? It’s simply not true. I mean, I’m not calling George a liar—he’s a forward-thinking dude, and that’s what he’s imparting. But he essentially has the AZZ line figured out, and definitely learned everything there is to learn about the tweed Deluxe long ago, and he’s still thrilled about both, and much more.
Tedeschi Trucks Band - Layla (Live at LOCKN' / 2019) (Official Music Video)
Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II reach for the sky with a pair of Alessandro 1/2 AZZs close at hand during Tedeschi Trucks Band’s Layla Revisited (Live at LOCKN’) concert.
High-End Reputation
“Buy my amps before I die!” Alessandro jokingly exhorted as I entered his workshop. He’d just gotten off a call where he learned about the recent astronomical sale price of a Trainwreck amp built by his late friend and mentor, the legendary Ken Fisher.
Alessandro is sensitive about not overstating his relationship with Fisher. “He saw something in me,” he says. “I don’t want to say took me under his wing, but he was very kind and gracious. It was an opportunity I relish and I appreciate having him in my life.” As Alessandro tells it, their meeting came at just the right time, and it was Fisher who gave Alessandro the push he needed.
Growing up in the Philadelphia burbs during the ’80s as an SRV-obsessed teenager, Alessandro purchased a ’59 Bassman that “just wasn’t happening.” He took it to a few area techs, all returning it with the same result. But “I was just getting into learning electronics,” he remembers, so he opened it up and realized that a broken capacitor had eluded each of the techs. “I changed that one part out and the amp came to life.”
An example of one of Alessandro’s handwired Twin Reverbs, with visibly meticulous wiring and Alessandro-branded components.
Photo by Nick Millevoi
That was all Alessandro needed to catch the bug, and he started tinkering with old amps, soon doing repairs for local players. This experience served as a deep educational phase, and the timing was kismet. “There’s a whole learning curve on how amps age,” he observes. “What happens to a ’59 Bassman at year 20, at year 40, at year 60? I was of the generation where I came in on year 25, so I was coming in when it was a perfect time to learn.”
Eventually, one of his early clients inspired him to build an amp of his own. The request was to put an extra gain stage into a black-panel Bassman. After trying it in his client’s amp, Alessandro decided to build this circuit from scratch in the chassis of a Sunn Solarus. This build became his first prototype, which he called the Hound Dog Redbone.
A pre-med student working on amps in his free time, Alessandro took the amp to Fisher’s house for their first meeting, and they hit it off. It wasn’t long before Fisher gave him his first taste of hype. “He got me my first press,” he remembers. “He was writing for Vintage Guitar and basically said this Hound Dog is the closest thing to a Trainwreck. And from that point, my phone never stopped ringing for two years. I had orders coming in from all over the world before I was even a company.”
As he graduated from college, he looked at his potential spend on medical school and compared it to the auspicious start of his fledgling amp business, and decided to make a go at the latter. When he developed his second Hound Dog model—another “brutal 50-watter”—Alessandro tipped his cap to the elder builder, naming it the Bloodhound, after Fisher’s dog. He soon developed a full line, also including high-end low-power heads.
Somewhere along the way there was a cease-and-desist for the Hound Dog name, but Alessandro got some sage advice. “Bob Benedetto took me aside,” he explains. “He was like, ‘George, you’re Italian, you have a great last name, why don’t you use it?’” Thus, Alessandro High-End Products was born, reflecting his growing interest in hi-fi audio.
“When I started hearing what high-end audio sounded like, it was a mind-opening experience.”
“When I started hearing what high-end audio sounded like,” he explains, “it was a mind-opening experience. By utilizing better materials properly, you could elevate the product.” That included everything from building hi-fi style transformers, to eventually using his own Alessandro-branded components.
He developed a reputation for meticulously building amps at the highest level that quickly spread to the most elite circles in the guitar universe. Early adopters included Sammy Hagar, Billy Gibbons, and Eric Johnson. Just above his workshop desk hangs a photo of the builder and B.B. King, who he says was a good friend, both holding up an Alessandro catalog at his 30th birthday party. And at this point, the list has grown to be quite extensive. It’s not hard to find one of Alessandro’s amps onstage or in the studio with any number of rock stars, from Joe Perry to John Mayer to David Gilmour. And when I ask George about Gilmour’s very visible use of his Bluetick and Redbone Special, he shows me another photo on his desk of the Pink Floyd guitarist and his Alessandros sitting in with Jeff Beck.
Onstage with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Derek Trucks rocks a 1/2 AZZ and Crossbreed. Both Derek and Susan Tedeschi are running Super Reverbs that have spent time on the builder’s bench and are loaded with Alessandro’s signature Eminence speakers.
Photo by Stuart Levine
Handwired Access
My field trip to the Alessandro workshop wasn’t my first exposure to George’s work. Growing up in Philly, I was lucky enough to count hanging out at a small, family-owned guitar store as one of my first jobs. A few select customers would come in and talk about a guy a few towns over who was doing work for Gilmour and Eric Johnson, and who would put an amp in a gold-plated chassis for the price of a small sedan. My curiosity was piqued. When he introduced his old Working Dog line, targeted at gigging musicians, the amps came through the store and I plugged into the first boutique models I’d ever tried. Despite their reasonable prices, they were still out of my reach, but I never forgot that first taste.
As I got deeper into amps, and vintage amps specifically, I cycled through all the local techs—just like George did in the ’80s. I’d always known he was there, but the high-end Alessandro clientele led me to assume he was off limits for repairs, or at least prohibitively expensive. It was only recently, when I became a client myself, that I learned how wrong I was.While it’s partially Alessandro’s love of vintage amps that keeps him available for repairs and restorations, he also wants to work for working musicians at all levels, including those who can’t afford or justify a high-end amp (or at least one that commands five figures). “I definitely want to be approachable for any level of musician to purchase our product,” he tells me. “Because I do want to be able to inspire and get a good product into the hands of younger musicians or working musicians.”
To do so, he’s come up with a clever way to make his work more accessible, and that’s his handwire service.
The concept is simple: A customer brings Alessandro a modern consumer-grade amp—a reissue Fender or Marshall—and he’ll rebuild it by hand. He explains that his goal is “to at least equal what Fender was doing in 1964 and ’65. But if I can, what would happen if they continued to evolve it?”
And while he could build that from scratch easily, the rebuild concept is pragmatic. “I can’t build from scratch what we offer with the handwire service.”
So, he’s designed a circuit board that’s easily reproducible. “We gut the whole thing. The only thing left in there is the transformers and tube sockets—it’s very efficient.” And it keeps costs down. So, starting at $525 for a Princeton Reverb—you can, of course, keep upgrading beyond that—you can have a handwired amp that Alessandro says he’ll “put up against a vintage Princeton Reverb any day.”
“I definitely want to be approachable for any level of musician to purchase our product. Because I do want to be able to inspire and get a good product into the hands of younger musicians or working musicians.”
David Gilmour - Time/Breathe (Reprise) (Live At Pompeii)
Is there really any better way to make a case for a great amp than seeing a video of David Gilmour playing it at Pompeii? Here he is from 2017’s Live at Pompeii with a pair of Alessandro heads behind him in the hazy distance.
And that’s not sales talk. Frankly, George doesn’t have time for that. Just talking to him, it’s clear he only spends time on stuff he’s into, and lets his reputation do the rest. Take a look at his website, for example. It’s a sparse landing pad, featuring some information about most of what Alessandro High-End Products has to offer. If it feels like maybe there’s more available than you see, that just might be the case.
The Alessandro social media pages are a better way to see what he’s up to, but their long scroll of amp demo videos still maintain the mystique around his work. Of course, we, as tone hunters, absolutely love our elite-level amp builders to have mystique around their work, and that’s the level Alessandro is working on.
If you really want to know what George can offer and maybe find out if you can afford one of his amps, or even just talk about whether that’s right for you, you’ll have to go right to the source and have a conversation.
And how does someone do that?
He says, simply, “The people who need to know me find me.”
Roots music’s reigning creative power couple: Derek Trucks poses with one of his beloved Gibson SGs and Susan Tedeschi holds the Gretsch White Falcon used for the new albums’ sessions.
As their fans know, Tedeschi, who’d built her career on stinging Tele tones and one of the most soulful blues voices in modern music, and Trucks, an electric slide prodigy who first made waves as a solo artist before joining the Allman Brothers Band, met in 1999, fell in love, married, and started a family. In 2010, their careers united as well when they formed TTB with a rotating cast of equally exceptional musicians. Many tours, four studio albums, a Grammy, and eight Blues Music Awards later, TTB has become something more akin to a rambling roots-music collective than a band.
Tragedy struck the ensemble in February 2019, with the death of original band member and multi-instrumentalist Kofi Burbridge (brother of former TTB bassist Oteil Burbridge). The group was devastated. Then, while still dealing with the loss of their dear friend, Covid put a hard stop to the entire music industry. Something had to give.
Tedeschi Trucks Band - I Am The Moon: Episode I. Crescent
“After the loss of Kofi and Covid, we felt like we needed to hard reset to figure out where we were,” Trucks observes. Away from the road, Tedeschi and Trucks poured their energy into the relationships that matter most—their own family.
“When the lockdown happened, our son was moving on to college,” Tedeschi says. “There was a real sense of, ‘This is our last real hang time with him.’ It was really nice to be in a place with our kids where none of us could go anywhere, and we actually got to spend real quality time together.”
According to Tedeschi, sending their son off into the world inspired one of I Am The Moon’s songs, “La Di Da.” But Covid and a difficult goodbye were only two of the energies coalescing into what would be TTB’s most ambitious project.
Meanwhile, Mike Mattison, TTB vocalist and guitarist, was immersing himself in the seventh-century poem Layla and Majnun, credited to Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, and the 1970 album it inspired, Derek and the Dominos’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. The band had already been examining the musical side of these works and had recorded a live rendition of the Layla album, with guest Trey Anastasio, at the 2019 Lockn’ Festival. That performance was released as Layla Revisited Live at Lockn’ in May 2021. The poem is considered the East’s Romeo and Juliet. It follows two lovers through a timeless tale of passion, joy, separation, and death. Eric Clapton and Duane Allman’s collaboration focused heavily on Manjun’s side of the story. And Mattison wanted to give it a twist.
Initially, TTB’s members began to work on the I Am the Moon album cycle apart during lockdown, but they amassed at Derek and Susan’s home when it was time to record.
Photo by David McClister
“He had been kicking around this idea of taking the Layla concept and flipping it on its head—thinking about the story from Layla’s perspective,” Trucks says. “He reached out to everyone in the band with a suggestion that we all dig into the poem while we’re at home, before we could really get together. The concept was to keep everyone tight.”
With the members immersing themselves in Layla and Majnun, the creative juices quickly began flowing. But to capture the results, Tedeschi and Trucks would need to bring the entire band together. So, after a whirlwind of quarantining, vaccines, and negative test results, TTB’s players moved in with Susan and Derek. “They came down and lived with us, the core of the band,” say Trucks. “Once a few of the songs were written, that creativity started really inspiring everybody and sparking ideas. It had its own gravity at that point. I’ve never been a part of anything quite like it.”
“It was nice having no rules and no time constraints and being able to let things flow and happen organically.”—Susan Tedeschi
Many songs and arrangements were created in the moment, right on the studio floor. According to Trucks, that gave the recordings the energy of being onstage. “We track with the core of the band. It’s two drums, bass, me and Sue, and keyboards. Sue’s usually in a vocal booth, either with a guitar and a quiet amp in the room or an amp in another room. I’m set up in the same room as the drummers with a big tent around my amp. So, it felt a lot more like it feels onstage when we’re exploring.”
While many songs were brought in by individual band members, Tedeschi agrees that the relaxed, open environment was crucial to the songwriting process. “It was really cool to hear some of the things that the other musicians were coming up with,” she says. “The boys would play the riff or something, like on ‘All the Love,’ and it was really fun to sing against. I was trying to take in everything that was going on in the moment, as well as the poem. So, as Derek was saying earlier, it was nice having no rules and no time constraints and being able to let things flow and happen organically.”
Derek Trucks’ Gear
Trucks’ primary instrument for I Am the Moon was the fourth prototype for the Gibson Custom Shop’s Dickey Betts SG VOS.
Photo by David McClister
Guitars
- Gibson Custom Shop Dickey Betts SG VOS prototype No. 4
- 1965 Gibson ES-335
- 1960s Supro tuxedo finish
- Vintage National resonator
- Vintage Gibson Roy Smeck acoustic
- 1930s Gibson L-00 with DeArmond pickup
- Various vintage Martin acoustics
Amps
- Early ’60s Fender Deluxe
- 1950s tweed Fender Deluxe
Effects
- Leslie cabinet
- Vintage Echoplex
Strings & Slide
- DR Customs
- Coricidin bottle slide
That freedom also applies to Trucks’ solos. “They’re all improv, mostly,” he says. “The solos are live on the floor because they’re what’s leading the track at that moment. Some of the solos you definitely think about more than others, but a lot of them, they happen naturally. That seems to be the best way.”
Though Trucks’ thick tone and inimitable slide work are all over nearly every song, Tedeschi’s rhythm playing drives the whole project. And when the two cut heads, as on “Playing With My Emotions,” it’s pure blues-rock magic. “‘Playing With My Emotions’ was actually in the moment,” Tedeschi remembers. “Derek looks over at me and is like, ‘Play!’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’” [laughs]
“I haven’t used any Echoplexes or Leslies and things like that on our stuff. One of these days, I’ll get into it.”—Susan Tedeschi
“It’s fun when, thematically, that makes sense,” Trucks says. “But it wasn’t written or scripted when we went to that. Me and Sue, we play the dueling-guitar stuff live. An old friend, Colonel Bruce Hampton, would call them guitarguments.” [laughs]
“Playing With My Emotions” perfectly illustrates both players’ approach to tone. Trucks is all about his signature, driven slide sound, which is perfectly offset by Tedeschi’s cleaner-yet-still-biting Tele.
Susan Tedeschi’s Gear
Tedeschi played her 1970 Fender Stratocaster for the sessions. TTB fans regularly see this guitar, as well as her longtime favorite, a ’90s Telecaster, in concert.
Photo by David McClister
Guitars
- 1990s Fender Telecaster
- Late 2000s Gretsch White Falcon
- 1970 Fender Stratocaster
Strings & Picks
- DR .010s
- Fender Heavy
Amps
- 1964 Fender Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- 1968 Vox Clyde McCoy wah (gift from Jorma Kaukonen)
“I was using my Tele through my ’64 Deluxe [Reverb],” she says. “Whatever came out in that moment is what you got. I had every intention to go back in later and re-do it, but it never happened.”
If you’ve seen Tedeschi onstage, you’ve probably seen that Telecaster. It’s also featured on the cover of her breakout solo album, Just Won’t Burn. But, as Trucks remembers, the Tele wasn’t her only go-to for these sessions. She also played her 1970 Fender Strat, and a Gretsch White Falcon on “Circles ’Round the Sun.”
Trucks employed a wider range of instruments to cover the music’s acoustic, resonator, and electric tones. “I think on ‘Fall In,’ I’m using a National that we ended up running through an old Supro amp,” Trucks says. “And I have this old Supro [a 1960s tuxedo model] guitar that I use as well. We used a lot of different acoustic guitars. I have a 1930s Gibson L-00 that has an old DeArmond pickup, like Elmore James, that I used a few times. I think on ‘Emmaline’ I was playing that. I have an old Gibson Roy Smeck. And there are a few old Martins that we use.” In the studio, Derek goes for early-1960s Fender Deluxes.
“Me and Sue, we play the dueling guitar stuff live. An old friend, Colonel Bruce Hampton, would call them guitarguments.”—Derek Trucks
Although they use similar amps, Tedeschi and Trucks take wildly different approaches to their sounds. “I haven’t really done a ton of experimenting yet,” said Tedeschi. “I haven't used any Echoplexes or Leslies and things like that on our stuff. Those are all really fun, but for the most part, on this record, I’m playing vibrato or a wah. One of these days, I’ll get into it. I don’t know why I haven’t. I do enjoy doing that.”
While sticking to tones with plenty of vintage vibe, Trucks explores a bit more. His only rule is it has to sound great in the track. “A lot of times, me and Bobby T [longtime TTB recording engineer and road manager Bobby Tis] would experiment,” he says. “I would always have a second amplifier upstairs being recorded for some extra room sound. A lot of times, we would put a vintage Echoplex on it for a little bit of smudge. I would use that old Supro sometimes with that setup. I would plug into the Leslie quite a bit, too, for certain overdubs or a song like ‘Circles ’Round the Sun.’ It think that song is my guitar going through my Deluxe and an actual Leslie, which is a pretty great sound. Then there’s one or two songs where I took the solo on a tweed Deluxe. But it’s funny. You can get a sound on the floor that sounds incredible, and then you take a solo and you realize it’s either too little of something or too much of something.”
Rig Rundown - Tedeschi Trucks Band
Tedeschi has used her Tele for gathering autographs over the years. Easily readable are signatures from B.B. King. Hubert Sumlin, John Lee Hooker, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Check out the live gear used by Derek and Susan.
Trucks’ standout moment comes early in the four-album collection as he guides the band through the only instrumental, I Am the Moon: I. Crescent’s closing track, “Pasaquan.” Clocking in at over 12 minutes, the song is part Allman-style jam, part Middle Eastern melodicism, and part Floydian expanse. With a song like that, Trucks knew the band had to nail it. It had to sound electrifying.
“I didn’t want to play it more than once or twice in a row, ever,” says Trucks. “I wanted to make sure that, when we did capture it, it would be spontaneous. We really took wildly different approaches each time we played it.” Trucks also took an uncharacteristic approach to both his gear and technique on “Pasaquan.”
“I used a 1965 335 on it and tuned down to D. I realized there was no other way to get that sound. It’s made for that tune. And it’s all fingers. Over years of being onstage with the Allman Brothers, you’d have to improvise quite a bit in different ways, so you get your chops up for that.”
About the chapters of I Am the Moon—I. Crescent, II. Ascension, III. The Fall, IV. Farewell—Trucks says, “We had this episodic concept pretty early on, and we had the album titles pretty early on. We were listening to a lot of vinyl, and I started realizing that all of our favorite records were cut for vinyl, which is 35 or 40 minutes. We knew we had the right amount of material for that, and it worked.”
“We track with the core of the band. It’s two drums, bass, me and Sue, and keyboards.”—Derek Trucks
All four episodes were released a month apart to let listeners absorb each album of the saga to its fullest. But together, a beautiful story of love, distance, creation, and saying goodbye unfolds. This approach to releasing the albums paid off, and fans embraced the music faster than any previous TTB title.
“When we did the first show of this summer tour, I think we played two of our old original tunes, and then we did the whole Crescent record, start to finish,” Trucks says. “We were a little bit shocked at how well it went. Usually, when you break out new material, there’s a little bit of air that goes out of the room. This time around, it seemed like people connected with it pretty early on. Even when we’d get done playing the new stuff and go back to some of our older stuff, it didn’t have the same weight.”
“The poem was interesting, because you have a lot of different correlations with family and how everybody’s affected by each other,” she says. “Here, Layla is in a situation where she’s in love, and she has to be able to let go of it. She has to be able to say goodbye even though she doesn’t want to. I thought it had a parallel to being able to let go and say goodbye to my son. It was the perfect story and the perfect concept for that time.”
YouTube It
Watch Susan and Derek and their comrades in song play the title track from their multi-media extravaganza, I Am the Moon. Oh, and be sure to hang for Derek’s epic slide solo at 4:25!