John Mayer’s Dead & Company Final Tour Mystery Amp Identified
Watch a breakdown of the rare and mysterious amp the guitarist used for the just-completed run.
By Scott Bernstein Aug 4, 2023 • 8:02 am PDT
Guitarist John Mayer utilized multiple amplifiers for Dead & Company‘s recently concluded Final Tour. One of the amps was hidden behind a mysterious red curtain, leading fans to speculate what it was and why the need for secrecy. Thankfully, the mystery has been solved by intrepid John Mayer fans with a full description found below.
YouTuber Justin Jeske and pal Wayne Liao indentified the amp behind the curtain. They were helped by the few nights Mayer’s tech left the curtain a bit askew, allowing them to sneak a peek at the mystery amplifier.
John Mayer’s main amp was a 50 Watt Dumble Small Special SN:0005, the exact same amp he used on previous D&C tours and the first leg of his solo tour. It fed into a Two-Rock 212 cabinet.
When Dead & Company began the tour, Mayer had the aforementioned second amp set up behind a red curtain. Spectulation started immediately. Was it new PRS signature mirror amplifier? Was it something made by Two-Rock? Or was he just screwing with die-hard gearhead fans and it was nothing special?
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Jeske and his friends ended up figuring out the mystery. They exposed it pretty early on in the tour but now Justin has gone into detail. Once the curtain was pulled back a bit, fans thought perhaps it was Marshall due to black and gold and white piping. Yet the gear is an extremely rare Dumble Small Special 100 Watt amplifier. “These amplifiers were mainly intended to be used as bass amplifiers that Howard Dumble actually built and it’s pretty much a Dumble Overdrive Special with the overdrive circuit,” Jeske explained. “So you’re getting just a whiat I assume is a really great sounding clean amplifer with just an absolute load of headroom.”
In the video below, Jeske shows off multiple views of the second Dumble amp on stage as well as other images of the rare piece of equipment in the wild. Denmark Street Guitars posted to their Facebook in June of 2018 that they landed the rare amp and even used #JohnMayer within the hashtags.
Mayer had never used the rare Dumble amp before Dead & Company’s Final Tour. Watch Justin Jeske show off the vintage piece of gear and discuss the amp below:
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