Phil Bradbury, of West End, paid his way through college partly by playing lead guitar in a band,
and he dreamed of making a name for himself in music. After graduation, though, that dream took a back seat to providing for his family, and he wound up working in the lucrative but demanding, and often dangerous, coal industry in eastern Kentucky.
By the early 1980s, through a combination of determination, vision and the serendipity that seems to constantly surround him, Bradbury was shifting gears. A self-taught computer programmer, he got his first copyright around 1982 and established a software company, Bradbury and Associates, when personal computers were almost unheard of. Even getting a business loan for such an unfamiliar entity was nearly impossible, but he persevered and went on to sell and develop software for Fortune 500 companies.
"He just has a driven soul,"says Carol Bradbury, his wife of 32 years. Over the decades, the software company flourished and Bradbury pursued an array of interests aside from his day job. Among other things, he built and rode custom motorcycles, raced vintage and historic cars, wrote for a national racing magazine, got his contractor's license, and had a minor role in a "B" movie. Above all, his passion for music, specifically playing guitar, never waned. "I couldn't stay away from it," he says. Bradbury had a collection of old American-made amplifiers, which, until the 1940s and '50s, were made with octal, or eight-pin, vacuum tubes. As technology progressed, these were replaced with smaller and more efficient nine-pin tubes and then transistors.
The result, Bradbury believes, is modern amplifiers that are "loud and powerful but lack the sweet, beautiful tone old amps used to have." He decided he needed to resurrect the old octal tubes. A natural creator and tinkerer, Bradbury bought resource books and got to work, building first a 15-watt amp, then a 30-watt one, starting with blank chassis and doing all the drilling and wiring by hand. "I could not believe how beautiful the resulting tone was," he says. His musician friends agreed, telling him, "You have got to build and sell these."
Having built four amps, he and Carol decided to go to the 2009 New York Amp Show, where a writer for Guitar Player magazine wandered into his room, tested the amps and loved them. Meanwhile, someone from Premier Guitar magazine happened by, said he hadn't heard sound like that since the '50s, and made a nine-minute video featuring Bradbury and his Little Walter amps. (That video is still available on YouTube.)
One of Bradbury's underlying principles is that the shortest signal path equates to the purest possible tone; his amps are streamlined accordingly, with one volume control and one tone control.
"I'm CEO of a software company, so I love technology," he says. "But I believe you can overdo it in certain things. Newer is not always better." Bradbury doesn't claim total credit for designing his amplifiers, and says he is simply trying to improve upon a foundation laid by Leo Fender, an American inventor whose guitar, bass and
amplifier designs from the 1940s still "dominate" popular music. But, he adds, he does have a few secrets of his own, which he chooses not to reveal. Bradbury believes the amplifier is just as important to the sound as the guitar is, and some pretty big names think he's right. His current customer base includes country-music star Vince Gill; Kerry Marx, a staff guitarist with the Grand Ole Opry; and prominent session guitarists Reggie Young, Brent Mason and Robbie Calvo. Calvo met Bradbury at the 2009 Nashville Amp Show, where he played with Bradbury's flagship 30-watt octal tube amp. He was "just blown away by the quality, clarity and transparency of the tone," he says. "You can hear around every note being played. No other amp replicates the
tone of your soul, fingers and guitar like the Little Walter amps - no coloration whatsoever, just pure liquid tone." Bradbury, now 56, hasn't given up on his dream of touring as a musician. But in many ways, he's already living a dream: playing impromptu jam sessions with world-renowned guitarists like Young, attending birthday parties for celebrities like Naomi Judd, bonding with AC/DC lead singer Brian Johnson over a shared passion for racing. Last year Bradbury released his own album, with songs he wrote and recorded in his home studio.
"Every day I get up and look forward to the day," he says, "because you never know what's coming down the pike."
Jennifer Kirby is a local freelance writer.
