4.52am Issue: 006 30th October 2016

MOTION CUSTOM WORKS
3G8B1
I love Andrew Pih’s approach to his Motion
Custom Works’ amps, there is just no
compromise whatsoever on any level. He is
humble and modest about the ridiculous
quality of his amps, but it is easy to see that
there is a steel inside that means that
nothing will get in the way of him producing
you the best amp you could possibly want.
I asked about how he goes about designing
an amp,
“I always start with a record; I have many
great guitar sounds stored in my head that
excite me...I try and build to that. I mean,
all guitarists / musicians are fans of music,
some of them hear the whole thing, the
song, chords, harmonic interplay and
production value...some of them dissect
music into individual sounds and separate
the rhythm guitar from the lead from the
bass from the vocals and so on. Well this is
where I start. It often ruins my appreciation
of the art and means I will dismiss some
great songs because the guitars sound
wrong (to me).
I start with the output section, mating the
right valves to the right spec output
transformer and speaker is key to a great
sounding and feeling amp. Then I'll move
onto the tone stack, this is where a bulk of
my testing time is lost, it can take weeks of
tweaking and revising it before an amp hits
the sweet spot but it has, on one occasion,
worked straight out of the box, the
3G8C1....it just happened and it sounded
exactly how I imagined it would.”
But how does he maintain the quality of
his amps, when there are so many
aspects to their manufacture?
“I try to be in control of as much as I can.
The cabinets were designed by me and
built by my father in law, a 75-year-old
master carpenter. Call it fortune, call it
destiny...he has a fully functioning wood
workshop at the bottom of his garden. He
is from a generation before power tools,
before jigs and ready-made, easy fit, one
size fits all manufacturing.
He's incredibly patient with me, he
makes, remakes and re-remakes newly
designed cabinets until I'm happy with
the build methods and most importantly
the sound, he brings knowledge and
experience that being 75 years old can
only bring.
I do all the metal chassis design myself
too and use a local family owned
fabrication company to do all the folding,
punching, plating etc.
I do all the cabinet covering myself, I wire
and assemble the turret boards too. I'm a
bit of a control freak, I don't think I could
relax enough to trust anyone with any
other part of the build.