How do I get a Trainwreck Amp?
Once in a blue moon they show up on eBay. There are only about one hundred of them so they are hard to find.
How much do they cost?
An Express sold for $27,000 in June of 2005. A Liverpool sold on eBay for $25,500 (plus $125 shipping) in June of 2007. Offers of $30,000 have been made on Trainwreck Rockets but these offers have never been accepted. Ken may have been the only human in the history of this planet to have built amps that were worth this much even when a particular amp had not been touched by someone famous.Why do they cost so much?
The cost of Trainwreck amps is set by the law of supply and demand. They sound incredible and rarely require service.What makes Trainwreck amps so good?
To start, they are so responsive. You can set up a Trainwreck so that you can control the amount of distortion in your sound with the volume knob but, depending on how much overdrive you like, you can go from gorgeous clean to gorgeous crunch by merely altering your touch.The tone of these amps is incredible but if you don't have tone in your fingers, don't expect a 'wreck to make you sound good. Remember, they are totally responsive. If you have a bad sounding guitar or you put bad sounding tubes in the amp, don't expect it to sound great.
The unprecedented clarity of these amps makes it possible to hear the tonal differences created by your guitar cable, your speaker cable, removing your pick-guard, or whatever. A Trainwreck head will allow you to distinguish the quality of every link in your signal chain. Clarity also means that when the amp is distorting, you can still hear all the nuances of your playing. That Ken made amps with this degree of clarity that still sounded beautiful, even under distortion, was his unique genius.
Trainwreck amps are also built incredibly well, built to last. I know two people who have been playing through them for over twenty years. One person sent it in for service once. The other had an old tube die so he had to replace the tubes and a fuse. That's it.