I received an email recently from a customer who just purchased their first Ampendage amp stand. He said that as soon as he tried his amp on the new stand it sounded clearer than before. This is fairly common, just getting the amp off the floor can improve the sound dramatically. What was unusual this time was that he had previously been using an Auralex Gramma Isolation Riser under his amp. The Auralex is specifically designed to improve the clarity of the sound, but this user found that the Ampendage “clearly gave me more defined bass and cleared mud up from closed position chords down at the third fret giving more note to note definition :-)”
I don’t think it’s a secret that the Ampendage was designed primarily for looks, but there are a few good reasons why it is adept at clarifying your sound. The main cause of a muddy sound is usually low frequency waves vibrating other objects in the room, most commonly the floor. The Ampendage has rubber pads on the top and rubber feet on the bottom that help absorb unwanted vibrations. The shape of the stand (wide top and base, narrow legs) also prevents the transmission of waves to the floor. (Objects with widely varying cross sections tend to dampen resonance – I learned this at engineering school yeeeears ago.) But the biggest difference is likely the simple fact that the Ampendage raises the amp about a foot off the floor. This is a much wider gap than the Auralex provides and therefor will have a bigger impact on the long, low frequency waves that are the bass notes.
Certainly improving your guitar sound was a consideration in the design, but analyzing it now, I see we’d have to go to great lengths to get better sound isolation than the Ampendage already provides. It may have been partly by accident, but it looks like the Ampendage hits a home run when it comes to sound quality!
Kevin
