Silktone founder Charles Henry says his musical ear is responsible for the success of his hand-buit high-end tube amps.
“The most important thing is the musicality – the way it makes you feel and the way it resonates with you,” he says. “I leaned into that and people were kind of blown away by it. It’s been snowballing since then.”
In 2024 Joe Perry told Guitar World that Henry’s products are great amps to use with pedals adding, “If you can get your hands on a Silktone, it’s a great piece for your arsenal.” Grace Bowers and Yvette Young soon added their own seals of approval.
“Charles Henry is the best,” Young said. “I’ll hype him forever. He’s an outstanding person. Those amps really sound so smooth, and I feel like they just make me play better.”
Guitar World asked Henry about his amplifier success over the past few years after he’d started out as a cable manufacturer.
What sparked your interest in tube amps?
“I got this weird obsession with audio when I was 19. I popped into a hifi store to get a new turntable cartridge, and I heard a tube amp for the first time – a big old stereo with nice speakers. I was like, ‘Holy crap, I had no idea stuff could sound this good.’ With the fancy speakers it cost $150,000, so I was like, ‘Whoa, can’t do that!’
“I kept going in and listening to records, and they ended up selling me a cheap little tube amp from the ’80s. I hooked it up to my speakers and it sounded nothing close to what had been going on in the store. I got curious as to why, started tweaking it, and ended up teaching myself to mod amps.
“Once I got good at it, it was boring – the end result was always the same. I started applying it to guitar, and that was way more fun. The first amp I built really sucked because I built it like a hifi amp; it was so lifeless and dead. There was a lot of detail but it had no energy or flow.”
“I got into the nuance of it, like vintage design, and almost making mistakes on purpose, like doing a power supply that doesn’t suit the amplification stage, so you could get weird compression and distortion.”
Did you have established vintage designs in mind?
“I was definitely inspired by other, mostly vintage, amps – not really modern amps. The ’60s Fender stuff was huge. A lot of the preamp designs I’ve studied have a lot of Fender DNA. Then I fell in love with vintage Marshall JTM45s that used the KT66 tubes.”
Is it difficult to make headway selling tube amps at a time when modelers and solid-state amps are king?
“Not at all. A lot of people freak out about that, but I see them as completely different things. A lot fewer people are going to use an everyday tube amp.
“That’s a risk to the tube amp market because fewer people will buy budget Fender tube amps. But when you get into the niche category, my market is for a discerning ear and someone who wants the best.”
Joe Perry was like, ‘This is the tone I’ve been searching for my whole life. I want more!’
Joe Perry has recently championed Silktone.
“Joe is so cool. His tech ordered an amp and I sent him one, put my phone number in, and didn’t even think about it. Months later, I got a long text message praising the amp and talking about tone. I’m like, ‘Holy crap… I think this is Joe Perry!’
“He loves the Micronaut. It’s just a little 4-watt head, but he was like, ‘This is the tone I’ve been searching for my whole life. I want more!’ He wanted a Micronaut, but a super-beefed-up one; 15 or 20-watt, but without changing the tone. I’m working on that for him now.”
How did you get in touch with Grace Bowers?
“We started talking online. Silktone actually started about two blocks away from where she started playing guitar in California. I pitched Silktone to the first guitar shop she bought a guitar from. We didn’t know it at the time! But yeah, something resonated. I was like, ‘Man, I’d love to get some stuff in front of you.’
“She fell in love with it and she’s commissioned a big 100-watt amp. It’ll be the first high-powered thing I’ve done. I’ve been waiting for someone to want one, and I have a lot of new, unique ideas that I want to do on that front.”
Yvette’s been a huge advocate… it’s cool to see one of the best players of the modern day do that
Yvette Young, known for using Vox amps, recently shouted Silktone out.
“She’s probably the coolest person I’ve ever met. We’ve become really good friends – she’s just really genuine, and she’s an absolutely amazing guitar player. We met at a show where I gave her a fuzz pedal, and she was blown away by it.
“Next time she rolled through town she was like, ‘I want to check out an amp.’ She loved it, and now she has a few of them. She just shot a demo for me; a little impromptu thing for when I was releasing the new Echonaut. She’s been a huge advocate for Silktone. It’s really cool to see one of the best guitar players of the modern day do that.”
You’ve managed to appeal to a wide range of players, which is tough. Where does Silktone go from here?
“I’ll keep going forward ’til it’s not fun anymore! I’ve got a bunch of amps planned and a lot of ideas I want to visit. I wish I could do them all at once, but I’ve kind of learned from each one on the go.
“The latest is the Echonaut, which is based on the one Joe Perry loves, the Micronaut. A lot of people wanted that as a combo. So I took the Micronaut, doubled the power, and made it an 8-watt amp with a really cool spring reverb.
“I really wanted to get the reverb out of the simplest circuit possible. I’ve heard a lot of single-tube reverb amps; but I’m trying to meet a price point, trying to keep labor down, and be mindful of that.
“It’s my favorite amp that I’ve ever made. The other amps do more, but this thing is so much fun with the crazy tones you can get out of it.”
- For more information, head to Silktone.
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