Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan teams up with Carstens Amplification for “game-changer” signature amp

Smashing Pumpkins’ 11th studio album, Cyr, is released today, but that’s not the only new Pumpkins product on tap.

Carstens Amplification has unveiled the Grace, a brand-new signature guitar amp for head Pumpkin Billy Corgan.

Built by Brian Carstens, a longtime amp technician for the band, the aim with the Grace was to design an amplifier with an “unheard of amount of gain, high headroom and distinct tone.”

The hand-wired 100-watt single channel head features four EL34 power amp tubes and four 12AX7 tubes in the preamp section.

Front panel controls are volume, bass, middle, treble, master volume and presence, and there’s also specially designed hand-wound Mercury Magnetics transformers, premium capacitors and a Mercury Magnetics hard-wired power cord.

The Grace boasts a powder coated/silk screened, high-quality aluminum chassis and is available in a choice of black, red or cream vinyl for $3,499.

Only 50 will be produced, with each amp signed by Corgan. 

For more information on the amp Billy has called a “game-changer,” head to Carstens Amplification.

Richard Bienstock

Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.