Tommy Thayer

In this Premier Guitar video interview, Tommy Thayer talks about his signature amp at 1:40, saying, “This is the Hughes & Kettner Tommy Thayer signature Duotone. I've done this amp for about eight years now. Hughes & Kettner has done a fine job. They've been a great supporter. Obviously, I love the amp a lot, because I'm still playing it eight years later. I haven't replaced it with something else.” He goes on to say, “But these are great. It's something sweet and really robust, but very ballsy about the way these sound. I'm really, really happy. It's a two-channel amp. I mainly use the Overdrive channel. …No effects, actually. Occasionally I might put an effect into a loop. We were doing "Christine Sixteen" recently, so I had an octave divider that my tech manually operated for me during the guitar solo because there was an octave effect on the guitar solo. Other than that, very little or no effects. That's always been more my philosophy. It's about keeping it really simple and right down to the pure, basic essence of what I'm doing. These are great amps... All the royalties that I make on these amps, I donate directly to the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, which is a charitable cause I really believe in. Children's health and all that sort of thing are really important. That's worked out good. I've been able to give them the royalties and so everybody's happy.”

Tommy Thayer runs his amplifiers through 4x12 Engl speaker cabinets. At (2:47), Thayer says, “We have these Kiss custom cabinets. They are 4x12s, much like a Marshall. Actually now on this tour, before I started the tour I did some AB-ing. I'm actually using a couple of Engl cabinets up there right now. Don't tell the guys in Hughes & Kettner... We have a guy on our crew, he's actually my guitar tech, a former guitar tech, he works with Engl, and he convinced me that it has a nice sound. And we AB'd them and it did sound good.”

The Grandmeister is listed as one of Tommy Thayer's amps on the Hughes & Kettner artist page for Tommy Thayer