Maybe you’ve seen the blue “Analog Outfitters” sign on the building at 514 N. Neil St. Maybe you noticed a few vintage instruments in the window a while back (before they closed down the retail section of the store). Maybe you play guitar and have heard (or read online) some of the buzz about Analog Outfitters.
Odds are, Analog Outfitters is a foreign idea to you. At least that’s how the company’s owner and founder Ben Juday sees it.
“No one in town knows we’re here,” he says with a chuckle. “I always say we’re the weird guys by the post office.”
Even though many people in Champaign may not know about AO, they’ve been churning out some great stuff in their workshop a block south of the Neil post office branch. And their amplifiers, cabinets, and midi controllers are stunning both visually and aurally, and finding fans across the globe.
The idea for AO might not have happened if it weren’t for one particular physics class Ben Juday took taught by professor Steve Errede. Juday came to the University of Illinois in 1999 to attend graduate school focusing on geography. After taking Errede’s class on the physics of electronic instruments, however, Juday’s career path was altered.
Juday, who looks more like he was destined for a career in geology, with his scruffy beard, cargo shorts, hiking boots and tall socks, finished his master’s at the U of I and then went into organ repair. While fixing organs for individuals and churches he would often be offered a less desirable organ if he would simply haul it away. Not wanting to see instruments made with such care discarded, Juday began to take on ograns and save their raw materials.
“I felt it was too much of a shame to lose those quality materials in them. I started hesitantly collecting them years ago thinking I’d find a use for them. I basically became completely overrun,” he said. “Then one day I was just bored and said, ‘I’m gonna make a guitar amp.’”
Using parts from old Hammond organs, a street sign, and an enclosure previously used to hold scientific equipment, Juday stumbled upon a winning combination of parts that sounded great and fit together perfectly. He tinkered with the amplifier (though still keeping it simple) until he came up with a product he felt was worth sharing.
The amp he created was the model now called the “Sarge.” Its combination of transformers and vintage vacuum tubes provided a great array of tones recalling the early Fender models. When a few shops in Nashville showed interest, Juday knew he was on to something and AO was off and running.
Juday has a rabidly creative mind and quickly went to work creating more things for his fledgling company to sell. Branching out from simply using the chassis and electronics from old organs, Juday started cutting down the wood from the organs (including redwood, which is no longer available for purchase) to make the ORGANic line, a series of strikingly beautiful cabinets for amplifiers and speakers. More recently, AO has repurposed street signs from municipal auctions as enclosures for amplifiers, resulting the appropriately named Road Amp series.
Finding the raw materials has never been a cakewalk for Juday, but it is something he seems to enjoy. Especially since repurposing those items allows him to flex his creative muscle.
“We get organs on Craigslist some times, and other organ dealers have large volumes of obsolete organs like we do and will send us parts,” he said. “We go to government surplus auctions, where we get scientific equipment, and we go on ebay. It takes some energy to find this stuff, but it’s super-high quality.”
The effort put in to finding material has paid off, as much of the second floor of AO’s headquarters on Neil street is a repository for organs, signs, and scientific equipment.
“It was hoarding until I had something to do with it,” Juday joked.
Those goods don’t linger long without becoming something else, however, as AO has seen their stock rising. There are now 14 retailers stocking AO gear in America, the most recent being Champaign’s newest guitar shop, Upper Bout, as well as one retailer in London and one in Hong Kong. The growth has come as a direct result of the quality of the gear.
AO will turn three years old in November, but already their gear is receiving praise alongside brands much more established and hallowed in the annals of music history. Likewise, AO gear is earning its own place in music history because of its quality.
The list of artists using AO amplifiers is fairly astounding, including members of Bob Dylan’s Band, Nels Cline of Wilco, Pearl Jam, and ZZ Top. That sample is pretty staggering, but it neglects to mention one Mr. Jack White, who played an AO amp on his album Lazaretto, which debuted at number one, selling 138,000 copies in its first week (including 40,000 vinyl copies, the best opening week for a vinyl record since 1991).
Success is unlikely to drive AO from its location on Neil Street, however. Though many players in Nashville, like Jack White, are using AO amps, Juday is comfortable building his company in C-U.
“Champaign is a great place to be located. Its not very expensive as far as finding space, and for all of our dealers we just load up a pallet or boxes and ship it to them and they put it in their store or online. Champaign is just as easy as anywhere else. We don’t need to be in a big city, this works just fine,” he said.
So Juday and his band of pirates will keep tearing down old organs to make guitar amplifiers right here in C-U. Maybe the town will get to know AO a little better the longer they’re here. If not, Juday seems pretty content to keep doing what he’s doing, to paraphrase him, “Taking what used to be in grandma’s living room and kicking it up for rock ‘n’ roll.”
Photos courtesy of North Joffe.