[crawdad]

Heres my take, one piece at a time.

I think it all began with Mesa Boogie. They took a stock Fender amp and tricked it out. A new style of cascaded gain stage amps was introduced. I don't know if they were the first to do this, but the design caught on and was high profile. Dumble followed a somewhat similar path too.

Amp techs noticed and began to offer these mods to customers.

Then, Kendrick amps came out--which kicked off the whole boutique amp trend. Gerald Weber began writing books and articles about amp repair and modification--stuff like how to convert Silverface Fenders to Blackface specs. Certain companies, who shall remain nameless, began selling amp mods. More books came out and the internet was hosting more and more information about tube circuits, building, mods, etc.

Companies sprouted up that began selling chassis and components to build complete amps, as well as complete kits.

In the end, we had many choices. Some might say too many choices--while others may welcome them. Fierce Carrot ended up with a Trainwreck clone, which he doesn't want to mod, yet he DID mod it at build by adding PPIMV and a power reduction switch (cool to me!). Such things were non-existent in the Blackface era. Not to mention that Ken Fischer was on the cutting edge of amp building--the total other end of Fender's philosophy of build them simple and sturdy (well, the old days anyway...)

I guess I'd say that once the genie is out of the bottle, its out for good. Whether a particular mod to an amp makes it better is an interesting but different discussion.