The Tym "FAMP" guitar combo

That's right folks, sleepless nights and stupid discussions with friends that usually start out like "imagine if you could ...... " has come up with this idea. My unhealthy obsession with making things that other people would laugh at has bought it to life. Are you sick of dragging around great big, heavy amps to practice ? Sick of packing your amp carefully in the back of your car and dragging it out when you get home ? Well ........... as far as I know this is THE FIRST time anyone has been silly enough to try this.

This is the prototype of the new Tym amp made for practice and/or touring. Completely self contained once locked up with nothing to catch or break off and ....... this amp CAB is made out of high density foam, yeah, you heard right.
It's a 50W guitar combo, with 60W 12" speaker IN A HIGH DENSITY FOAM CABINET and it weighs under 9 KG. My 2 year old can pick it up.

Once the amp is closed up after using there is nothing exposed. No protruding handles, latches, knobs, jacks, switches etc to break off. You open the back to play it. You close it and lock it and throw it on a plane, in the back of a ute ........... whatever, and nothing breaks. It bounces around 'cause IT'S MADE OF FOAM.

The amp is the Tym 50W solid state with Tym designed and hand made preamp stage and PCB 50W power stage. It's essentially the same amp we built recently for Tone from GuitarNerd. We were fascinated by the EH Freedom amp and built a Tym version in an old Goldentone cabinet. When I showed Tone this FAMP version, his response was "OK, NOW YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR!" It could have been lighter but I refuse to use switch mode power supplies in my amps. They just don't have the bottom end and sound any good so this has a "proper" toroidal transformer with plenty of headroom which adds to the weight, but delivers better tone.

The cab had to be light and "damage proof" because we didn't want to use tolex or hard cases to save on weight, so, after talking to my good friend Naut from Naut cases who works in foam and has a CNC machine, the cabinet was born. The foam is then coated in a thick, waterproof "skin" as used on PA and some speaker cabinets to protect it and stop it tearing. Metal corners aren't needed because if you drop it, it just bounces. There are no exposed handles and the grill cloth has security mesh between it and the speaker so you can't damage the speaker. You can stand on it and it's fine. You could kick it down the street (Tym guitars does not endorse or recommend kicking an amp down the street), and it will still work.

It really does sound great, especially with a boost or fuzz in front of it and we're already working on a 100W version that will be the same size and only about 1/2 KG heavier.

Great for practice, touring, playing live, using as a footstool (Dave) ......... whatever. Did I mention it's made of foam and it's less than 9 KG's !!