We recently connected with Andres “Beto” Delgado and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Andres “Beto” , thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

From 2002 I was able to make a living and raise a family doing one of the things I love the most: to create a personal guitar sound and helping others to develop their own. I am absolutely self-taught and at the beginning it was a personal quest that was growing step by step. My goal was to find the best possible guitar sound and to achieve that, the only way was to build my own equipment. Through time that process grew up to a point that some fellow musicians started to ask for my services.

The most important milestone I achieved was to reach a high quality sound that can rival with any other amp brand in the world.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

1. Everything started from my love for music. At the beginning of the 90’s in Colombia, my country of origin, I felt interested on playing the electric guitar, and through time, I started to play on local bands and on my local church. At that time I discovered that depending on the quality of the available amplifiers, my playing style would be more inspiring or dimmed. The best the amplifier sound, the more pleasant the playing feeling. And I started to feel that everything in my music was on my control. I discovered that when I started to play with a vintage 65’ Fender Amp. After a while I sold that amplifier and started to look for a more powerful one and then I realized that I’d made a huge mistake. The amps that I bought were more powerful, but didn’t have the playing feeling and sound quality of that old Fender. At that time I started some basic studies on electronics. I had two choices: to buy another vintage Fender (something really difficult in my country at that time) or to jump into the task to build my own amp with the sound I had in my head.

2. I provide my clients with guitar amplifiers with a high quality and inspiring sound with sturdy construction with long-lasting durability (at the level of the equipment made in the Golden Era of audio). I can say that I’m the best amp builder in my country and one at the top in Latin America.

3. The thing I’m most proud of is that I think that I’m a good guitar player. And as an amp builder I’m proud about my amplifiers, because they offer and audio quality, versatility and durability at the level of the elite brands, but at a fraction of the price.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is to see the achieved goals. After long days of research, experimenting and living hard moments in the search of a special sounding amp, the most pleasant is to see that the results go beyond my own expectations, and that those results are at the level and sometimes are better that the other great brands.

Is there a mission driving your creative journey?

To build inspiring sounding amps to help others to make inspiring music.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.magmaamps.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/magma_amps/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MagmaCustomAmplification/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1DGswl_6QAufs16pcccpQg/featured

Image Credits
All images are of my own.