We were lucky to catch up with Jake Copeland Aaron Allred recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jake Copeland thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Being longtime friends and musicians, both of us stayed fairly up-to-date on the latest trends with professional guitar gear. We have both always had a passion for professional music and how to achieve top-quality sound. In the last decade, we had both noticed the growing trend of guitar players switching from big and heavy tube amplifiers to devices like the Kemper Profiling Amp, the Line 6 Helix, or more recently, the Quad Cortex; all of which are devices that are designed to replace a guitar players amplifier but still maintain the tonal integrity that guitar players have sought after from tube amps for the last 70 years or so. I (Jake) had made the jump to using a Kemper for many years long before Aaron was ever on board with a digital amp solution. He is a bit of a purist. However, after hearing the accuracy of the device compared to real tube amps, Aaron slowly started to come around. Then the lightbulb day happened on a slow weekend when the world was shut down during the pandemic. I (Jake) went over to Aaron’s house for the weekend because we wanted to try our hand at creating our own sounds for the Kemper. While we were learning the creation process we became a little frustrated with the hurdles involved with finding a good amp sound on the user end. That’s when it happened. Lightbulb! We had spent many years as what people would consider to be professional musicians and we weren’t amatures by any means when it came to creating guitar tones. So we knew that other guitar players likely felt the same frustrations while searching for usable sounds. We thought to ourselves “What if we started a company that created professional guitar amp sounds but combined it with a mindset of simplicity for the user experience?” and we were off! We knew we had to have a few things out of our company if we were going to be successful. First, the company had to look good. These days, especially with online-based businesses, optics are very important. We knew we had to have a professional image from top to bottom in order to stand out amongst the competition. Second, we knew our product had to actually be good. We knew we would have to spend the time and effort to create great-sounding products that people would love to play. And finally, we knew we had to be different which meant we had to be simple. Instead of offering users hundreds upon hundreds of sounds from one single amp, we decided to only capture the sound that an amp was best at. We sought to have every single file from one of our packs be extremely easy to use but also be of the utmost quality. For us, it was all about getting the guitar player out of the endless loop of tone searching and back to doing what we all love, and that’s simply playing guitar and sounding great while doing it!
Jake Copeland, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Jake and I (Aaron) have played music together for many years whether in houses of worship or local bands. The partnership was obvious once we hatched the idea for Alter. At its core, Alter Amp Works is an amp profiling company. Profiling is a process made possible using a device called a Kemper Profiling Amp. It is, simply put, a guitar amp modeler. This device is able to create digital replicas of amps using some test signals and a mic’d up speaker cabinet. This effectively can put every vintage, rare, or boutique amp in the hands of players who otherwise could not afford them or want the hassle of a traditional tube amp simply by loading in one of these files on the device. We are able to put multiple of these sounds from one amp into a pack of files and sell them as a 3rd party. As of 2023, there are now other alternatives to the Kemper that perform the same digitization process and we work with a few. For us, the problem in this market was simple. it was difficult to find a 3rd party profile pack that was easy to use and of professional quality. This complicates the end user’s experience when trying to find the right tone in a pack that they’ve purchased. We sought to eliminate all of this by only taking the absolute best sounds that the Kemper made and creating more condensed packs, effectively eliminating the frustrating cycle of tone searching for the player.
On top of this, we felt as though the aesthetic for a 3rd party profile provider could be elevated to look more professional whether that be high-quality website photos, audio demos of our products, or a more intuitive website.
For us, we are most proud of the supportive customer base that has followed us. We’ve had customers, most of whom we’ve never met and live across the country, send us their guitar gear to create products with. It is humbling, to say the least, that guitar players in this community appreciate what we’re trying to do.
How’d you meet your business partner?
We have known each other since high school. We were first introduced by mutual musician friends through an audition process. I (Jake) was part of a local band and our drummer had recently left. Our keys player had known Aaron through his church because Aaron had filled in as a drummer for their church a few times and encouraged me to give him a shot to audition. I (Jake) decided to contact Aaron and we drove over to his house that day for one of the most on-the-fly auditions I think either one of us had ever seen! We met Aaron at the door, followed him to his drum room, played a little bit of music together, and that was it! He was in the band and we were friends from that point forward! The next few years saw us traveling together across the U.S., recording music together, and just becoming friends. Even after our band ended, we always stayed in contact and played together for various gigs whether at houses of worship, pro gigs, or just for fun. We became trusted musical confidants and friends along the way. It was always a very natural progression to the point where we were both present at each other’s weddings even before Alter existed. Then when the opportunity presented itself to both of us to open a business together, it just made sense. There was no question for either of us if we should have gone into business with someone else. Through our many years of friendship, we knew that we worked well together and we were confident in each other’s professional abilities. Nothing was forced and it just felt right.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I think this all starts with our company’s aesthetic. We feel as though nearly anyone who would come across our website would be inclined to agree that it looks professional and easy to navigate. This carries over to our presence on social media which has been a huge driver of customers. We have from the start pushed heavily on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. We have become rather involved with various forums for these digital amp devices on Facebook. I think our customer base plays the largest role in building us up. The opinions of these forum members have a heavy influence on whether you float or sink in this business. We have customers of ours who take valuable time out of their day to post about enjoying our product. The guitar community, while large, knows a lot of the same companies and manufacturers, so word of a good or bad company travels quickly. Our business is all based online, so any thoughts or opinions of our customers are nearly the sole source of building our reputation. We also strive to create a genuine connection with our customers through customer service. We always strive to be timely and thoughtful with our responses when a customer reaches out. At the end of the day, we set out to help players and develop meaningful relationships with players around the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alterampworks.com
- Instagram: @alterampworks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alterampworks/