"People don't care about technology per se, they want solutions to their problems," Muench said. "For us, it's a simple thing like putting knobs on products instead of menu pages and LED displays. It's the real simple things that people are more comfortable with."
Line6 has endorsements from a stable of more than 50 music celebrities--among them country legend Clint Black and Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx--to help reach its primary target market: millions of hard-core guitar enthusiasts among an estimated 18 million U.S. guitar players.
Muench said his typical customer is 30- to 40-year-old male with an above-average income who plays, either with a band or on his own, at least two or three times a month.
Line6's 130-member work force--including engineers, research and manufacturing workers at its Woodland Hills plant--produces modeling amplifiers with various features, priced from $399 to $999. The company's $299 POD non-amplifying modeling device, which resembles an oversized video game control module, allows a player to input directly into a recording device without an amplifier. Those categories account for at least 80% of company sales.
Line6 also markets a line of $249 effects pedals to create delays, fuzz and distortions, and its $500 software product, called Amp Farm, duplicates tones from a specific series of classic old amplifiers. Line6 also has rolled out a line of software products that lets customers upgrade their products via the Web.
Digital modeling technology has spread rapidly through the music industry. Guitar Player magazine last December reviewed five modeling products. In addition to Line6 and Yamaha, other manufacturers represented in the review were Johnson Amplification of Sandy, Utah; Rocktron of Rochester Hills, Mich., and Crate, a division of St. Louis Music.
Acknowledging the versatility of digital modeling, Guitar Player nonetheless pointed out a few shortcomings in the new technology, notably an audible hiss--Yamaha is an exception to that--and an inability to slice through rhythm and bass as readily as do vintage amplifiers using vacuum tubes.
Which brings up one of the major hurdles facing the makers of high-tech digital modeling amplifiers.
"There are people who will never give up their tubes," says Zirngiebel.
"Maybe in 100 years, tube amps will be in museums," he said. "But there will still be those great old sounds, and they'll all be on little chips."
