Our Concept.

Magma amplifiers and speaker cabinets are a synthesis of furniture and sound equipment. Beautifully designed and hand built, they nestle elegantly into the interior environment, dispensing the need to keep that black box of doom on view in the home.

The simple, modular design of the pieces allows the musician to have constant access to professional quality amplification, at home in their living room.

We have been conscious of the quality and ethicacy of our materials, checking our birch plywood comes from FSC managed sawmills, cut locally, supporting UK business and making sure all the amplification components are high standard and durable. We hope that the love and care put into the product flows through, erupting when you plug in and play.

How It Began.

The original seeds of Magma were planted ten years ago as a set of experimental speaker cabinets, built, out of hours, in a furniture workshop on the back streets of East London. Over time, we made a conscious decision to work out a valve amplifier that would compliment all the aspects of the design, process and aesthetics. From this incubation, the concept and design hasn’t really shifted, however the brand and the products have grown to a neat package before the company officially launched in 2021. There is a subtle elegance that we’d not really ever seen in this industry before, so we decided to bring it. 

We had this idea of keeping it clean and minimalistic from the beginning, with limited branding. We’ve tried to let the design and aesthetics speak for themselves. Then use the amp and sound as an actual audible voice of the company. If we can set a rig up in a room and someone says ‘I want that, my partner will love you’ then we’ve done the job. It’s the reaction that is the most exciting thing, seeing people's appreciation for something different, unique and cool. 

The single channel clean tone approach for the Flow and Overflow was developed as an operating platform for pedals. We knew getting the foundation spot on was important to lay down the initial tone and starting point for folk to grow their own sound from. This is why we chose to create the amps tone as good as possible in both quality and performance. 

Who We Are.

Magma Amplification hand build bespoke made to order guitar valve amplifiers and speaker cabinets in a small workshop surrounded by countryside just on the outskirts of Bristol UK. We are a two person team who first met twenty years ago at design college. Both of us have shared style and taste in music, design, aesthetics and many other aspects of our lives, so the original concept just fell into place neatly.

John Szmidt - After playing in several bands as a professional bassist for over fifteen years, John decided to take a break and took a long one man cycling journey around the South of the UK. He ended up in Bristol where he took residence and started a career in the construction and carpentry industry. Over the years working for multiple companies it has ended in him becoming a self employed designer and carpenter out of his own workshop. He generally works on the laser cutting design aesthetics and construction/finishing components of the company.

Ben Baker - After playing in one band non professionally, working in the furniture industry as a designer/maker, Ben took up production management roles in various plywood related CNC and digital manufacturing companies. Learning to implement lean principles and efficient methods of production, using the theory of constraints, along the way. After initially designing and making the first cabinets 10 years ago and setting up Magma with John, he mainly works on design/engineering the carcasses and assembly processes, along with new materials research.

Left To Right. John. Ben.