In the beginning:
From an early age, Tristram shortened to "TRIS" (grandson of Alice Coffin of New England) showed a great deal of interest in music (always banging on everything in the house with his father's drum sticks). Some of his earliest recollections were of his father recording albums at Kearney Barton's Audio Recording in downtown Seattle. He was thrilled by the complexity of speakers and wires and tape machines and with the inner workings of the recording process. About Mahaffay
Due to his father's success in the local Seattle area, Tris was able to learn the "ins and outs" of the music business from the recording process to live performances. However, it wasn't until age 12, after becoming a Southern California resident, that he got serious about it. Starting on the drums, like his father, he was unsuspectingly forced to take up the guitar after losing a coin toss to his best friend, Steve. Steve wanted to play drums (and already could) ...so he did.
Tris's first band he was associated with was the worlds first “Oasis” -Ron Anderson, Kevin Jones, Steve Greco, Sean Godknecht . They played everywhere in the young OC. All of these boys had a great influence on his musical history. “Particularly Ron Anderson, the very first time I heard Van Halen , I thought to myself, this guy sounds like Ron. He's ripping off Ron!....Ron could sit down with a bunch of mediocre equipment and make it sound like god! -great ear!
We where only 12 years old!” – Tris He adds…
“Kevin Jones is still in my opinion one of the best hard rock vocalist/guitarist ever. He can be heard on countless recordings and still plays in at least three different bands to this day.
Steve Greco, is still my best friend, his group “Usual Suspects” is main stay in the Orange County show case clubs. He plays drums hard—rock n roll hard!
“Sean Godknecht ventured into sound reinforcement and live recording , he has done his home work in this business, if I ever get a stadium tour he will be the only one I call“ Because of his Tris's interest in sound and electronics, finding daytime work in the exploding Southern California electronics industry was easy. By day, now in his teens, Tris worked as a electronics technician. At night he played in various bands throughout the area - mostly for fun but also with a good sense of how the music business was run. He managed to get local air play on Southern California radio stations, played all the clubs and even sold records through the local record stores. Unpredictably in the 80's, the music business decided to basically eat itself alive with more "show" business then actual "music" business and it was at this time, around the mid to late 80's, when Tris had had enough.
With all the time now available to him, Tris focused on what had become an obsession - tweaking his own amps in a never ending search to get "that sound". Tris spent days, weeks and literally years learning how to make an amp sound like it was going to explode while at the same time perfecting a very stable and extremely reliable circuit. All of Tris's amps and most of his friend's got the reworks for free as long as he could experiment whenever he had an idea.
With the inspiration of the Fender Super Champ, designed by Paul Rivera, Tris decided to try his hand at a product that would satisfy the traveling musician with a small but powerful tube based amp. This would later become the Little Lanilei .
In 1990, Tris founded Songworks (now Mahaffay Amplifiers) Systems and Products - a home based business operated solely to design and test a collection of musical instrument devices that he had in mind to market.
In 1994, Tris joined NAMM and proceeded to walk aisle after aisle of the yearly trade show in Anaheim, CA. With his friend Mike, he set out to find a niche where his knowledge would fit into the market. It was at this time that the first experiments were done on a tiny little tube based amp. From the beginning, it was apparent that there was not an "over the counter" solution for many of the components that were needed. It would take a million phone calls and over two years to finally locate the pieces needed, many completely made by hand - and still are. During this two year search for parts, Tris and Mike had been "throwing out" ideas for the name. Mike, an avid Hawaiian shirt wearer, put together the first image and after shuffling around the alphabet a few times the "Little Lanilei Tube Amp" name was coined.
From the beginning, the thought of a graphic design on the grill front had been planned, but it wasn't until Darcey , a local artist and very close friend, presented the image as it appears today. Armed with her immense creativity in art and knowledge of embroidery and with the help of her perfectionary woodworker husband James, the Little Lanilei tube amp made it's first appearance at the winter NAMM show in 1997 - to rave reviews!
Now, over years in production, the little amp has come a long way. Three new models are available as well as a few other clever devices - such as the "Little Lanilei Rotary Wave Speaker". They are all still hand built one at a time, just like the originals, using the finest components available with point to point construction.
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