Tech 21

Barta was a working musician with an electronics background whose day job was repairing, modifying and customising amplifiers. He first tried to sell his amp-emulation idea to established manufacturers, and when none took it up, he launched the SansAmp under his own company instead.

The SansAmp, whose name comes from the French for "without an amp", let players record or play through a mixer or PA with amp-like tone straight from a pedal, and it became popular through the 1990s. It grew into a full line, including the SansAmp Bass Driver (1992), the GT2 and PSA (1993) and the RBI (2001), followed by the Fly Rig series, amplifiers with SansAmp circuitry built in, and signature gear for players such as Geddy Lee, Richie Kotzen and Steve Harris.

Unlike most later amp modellers, Tech 21 has stayed with analogue circuitry rather than digital signal processing, and several of its designs have stayed in production with few or no changes for decades.