Boutique amplifiers

Boutique amplifiers are a type of guitar amplifier that is hand built with the intention of being much better than the mass-produced variety offered by large companies. In the majority of cases, this is reflected in the price. Sometimes they are "clones" of older designs, often with minor improvements in layout or circuit design. Sometimes they are new designs altogether. A common claim made is that they feature better parts than ever appeared in any commercially available amplifier, and use vacuum tubes as the primary means of processing sound. In all actuality most boutique designs use the same components used by the large manufacturers in bygone eras that were abandoned in favor of minimizing manufacturing costs.

As a response to the many boutique builders, large companies have released reissues of their classic designs, touting their faithfulness to the original sound and the labor intensive building process. Terms like "hand wired" and "point to point" wiring abound. Regardless of whether an amplifier uses point-to-point or turret board or any other means of circuit board assembly, the term "point-to-point" has evidently been chosen as the default term to refer to all wiring methods. This has resulted in some confusion over their meaning.