Maybe you can’t play like Dimebag Darrell (then again, who can), but you sure as hell sound like him — and on a transistor practice amp no less. Over the past two years, Dime’s longtime guitar tech Grady Champion has worked with Dime’s widow Rita Haney and Warhead amplification to design a dead-ringer amp tone for Dime’s Randall Warhead amps from the early 2000s. The result is the Warhead 40-watt mini-amp, which delivers Dimebag’s signature scooped crunch with plenty of attitude.
Originally built for a 300-piece run, the limited edition, which featured a Dime-Slime metal grill and a glow-in-the-dark logo, quickly sold out. Now, due to overwhelming demand, Warhead had manufactured the standard BLACK Edition of the amp, which is now available for pre-order for $529.99. Shipping starts in November. Click here, to link to purchase site.
The Warhead Mini Guitar Amp: BLACK Edition delivers the same sound and craftsmanship as the original Randall, wrapped in a sleek, all-black design. The Warhead is a 40-watt, single-channel, solid-state power amp crafted with direct input from the folks that made Dime’s amps sound so fierce and magical. While players can modify the settings to their hearts content, the amp come with the same pre-eq circuits and exact settings to deliver that pure, unfiltered Dimebag tone.
To hit all the right notes, Grady and Rita teamed up with David Karon, who worked with Dime at Randall more than two decades ago. Now running his own audio company, David and his long time engineering partner Antonin Salva created the revamped Warhead brand, a heartfelt dedication to the Dimebag’s powerful tone. The prototype went through several iterations before the final design was approved. Then, the Warhead was rigorously tested. It was even used during Pantera’s reunion rehearsals to ensure it lived up to its name.
Check out Grady’s Warhead video below:
