Museums, studios & shops
Alligator Amps
- Type
- Guitar and amp shop
- Address
- Avenue des Alpes 48, 1820 Montreux
Alligator Amps sells and repairs electric and acoustic guitars, basses, amps and vintage keyboards, Rhodes included, as well as drums and pedals. The workshop handles adjustments, custom modifications and fine-tuning, alongside a backline rental service for concerts across the region.
The man who loves valves
A passion for tubes turned into a trade
Behind Alligator is Emmanuel Cottier, a Lausanne guitarist based in Montreux. His passion is valve amps from before the digital age, those of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when saturation could only be had by heating up the tubes. “As soon as I bought my first amp, a Fender Blues Junior, I rushed home to take it apart. There is something wonderful in the circuit of each amplifier. Simple and beautiful.”
After some ten years living this passion alongside his job, he took the plunge and opened his show-room and workshop in Montreux. There he hunts down old amps, handles the repair and upkeep of stage equipment, and gradually builds his own amps, designed with their future owner to recover “the sound he always dreamed of”.
The Hendrix grail
Hunting for a vintage amp also means weighing up a risk: the gear is found mostly on American auction sites, with no chance to try it. Emmanuel Cottier’s job is to appraise the object and guarantee that it will work. The most fantasised-about amp remains the 1966 Marshall Plexi JMP, Jimi Hendrix’s: “Basically, everything can be found, as long as you pay the price.”