Bogner Snorkler 50 Valve Amp Head

The SNORKLER is based on the mods from Reinhold’s earliest days back in Germany which basically started it all for him to ultimately move to Los Angeles in the late 80’s. His very first notable client was Rich Williams from Kansas, while on tour in Germany Reinhold had him plug into one of his modded plexi amps which resulted in Rich handing Reinhold his back up plexi to be modded.

With most bands coming through town this did not work out as time was often to short and every one suggested he should move to Los Angeles. Boom, after a short first visit he came back equipped with a modded white 50W JCM800 which served as his “Visitenkarte”, like we say in German. He quickly became friends with the likes of Aspen Pittman's Grove Tubes, Joey Brassler & Greg Bayles of Make’n Music  and Andy Brauer’s Studio Rentals through whom Reinhold sold his personal amp on November 12th 1989 to none other than Eddie Van Halen.

From there on musicians brought all sorts of donor amps in for modifications, the ones which had the circuits removed up to the phase inverter and Reinhold’s own designed blue pre-amp circuit board installed became later to be known as the Snorkler”
The word on the street is that recording engineer guitarist Ronnie S. Champagne had his 50W Marshall combo modded by Reinhold and gave the amp the name Snorkler,. Ronnie has an impressive career in music, he was involved with producer Dave Jerden as audio engineer on “Facelift”, the famous debut album of Alice in Chains where the modded combo was the main recording amp.

By the early 90’s Reinhold shifted his focus on designing his own amplifiers and modifications became rare, also his taste and designs shifted away from the original “blue board” high gain circuit but found it’s way back by replacing the Shark channel of the Fish pre-amp with the blue board circuit which is known as the “Cantrell Mod” as Jerry asked Reinhold to mod his Fish pre-amps to replicate the sounds used on Facelift.

In the past 10 years Reinhold has been asked on occasion to do a Snorkler mod, he did a few for George Lynch and request came in very frequently which inspired him to make it a regular production Bogner available to everyone.