| Rivera Amplifiers | |
| Type: | Private |
| Industry: | Amplification |
| Foundation: | Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Founder: | Paul Rivera |
| Location City: | Los Angeles, California |
| Location Country: | United States |
| Key People: | Paul Rivera |
| Products: | Amplifiers |
Rivera Amplifiers is an American manufacturer of guitar amplifiers. It was founded by Paul Rivera as a research and development firm in August 1976 in Southern California.[1]
Before moving into manufacturing amplifiers under his own name, Paul Rivera ran his own amplifier repair and modification shop, and then worked for Fender Amplifiers.[2] There he acted as Marketing Director, specifying a whole range of amplifiers and designing some himself. These were the last range to be made by Fender before its owners, CBS, sold the company[3] to its then management, and the last to be mass-produced by Fender with 'traditional' (non-PCB) methods. Rivera, like other amplifier builders such as Soldano, began building Fender-based amplifiers to try to capture a piece of the market for hot-rodded multi-channel amplifiers dominated by Mesa Boogie.[4]