Former Peavey designer joins Blackstar team

Blackstar Amplification has announced the addition of Paul Stevens to their team as the new senior design engineer. 

Stevens has worked in MI for nearly a quarter of a century, previously employed as a designer for Peavey, Gibson and Trace Elliot, in addition to working as a consultant for brands including Orange, Hiwatt, Cornford and Carlsbro.

Paul began playing guitar when he was 8 years old and had formal training up to Grade 8 in both theory and classical guitar. From the age of 15 he was regularly performing and recording around Essex and London. An early interest to more intimately adjust valve amplifier tone led on to an electronics engineering apprenticeship at Marconi. 

 Blackstar’s managing director Ian Robinson comments, “Paul joins a world-class R&D team who are passionate about driving guitar amplification innovation forward on a day to day basis. It is a real pleasure to have an engineer of Paul’s experience and talent to collaborate with.”

Apart from designing, Stevens has extensive experience demonstrating products at trade shows. In recent years, he has continued to gig and record regularly, as well as performing at events such as the opening and closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympics.