Amp Week 2026: Gear-obsessive Joe Bonamassa has acquired guitars, amps, and pedals through some very strange means – but acquiring an amp via a Hollywood actor wasn't something that Guitar World had on its bingo card.
Over the past few years, Bonamassa has breathed new life into guitars collecting dust under staircases, carried out a bizarre exchange to get hold of a late guitar hero's axe, and even gone down the more traditional route of auctions, as was the case when he recently bought Gary Moore's Still Got the Blues amp.
Yet, one of his favorite amps, a Fender 5F3 Deluxe that “roars” in the studio, came with a touch of showbiz.
“It's actually the amp I bought from Steven Seagal,” he tells Reverb. “Yes, the actor.”
The 1950s combo – examples of which are valued between $4,150 to $6,680 on Reverb – packs just 20 watts. But Bonamassa says it shouldn't be underestimated.
“This one is my go-to studio amp, and I'll tell you why,” he continues. “A, I can just lug it around and not worry about it cosmetically. And B, it has a Celestion speaker in it.
“It’s gone through my friend Bob Dixon, who, to me, is the world's greatest amp tech,” Bonamassa states. “He gets so much clarity and headroom out of tweed amps by doing the minimal amount of work. But he knows what to do, and in the studio, it just roars. It sounds way bigger than it is.
“They take pedals really well. A lot of times with Tweeds, you don't want to crank them; they kind of give up around six or seven, that's about as much gain as you're gonna get out of them. When playing rhythm, you're barely touching [the gain]; three or four, and they give you this nice fat sound.”
Yet despite his gear-buying tendencies, Bonamassa recently announced he’s cutting back on his collecting after a major scare last year. That being said, he said his ninth Dumble amp purchase in June 2025 would be his last major buy, only to splurge on Gary Moore's Soldano months later – so take his words with a generous pinch of salt.
Elsewhere, Bonamassa has given GW readers an in-depth lesson on how to nail B.B. King’s greatest song, and discussed why a story involving a snowstorm and an unhappy mayor stands as his favorite anecdote of the King.
