Burning Amp Festival 2026
Burning Amp will return to the Petaluma Community Center on October 3rd and 4th. Visit the 2026 BAF for more details.
2025 Burning Amp Festival
BAF 2025 Epilogue
Thanks to all the attendees and everyone who made Burning Amp 2025 a success. It was two days of hanging out with fellow DIYers and audiophiles, talking about audio, listening to tunes on gear we built, and learning about new stuff. What could be better?
A quick word of thanks to our presenters, who gave their time to prepare and present at Burning Amp, starting with Nelson Pass, Scott Hinson, Mark Johnson, Rene Jaeger, Tom Christiansen, Steve Gray, Olen Rasp, and Greg Prisament.
The auction has become a Burning Amp tradition, with master auctioneer, Jim Tiemann leading proceedings. Several FirstWatt amplifiers were gleefully snatched by attendees, as were a brand new pair of full range Lowthers, also from Nelson, that went for a steal. A big thank you to Nelson for his generous donation of FirstWatt amplifiers and other gear, and to Bay City Screw and Bolt (Union City) for the tool set, and to Madisound, Parts Express, and Solen for donating cool parts to the auction and raffle. Bob Cordell, another audio legend and author of several best-selling books, donated two signed copies of his books to the auction. Mark Johnson donated a bunch of soldering irons and solder kits for the Amp Camps, and his Filt1AMax PCB’s for his new PSU filter design.
For the first time, there were two amp camps being held simultaneously, where attendees built power amps and headphone amps to completion and walked away with working amplifiers. A dedicated group of helpers, starting with Jim Tiemann, who led the camps, Mark Johnson, and Steve Gray made sure that every single amplifier was working. Both amps were Nelson Pass designs, and Nelson also donated all the parts and PCBs for them. A huge thank you to Nelson for making amp camp possible, a standout event at Burning Amp.
This year, we had a unique Speaker Measurement Camp led by Scott Hinson, he of DIYRM. Over two three hour sessions, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, Scott led camp attendees through the intricacies of speaker measurements and how to get repeatable, high quality speaker measurements using freely available software. The camps were a huge success and we look forward to what Scott will come up with for next year.
BAF 2025 featured cool posters and t-shirts, designed by Sheldon Smith. Thanks to Sheldon and to Chris Ouellette for getting the shirts and posters printed. A big thanks to Sheldon and Ruchi Sood for coordinating our online stream for the Ask Me Anything session with Nelson. Special thanks to Sheldon for running the audio/video desk on Sunday for the presentations, auction, and raffle. Videos for all the talks are available on Youtube.
Special thanks to our volunteers, Bill, Graeme, Cary, Demian, and many others for helping make Burning Amp a success.
See you again next year!
The Planning Committee (Jim, Rahul, Dan, Nelson, Scott, Sheldon, and Mike Rothacher)
Burning Amp Festival 2024
Burning Amp will return to the Petaluma Community Center on October 19th and 20th. Stay tuned for further updates.
Burning Amp Festival 2023
Burning Amp Festival ’23, Wine Country Edition October 31 – November 1 was a great success. All who attended in person loved the Petaluma Community Center venue. Thanks to all our wonderful presenters. See the Video page to view their presentations. Also thanks to the volunteers who made it happen, and especially the donors for the auction and the buyers – you guys went BIG!
Speaker Camp 2023
Nelson Brock is hosting a Speaker Camp near Sebastapol California on Saturday July 8th. See NEWS for more information and scroll down this page for pictures of the last Speaker Camp.
Burning Amp Festival 2022
A very successful Burning Amp was held on October 15th and 16th, both online via Zoom and live at Fort Mason Center. Nelson Pass donated a car-load of treasures for the auction and raffle. $5000 was raised at the auction. Thank you Nelson!
Videos of the event are now available on the VIDEO page. Enjoy!
ACA Redux Build Camp at BAF’22
Nelson Brock hosted the ACA Redux Build Camp at Burning Amp this year. This is Brock’s brilliant repackaging of the highly regarded Pass Amp Camp Amp. Each participant will build two ACA Redux mono-blocks. There will be a $160 material fee for this camp.
Speaker Camp!
A very successful Speaker Camp was held on June 25th at the Brock residence in Sonoma County California. The build was the Moth (full-range driver) SLOB (slot loaded open baffle) with an active crossover designed and built by Nelson Pass. Nelson also generously donated an ACA Mini amp to each of the builders. Here are some pictures:
Burning Amp Festival ’21 Online to the World!
BAF’21 was held online on Saturday October 16th & Sunday the 17th, and was a great success. Go to our videos page to see what you missed!