Bruce and Annette with Natasha, Dot, and Boris atop Cave Hill, a short hike from their house

The Sound Man

Alum’s remarkable career as the designer of the world’s top-selling electric-guitar amplifier got a major boost at Chico State

By Tom Nugent

How did Bruce Zinky invent—and then successfully market—the most popular electric-guitar amplifier in the history of rock ’n’ roll?

Ask this former Chico State undergrad to account for his remarkable success as a showbiz entrepreneur, and he’ll tell you about the 10 years it took to bring his ideas to fruition.

“I worked on improving the concept at Chico State for awhile, but the actual fabrication of the amp took place in my living room in the spring of 1997,” says Zinky.

“I’d been experimenting with different kinds of amplifiers, even before my college days at Chico,” he recalls. “Then I started asking myself: What if you could mass-manufacture a battery-powered amplifier no larger than a pack of cigarettes—so that a guitarist could tuck it into his shirt pocket, or even into the side of his instrument? With a device like that, a kid could play his electric guitar on a school bus, or out in the woods, or in his backyard, wherever.

“As soon as I realized that the product would fly, I went to work. I started building the amplifiers right in the living room. Within a few months, they’d taken over the entire house.”

The 4-ounce, $30 Smokey (so named because it originally was housed in a recycled cigarette pack—it now also comes in a translucent polycarbonate box or a custom artist box) became an extraordinary success. “Pretty soon, we were building the Smokeys in a warehouse, and then in two warehouses,” says Zinky. “We started from scratch—and then the whole thing took over like The Blob, and we went on to sell hundreds of thousands of them.”

Getting the brand out there and delivering the product required enormous amounts of hard work, notes Zinky, but the key to everything was the concept. “Once I realized that the concept would work—building an amplifier that would enable a musician to produce an electric-guitar sound anywhere on earth—I knew I could sell the product, and that we’d eventually be able to market it around the world,” he says.

Zinky’s Flagstaff, Arizona-based Zinky Electronics manufacturing firm has built on the success of the Smokey, growing into a $15-million-plus company that makes amplifiers and other sound-enhancement devices for clients worldwide.

From Kafka to Keith Richards
The son of a Silicon Valley optical engineer, Zinky arrived on the CSU, Chico campus in the fall of 1986, majoring in electrical/electronic engineering. He soon discovered that he’d fallen in love with two forms of artistic expression: absurdist literature (think Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros) and playing “funk party-dance” music with his own eardrum-blasting rock ’n’ roll band, Pit Bull Weekend.

“I signed up for this freshman English course, and we started reading novels and plays from all over the world,” he says. “That was a terrific experience, very exciting, because it really opened a window on all these different cultures. It showed you how different people think. And then we got into Kafka, and we read this story, The Metamorphosis.”

Zinky found the 1915 novella compelling. “Here’s a story about a guy who suddenly turns into a gigantic insect, but he doesn’t let it stop him,” he says. “He just tries to deal with it, you know? He tells himself: ‘OK, I’m an insect now, but I still gotta find something to eat. I gotta figure out how I can crawl across the wall.’ He wanted to move forward; he wanted to figure out what to do next, and I liked that.

Bruce Zinky with Smokey amplifiers

“The guy knew how to think for himself, and I found that very appealing.”

For Zinky, such self-reliance was a familiar theme. His father, Bill Zinky, had been a successful inventor of optical devices, and his fiercely energetic, take-no-prisoners grandmother, Kay Zinky, had amazed her contemporaries by inventing silk stockings that wouldn’t run during World War II.

“With that kind of background, I guess it’s understandable that I grew up wanting to tinker with things,” he says.

In Zinky’s case, such “tinkering” often involved musical instruments. Within a few months of beginning his studies at Chico, he found himself playing an amplified six-string guitar and doing his best to improve on the vibes crashing from his rock band’s speakers. “Those were some really great times,” he says. “We played all these gigs at places like the Burro Room in downtown Chico and the Blue Max, over on Oroville Avenue. I remember the blues jams on Sunday nights, and then all these really great musicians started coming to town—guys like Robben Ford and Elvin Bishop and David Lindley.”

Zinky began doing some sound engineering for his own band as well as other groups. “At one point I built a sound system for Ford, a blues-rock singer and guitarist whose career was really taking off,” says Zinky. “He was a favorite at Fender, and they contacted me about an amplifier I’d built for him.”

One thing led to another, and Zinky wound up working for Fender. “I spent four years down in Scottsdale, Arizona, building custom-designed sound systems and amplifiers for Fender. Then in 1996, I realized that I was beginning to repeat myself, and I didn’t want to do that.”

Even though he was making very good money, Zinky decided he wanted a more creative professional life. “I wanted to do something new, so I launched my own company and began to compete with the same folks I’d once been working for,” he explains. “It was tough at first, but after the Smokey took off, things got much better.”

These days, Zinky can look back on a career in which he’s provided custom-built sound instruments for such blockbuster performers as the Rolling Stones, Korn, the Grateful Dead, Deftones, ZZ Top, and Olivia Newton-John.

“We’ve done pretty well, and that’s very rewarding,” he says while reflecting on his 20 years in the rock ’n’ roll biz, “but for me, making amplifiers and designing sound systems was never about money—it was about finding ways to enable musicians, to help them create their unique sounds so that the whole world could enjoy them.”

Describing some of the highlights over the years, Zinky remembers a magical night in 2005 when two of his custom-designed electric guitars were played onstage during a thunderous concert by the Rolling Stones. “I remember standing in the wings, and the crowd is going nuts, and the Stones are really flying, and I look over there and see Keith Richards playing my guitar and really giving it a workout,” he says. “For a music lover who’s spent most of his professional life working to make music sound better, it just doesn’t get any better than that night in Las Vegas!”

A “reformed bachelor” who last September married his longtime business partner Annette Yurchak, Zinky now lives in Flagstaff and spends many of his workdays dreaming up the new products and marketing blitzes that are essential for providing his daily adrenaline rush. “Life is good,” he says with a contented laugh, “and I can’t wait to get up and start my next project each morning.

“All my life, I’ve done my best to avoid becoming a cog in a corporate machine, and I feel good that I’ve been able to achieve that. Making a living as an entrepreneur and a creator of new products hasn’t always been easy—but it sure has been fun!”

About the author
Freelance writer Tom Nugent is a former Detroit Free Press and People magazine reporter. He lives in Hastings, Michigan.