Dr. Z. Zaite grew up the child of a television repairman and learned about vacuum tubes at an early age.
[1] He played the drums, and started producing tube amplifiers in his Cleveland, Ohio, shop while maintaining his day job as a medical electronic technician at G.E.
[2] As the son of a TV repair shop owner, Zaite learned the ropes at the age of thirteen when he began tinkering with amps and PAs.
The following year, a Guitar Player review of the SRZ-65 boosted the company's public profile in the boutique amplifier market.
[4] After the 2010 Tennessee floods, which destroyed huge numbers of musical instruments owned by players of the Nashville music scene,[5] Dr. Z replaced Paisley's destroyed amps, and added the Z Wreck model (whose heart is a Fischer-designed output transformer) to its regular line-up; in 2014, Guitar Player magazine listed it as one of their Editors' Picks.