The sunn Forum
Sunn Musical Equipment => Q & A => Topic started by: red on February 18, 2006, 09:30:26 am
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Hey everyone. I'm curious about what changes Fender made to the classic Sunn silverface 412 guitar cabs when they "reissued" them. If anyone has any info, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Bill.
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Anyone at all? Help a brother out.
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Red.....I was a Fender rep when Sunn was released. Please know that this cabinet was never meant to be a "reissue". It was a totally new design. One that didn't sell. As a matter of fact, it bombed. It sounded good as it was loaded with 4 G12T-75 Celestion speakers, the cabinet was 13 ply birch construction and it needed to be carried by two men and a boy at 97 pounds per cabinet. Unfortunately, only a few of us at the company were into promoting Sunn at all.
Bass-ically Yours,
Rich Briere
www.richbriere.com
The Sunn Shack
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Rich, thanks for the info. Good to know.
Best,
Bill
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Rich, why do you think the Sunn line didn't sell? Lack of support by Fender?
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Why didn't it sell? Well, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, neither the dealers, most of the FMIC staff, with the noteworthy exceptions of Ritchie Fliegler, Richard McDonald, a couple of engineers whose names I don't know, and myself, could have cared less if it lived or died. The rep force was too busy selling core products, no artists were using it..........so there wasn't anyone who wanted to get behind it.
As an example, I had, roughly, thirty dealers in the Northeast who took it on. I had more dealers in my territory than the rest of the country combined. Suddenly, SUNN was everywhere up here and it sold simply because players saw it in so many places. It didn't fly out the door, but it was discovered, listened to and purchased.
I heard that parts of the failure were based on the following reasons. A: The salesguys were generally a bit too young to remember the "good old days when Sunn ruled the world, they remembered the SUNN PA from just a couple of years back and that stuff didn't exactly set the world on fire--so they never plugged the NEW Sunn in". B: It's nearly impossible to distinguish the new gear from the old stuff that's stashed away for $100 in the back corner. C: Many players thought that it was re-issue gear instead of state of the art innovations.
IMHO, Had FMIC stuck with it and built an image for the division instead of running one ad that showed the amp melting in the desert Sunn, things could have been very different. Had VOX brought back their line recently with the same enthusiasm that SUNN was given, VOX would already BE history instead of MAKING history.
Want a killer guitar amp? Perhaps one of the best ever? Grab a T-50 combo. Go ahead, I double-dog dare ya! That amp ROCKS!
Sunn 300T--Excellent. The 4x10 bass cabs? Exquisite. The 2x15? Thunder unleashed. Sunn 1200S.......well, we'll save that one for another day. :D
Bass-ically Yours,
Rich Briere
www.richbriere.com
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I have one of the Model 215 cabinets. I'm using it with my modified second generation Model T. They look good together, and sound pretty good, too, but I'm not sure it's "thunder unleashed." I think the 200S cabinet sounds better, but I may change my mind.
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I'd agree that the 200S cabinet is cooler sounding. That 200S cab falls under thunder AND lightning unleashed! :^>)
Bass-ically Yours,
Rich
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The thunder part comes when you couple the 2x15 cab WITH one or two of the 4x10's. When I use the three cabs, that's a nicccce sound.
Bass-ically Yours,
Rich
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I bought the guitar full stack from a store in Ithaca,NY and apparently the guy had been sitting on it for quite a while. No wonder it was sitting behind 30 or so piled up combo amps...
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Ithaca Guitar Works. Yup...great guy. I remember the stack well. 8)
Bass-ically Yours,
Rich