Hello Sunn Fans:
I posted my bio last year but I did not find it when I searched so...........
I was employed at Sunn only the last two tears of it's existence although my relationship started back in 1979. My roomate/soundman at the time was an engineer at Sunn and we used to go there to build gear for our band. Our first collaboration was on the Stagemaster amp. We found that if we drove the C-mos chip being used in the Beta amps at high current it would produce even harmonics when distorted. We made an amp for a guitarist in the band and it sounded great. The only problem was the chip burned out at regular intervals (every 10 gigs or so). We just had extra IC's and the socket was on the back panel for quick repair. Some guy's from marketing came to see us and loved the amp. We made a prototype, however we had to lower the current so the IC's would live a long life. This added some odd harmonics but it still had a better sound than transistor amps of that period. They also liked our light show gear which was designed around multiplexed signals and power slaves which eliminated the need for so much cable. These became SunnSpots. My roomate designed many products during the 80's (Stinger20, Stinger60, SC24F, SC2-16). When Fender bought us out he went on to found Nova Lighting Systems which became NSI which is now NSI Colortran the largest lighting manufacturer in the country. I went on to contunue with db Sound NW (our sound and lighting company) for a few years. I then built my recording studio (Studio 84) and have been teaching recording technologies at Portland Community College for the last 6 years. My best friend was the VP of manufacturing at Sunn and then at Biamp Systems and he is the source of all the documentation that I came to possess which dates back to 1969.
It is not a complete library but has much cool documentation. I just discovered that I have the original drawings for all of the speaker components of speakers manufactured at Williamstown Kentucky. There is so much information that I will be making available to this site as time allows. Well.......that raps it up.
Don Thompson
