Got my attenuator, disappointed with the Sceptre.

[Jonathyn]

You see, I bought a Sunn amp thinking I could get that Leslie West tone, and he got it out of a 4 or 5 knob Sunn amp, maybe modified yes, but I thought if he could do it with a Sunn amp, then I would like to get that tone too. I didn't realise until I got my Sceptre that it was vastly a clean sounding amp.
 Anyway, I took the casing off the attenuator, and underneath the slider switch, there is a label, and it states for each position; 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x. The 16x I am sure refers to 16 ohms, which aligns with the X. Oops! Looks like I had the attenuator set for 16 ohms, instead of 8. So the amp was being worked twice as hard! Ah well. We all make mistakes, I'm just glad I didn't leave it on for much longer and burn out the input transformer, it only overheated.

[Jonathyn]

I'm too worried about burning my input transformer out, so I'm not even going to run the amp with the attenuator on the 8 ohm setting. There's surely a possibility of the attenuator doing damage to 40 year old components even with the right setting selected. Sigh. Ah well. I'll take my tech's word for it that it's a badly made attenuator and I should just forget about it.
 

[Soundmasterg]

Your Sunn Sceptre was made when people were trying to get loud and clean, so that is what it does really well. Personally I don't like Sunn tube amps for guitar, but they sound great for bass.

Greg

I personally like my Sentura II for guitar. However, I don't much care for it's distorted tones unless the midboost switch is on.

Sunn amps can sound ok for a guitar when clean and distorted, though I think Fenders have more personality when clean than the Sunns, and Voxes definitly do. When distorted, Sunns are obscenely loud and the distortion is rather hard and farty to my ears.....Marshalls and Mesa Dual Rectifiers do distortion better I think. But thats just me. I just prefer to use Sunns for bass as they are kick ass there!

Greg

[Jonathyn]

I'm gonna keep my Sceptre. Use it as a clean sound amp. I'll just save up for an overdriven tube amp later this year.
 Next I'm gonna buy a solid state power amp for my PB-10. It's most likely going to be the Matamp Quasar Q250, which can be used for PA featuring XLR inputs (microphones) but it'll run a guitar preamp through its 1/4 inch jack inputs. Hey, it's Matamp, it's gotta be good!

[djc]

I most guitar players have a whole footboard full of of effects pedals..including distortion and ovedrive, that they would want a clean amp to run it through

 

i love the post, don't know who it was, that said something like "they asked me where the processor was and I showed them the end of the patch cable!"

[EdBass]

I find some of this discussion to be rather puzzling A lot of people make the statement that Sunn amps are too clean   Sunn amps were made to be clean   Conrad was into HIFI when he built the first amps, and he strived to get the cleanest sound at the highest volumes.  I've also heard people make the comment that the older Sunn amps don't have a master volume control, so they can't get overdrive.  It would seem to me that since most guitar players have a whole footboard full of of effects pedals..including distortion and ovedrive, that they would want a clean amp to run it through

Compare the output stage of the 2 X 6550/KT88 Sunn amps with a Dynaco Mk III. Remarkably similar, the majority of the values are identical, same transformers, etc.
Not a coincidence, the Sunn amps are based on the Mk III, which as most know was a super clean Hi-Fi amplifier designed in 1957 by David Hafler and Ed Laurent, rated at <1% THD at 60 watts output, less than .5% below 50 watts (which is where it would spend the majority of it's duty cycle).
I also would think that pedals would be the way to get an amp like that to scream at levels under wide open, rather than a power soak.