My brother Norm was working at a music store in Portland, OR and making mods to Fender sealed cabinets by porting them and selling them with 60 Bogen PA amplifiers. I helped him with the port size and tuning.
The very first cabinets under the Sunn name were dual 15" JBL D130's mounted in a 24 wide cabinet with the 15's staggered with two ports next to the staggered 15's. I borrowed $1300 from the Portland Teachers Credit Union (I was teaching at Centennial High School at the time) to purchase plywood, vinyl and JBL speakers. I swung a deal with a local dealer to purchase 12 JBL D130's at below retail. The rep for JBL canceled him as a JBL dealer because he violated JBL's "fair trade" agreement then immediately look us up and wanted to set us up as an OEM account purchasing direct from JBL. I thought that was pretty hilarious at the time, but felt bad for the retailer who was trying to help us out. I did'nt find out about it for a year or so.
Anyway, it took me six months to sell those first 6 cabinets. Then I had a dream about how to build a bass cabinet. The dream was so vivid I got up the next morning and started building the cabinet. It was a rear loading bass reflex design which became the 200S bass cabinet. This particular unit contained extra bracing which was not included in the eventual production version. I then built a piggyback head enclosure and stuffed it with a Dynaco Mark II 6o watt tube kit I built along with a Dynaco tube preamp. This was Norm's first unit he used on the road with the Kingsmen.
It had so much low end! Almost too much. The electronic response curves were for HiFi not bass guitars but it out performed anything on the market. As Norm traveled across the country playing this monster, everyone was askin him were he got this amp. He told them to ask their local music dealer to call me and order one for them. I started getting calls from Jacksonville, FL; Boston, MA etc. - These dealers were ordering 12 at a time - the rest is history.
The original dream became the well respected 200S cabinet. We later built our own preamp mounted in the top rear of the piggyback cabinet along with the Dynaco Mark III. Later we built it all on one chassis.
I have no idea where that very first cabinet wound up. I heard that Fender might have it. It has an extra row of screws on the back of the cabinet near the ends. This is where the extra corner braces were located. It was covered with a soft expanded vinyl which got torn quite easily but the box was rock solid.
Conrad
: Hello. I was wondering if Mr.Sundholm could share any recollections of the very first 'Sunn' bass amp...??
