Orion Preamp

[stacy schrag]

The Orion Preamp: I saw this monster at a local shop and wondered if anyone knew about it. It is the size of an old tube head and appears to be manufactured in the late 70's to early 80's. It has 2 normal inputs, 2 bright inputs, distortion, mix and level controls and a graphic EQ. Unfortunately, the graphic EQ section has been cannibalized. I guess I'm just curious about this thing. Is this something that was typically supposed to be paired up with a Concert Slave? Just, wondering. Besides the removed EQ sliders, this thing is in mint condition.  Anyone out there know of this oddity?

[Entwistlefan#1]

I read about the Orion series Sunn amps...well, are you familiar with the Acoustic 360 bass amp system from the 70s? It had a preamp box sitting on top of a 1x18" folded horn, with the power amp located in the bottom of the cabinet. Sunn, I think, came out with their own version of this design. It went with a Sunn folded horn bass enclosure, with the power amp located in the enclosure itself. I believe they are very rare.

[Ryan Phelps]

The Orion was the bass version of 3 different models offered in the 1969 Sunn catalog. They do not appear in the 1968 or the 1971 catalogs. The other 2 models in the same series were the Aquarius (guitar) and the Dymos (guitar combo). The Orion and Aquarius had preamp heads with a 175 watt RMS solid state power amp in the speaker cabinet. The speaker cabs were offered with 2 JBL D15S or 2 JBL D140 or 4 Sunn 12" transducers. Additionally, you could buy extension speaker cabs without the the power amp. The preamps had both rotary and slider controls and and had Sunn's Buzz (fuzz) built-in. The Aquarius also had tremolo and reverb.  The Dymos combo (guitar) delivered 40 watts RMS from a solid state chassis and had 2-12" Sunn transducers. The speaker cabs came with a unique black and white verically striped grille cloth. I suspect that this series was short-lived because it was not well received by musicians. Has anyone heard one of these amps? How do they compare to the later solid state Concert series?

Ryan