Sunn.......AND????

[Anonymous]

WOW!!! What a find. I have been away from playing for 20yrs and have decided to restore my old clone. This site is the answer to my problem. Amp and cabinet are homemade clones from '67 or'68 100s or 200s. made by a member of a U of O campus party band. Intended use was for a piano amp. I use it as a guitar amp untill it "smoked". It blows 2 amp slow blow fuses when standby switch is flipped. Power tube sockets and rectifier sockets are burnt, but the rectifer tube still glows orange on standby.I don't dare flip the standby switch. All power tubes, pre-amp and splitter(7199) tubes are not powered (should they be ?). I will be looking for a local ampman to if this is salvageable. power tubes are el34 x 2, pre-amptube is a 12ax7a x 1, rectifier tube is a 5ar4 x 1, and a 7199 x 1 (splitter or tone tube?). Tube choices are confusing. What's best for good,clean,high power? I have replaced the old RadioShack 15" with an early Fender ps15 8 ohm speaker(200 watts rated). My guitar is a '67 Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennesean in excellent condition. I would apreciate any ideas, tips, thoughts and helpful suggestions. Realy what to get this old girl to scream again. when I played it outside, i would wake sleeping children on the otherside of the valley and their parents would hunt me down. Great funnnnnn!!!! Hope to see what ya'all think.

[Don T.]

Hello:
 Well, I haven't been on this site in a lonnnnnnngggggg time. I sold most of my Sunn PA gear to a local club who tortured it for a year. They brought it back and I fixed everything. They just tortured it all over again. No respect. If a speaker blows they just crank up the remaining ones until they blow. It breaks my heart. The PA cabs were Sunn prototypes of my own design that I built myself. They ran guitar cords for speaker wire and blew the SGA 310  monitor amps. Only the SA21's keep going cuz' they haven't figured out how to wreck em yet.

As for instrument amps I have a Scepter, Stagemaster, (2) 60 watt Stingers and a SB200. I play a 62 Gibson Melody Maker, 79 Les Paul custom and a Takamine acoustic. My main amps are Supro's running in stereo, wicked gnarley yet not over powering for club gigs.

[Soundmasterg]

Hey Don, good to see you posting again!

I've got a 1970 Sonic 1 that was sick when I got it. I modified it to 200S specs and replaced every component and tube in it. Then I upped the cap values in the first two filter cap stages to 110 uf and 50uf respectively and changed to a Copper Cap rectifier. I also upped the cathode bypass cap on the first stage to 300uf. Now it REALLY sounds nice and gives good clean power for bass. In the process of my mods, I added a true ground buss grounding scheme with a ground lift switch and moved all the grounds to it. I also elevated the filaments with about 50v DC and those mods made the hum level go down quite a bit. It has JJ KT88's in it now.

I've also got a stock '68 2000S that hasn't been touched. I'd like to get some JBL equipped 2x15 cabinets made but am not there yet. I use a Rickenbacker 4001 bass through the Sunn's and an SVT cab, or a 1x15 cab with a JBL E140 in it. Sounds great!

[Flakey]

I found a home! After not playing bass professionally for 25 years, I decided to pickup the almighty 4 stringer again. Back in the day I used a sunn 612s and a Beta 105 1 15 cabs with my Rick 4001, 78 Pbass and 76 t-Bird thru a Sunn Concert Head. They are all gone now accept my Ric (it was my first bass and I saved six months working part time in high school to by it new). So when I decide to come back 25 years later I thought the new Edens, SWRs, etc. are cool and really light compare to the stuff I had to haul back in the day but all the bells and whistles scared me.

This last November I had a booth at a local musicians trade fair and a guy a few booths down had a 68 Sunn Sordano bass head with a Acoustic 2 15 Bottom both were mint. Truthfully I didn't know squat about Sunn tube heads but he said it was 50 watts, he bought it new in 1968, and he had NOS SUNN KT88s put in recently by a amp tech who bought out all the old Sunn parts when it went to fender. I remember my old Concert from in the day so I gave it a shot. Plugged in a p bass, powered up the head plugged into the Acoustic Cabinet and turned up the vol. knob on the p- bass.

IT WAS HEAVEN!!!!! I FILLED THAT ARMORY WITH SO MUCH LOW FREQUENCY ALL THE GUITAR SHREAD MASTERS TRYING OUT THEIR 50-100 PEAVEYS AND WHAT NOT HAD TO STOP PLAYING. 50 WATTS NEVER SOUNDED SO CLEAN, LOUD AND WARM AT THE SAME TIME. IT WAS THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I WAS PLAYING A BASS TUBE AMP THAT DIDN'T DISTORT AT ALL!!!

I didn't bicker on the price and paid him cash right there. All I will say is that it cost me less that a used silverface bassman head.

So since then, in the last 60 days, I also bought a Spectrum I head, a 1200s, and a 2000s. I know I really should find the matching cabinets for these heads but I'm not as young as I used to be to haul those heavy things around. I have also found, for what ever reason, Carven stuff sounds really good with these Sunn heads but I am open for recommendations to try.

Oh Ya, basses, well I built a P and J bass, bought another T-bird, my old Ric. and built a 24 fret explore bass. Kind of a tribute to my hero John Entwistle (God bless his soul   )

Great site here as well as the SUNN shack. A wealth of info. I've used it often already.

[protoz]

I recently picked up my first Sunn amp off of eBay - Coliseum 300

It came from Arizona so I figured it would be a little scratchy.  I was right, it was very dirty so I have cleaned it as much as possible and the knobs don't scratch like they did when I first powered it up.  I still get speaker crackle at times so I am going to take it into the shop for a checkup and cap replacement with the scematics offered on this site and the SUNN shack to help them out.

I took it to band practice just to show them as I hadn't really put it through its paces yet and playing at half volume against a modded Peavy 5150 was  just a joy.  The band really liked the sound over my Hartke 5000.  It made my knob-tweaker guitarist drool until I let him toy with it.  

The real test is tonight with both 5150 half stacks going in my heavy metal band.  So wish the Sunn luck

My gear right now is:
2003 Fender Aerodyne
?? Ibanez EDB400
Sunn Coliseum
Hartke 5000
Sabine rack tuner
Furman power conditioner
BOSS ODB-3 Bass Overdrive <--really just a fuzz pedal

[cjb]

Rich -- Just stumbled across this site, and yours, and your query about gear.  Very cool to come across Sunn worshipers out there!

It's funny -- and it just occurred to me -- but I've been using Sunn products since the early 70's (after continually blowing my Bassman 50 as a kid.  Slight issue with not understanding "impedance") and always seem to have something Sunn in whatever configuration I'm playing through.  I'm currently powering everything with a little SWR 2004 head (I'm getting old, and 75 lbs. of "rack" are getting harder and harder to justify; that doesn't keep me from heavy cabinets, however!) in lieu of my Crown-powered rack.  My Sunn Concert Bass head from years gone by was, I verily believe, HOCKED by one of my brothers who figured I didn't NEED four amplifiers (and figured HE didn't need to WORK), but I still have -- and use in my setup -- a Coliseum folded horn/18" Cerwin Vega cab and a Sunn 205 (2-15's, ported) along with an SWR 4-10 cab, all in a series-parallel config.  The 205 has had to survive one re-coning due to Johnny Rod of WASP who decided to crank it one night while sitting in (the thing only handles 100 watts) but, other than that, it's been a real trouper.  Sometimes I forego the 18 and use a single JBL 12" (for "impedance" sake!) at smaller venues where I'm getting plently of low end off the room.

Hope you're still out there reading these things!

Correspondance: cjbonano1@yahoo.com

[Rich Briere]

 Things still going well for you guys and gals? Life here is, finally, good. MANY thanks to all of you who have been staying in touch and stopping by the Sunn Shack. We seem to be finding NEW users for SUNN gear all the time and I keep hoping that someone who cares will buy the name back and start cranking out world-class amplifiers again.

Just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I'm up and running again.

Bass-ically Yours,
RB