sorado amp question

[spiderinsider]

hello,
a friend of mine gave me an old "sunn sorado" tube amp head unit.
 its not in the greatest shape. i need to get a fuse for it to see if it works.
i dont know anything about sunn amps . i guess its a bass amp.
its made in portland oregon  sunn musical equipment co.
it is marked 400 watts.
 the tubes are kt88 made in china. (aftermarket i guess)
i play heavy rock music.     rythm guitarist. i use marshall or vox.
is this sunn amp worth putting any money into?
i also have an old Guild amp with reverb. still works. is it worth anything? 
 
thanks for your time
 
                                  "spider"

[Oli]

Hi,

I got a sorado this jan for bass. It's the same amp as the 200s (bass amp), so app. 60...65 W RMS. I use a solid stateer reciver instead of the gz34 tube. Works great on bass and we tried it out on guitar aswell. It was a very clean sound (we compared it with VHT pitbull and an Marshall MK2 with a 1960 lead guitar box) - lots of "headroom". It worked great with an EH Big Muff and the boss tubescreamer. 

I would buy it cos it got this warm (unique) Sunn sound  and U can get the Tubes to 100% with only 60W RMS, great for small stages and recordings!

Greetings

Oliver

[Soundmasterg]

The 400 watts listed would be the power it draws from the wall voltage to supply the amp. The actual output power is listed as 60 watts RMS.

Personally I don't like Sunn amps for guitar, and love them for bass, but YMMV. They are clean up to a point, and then overdrive quite hard as compared to an old Fender. A lot of heavy metal guys would probably like them for that reason. They can be modded to work better for guitar but they sound fine stock too. If you get a fuse for it, you want a slo-blo fuse and not a fast-blo. I would also suggest that you turn the amp on after replacing the fuse with all the tubes out. If it works fine there, then turn it off, put the rectifier tube in (the GZ34) and turn it on again. If it works fine without blowing a fuse there, then add the other tubes in and try again. The fuse usually blows because something caused it to blow and it could be bad power tubes, or a bad power transformer, or other things like that.

Greg