Thanks, just browsing google images and poof. I just thought it was cool to see a Sunn Amp that belonged to someone so drastically different from what I'M used to seeing at least. Pretty neat, and I'm sure he got more than a darn good sound out of it.
There are actually some pretty neat amps displayed in those pictures from what I remember looking at yesterday. Too bad right click is protected on his pages.
Yeah, people seem to forget that distortion used to be the
enemy of amplifier design, and that old Sunns were very Hi-Fi and articulate. Also, all those amps pictured on this forum came frome
somewhere; if it weren’t for all the players using Sunn in the 60’s and 70’s for mainstream music, there wouldn’t
be any Sunns around for the new Sunn players that you are speaking of.
Keep in mind there haven’t been and Sunns built in any real volume numbers in almost 40 years.
A fact which actually is probably
why they are so often used by niche bands, even though IMO there are many more appropriate circuit designs to achieve the tones I hear when listening to the genres of music often referenced on this forum. Of course, any tube amp will get nasty if you saturate the tubes, but the old Sunns fought it (as they were
designed to do) much harder than some other brands.
I suspect that one of the problems Sunn had in the early 70’s, particularly with guitar amps, was the growing dominance of harmonic distortion as a tonal staple in popular music. The “sparkly clean” tone really took a back seat to heavier, tube saturated guitar sounds, and I think that it probably had an impact on Sunn’s popularity. Also because of this, Sunns have never achieved the popularity ($$$) in the vintage market enjoyed by Marshall, Fender and so became a real bargain in the used market.
Bass guitar, which is what got the whole “Sunn” ball rolling according to what I have read, personally observed and heard, was a different issue. Although clean was still very popular for bass, the advent of high powered transistor amps almost made tube bass amps obsolete. Transistor amps took their toll on tube guitar amps as well, but it was a short lived romance that pretty much petered out in the early 80’s; I know there are still transistor guitar amp aficionados, but far and away tube amps rule the pro guitarist scene.
Transistor amps “stuck” with bass players, though, and IMO that’s what made Sunns so inexpensive on the used market.
Back to the “niche” bands I referenced.
Personal musical preferences aside, I think that it’s a safe assumption to say that mainstream = big money, and that niche = little money.
Old Sunns were LOUD, fairly plentiful, but most importantly, up until the last few years anyway CHEAP;
real cheap. Low budget bands could afford to pile up a
bunch of them on stage and blast away, the genres caught on among certain factions, newbie players often patronize their idols choice in gear, and the whole new “Sunn mystique” was born.
As I said, I think the suitability of Sunn amps for the styles had little to do with it; it was largely a function of economics. Also, from a technical and practical standpoint, those big piles are mostly for “show”, bragging rights and economic reasons anyway.
If overall volume is the goal, and the money was flowing in, I can
assure you that the SPL levels generated by the mismatched piles of old amps that are often touted here could very easily and much more efficiently be out matched by a single 5 watt 1x12 tube amp mic’ed into a mega kilowatt, high efficiency speakered SR system.
People talk of the “brown note”; how about the “trip to the ER note”?
Of course I just made that up, however I assure you that with a big time, big money (remember the “mainstream = big money, and niche = little money” thing earlier?) sound reinforcement system, forget sending people to the bathroom; you could literally send people to the
hospital with bleeding ears, maybe sinuses, and
permanent total hearing loss.
With nothing but a Fender Champ onstage.
This is not meant as a condemnation of any genre, style, band, and I realize that only the real “big time” artists can afford to have a semi or two full of gear and a couple of thousand dollars a day worth of crew on the road with them. While not my style, as far as I’m personally concerned you can get on stage in your skivvies, bang two pots together and call it music. My opinions and observations were triggered by grimniggzy’s comment that the rig featured seemed so different to what style Sunn is commonly seen associated with nowadays.
And... please keep buying old Sunn amps. It keeps the value of ALL of our stockpiles high!
