Why didn't it sell? Well, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, neither the dealers, most of the FMIC staff, with the noteworthy exceptions of Ritchie Fliegler, Richard McDonald, a couple of engineers whose names I don't know, and myself, could have cared less if it lived or died. The rep force was too busy selling core products, no artists were using it..........so there wasn't anyone who wanted to get behind it.
As an example, I had, roughly, thirty dealers in the Northeast who took it on. I had more dealers in my territory than the rest of the country combined. Suddenly, SUNN was everywhere up here and it sold simply because players saw it in so many places. It didn't fly out the door, but it was discovered, listened to and purchased.
I heard that parts of the failure were based on the following reasons. A: The salesguys were generally a bit too young to remember the "good old days when Sunn ruled the world, they remembered the SUNN PA from just a couple of years back and that stuff didn't exactly set the world on fire--so they never plugged the NEW Sunn in". B: It's nearly impossible to distinguish the new gear from the old stuff that's stashed away for $100 in the back corner. C: Many players thought that it was re-issue gear instead of state of the art innovations.
IMHO, Had FMIC stuck with it and built an image for the division instead of running one ad that showed the amp melting in the desert Sunn, things could have been very different. Had VOX brought back their line recently with the same enthusiasm that SUNN was given, VOX would already BE history instead of MAKING history.
Want a killer guitar amp? Perhaps one of the best ever? Grab a T-50 combo. Go ahead, I double-dog dare ya! That amp ROCKS!
Sunn 300T--Excellent. The 4x10 bass cabs? Exquisite. The 2x15? Thunder unleashed. Sunn 1200S.......well, we'll save that one for another day.
Bass-ically Yours,
Rich Briere
www.richbriere.com
