I recently went on a cross country trip in my van with my girlfriend,Sara, to perform with our band, Oroboros, at Burning Man.
I decided it would be a great opportunity to delve into a new obsession of mine, Sunn amps.
A couple months earlier I was given a Sunn 100S, with a Yamaha 2x15 Cabinet.Since playing music was a fairly new venture of mine,
I had not heard of Sunn and didn't know what to think of it. Many guitar shops really didn't know much, nor had much
good to say about them in the DC area. So this obession really began as i started to search the Net.
I liked the sound from the 100S yet I knew the wattage wouldn't make it out of my practice space.
At that time the 2000S or Model T seemed to be the obvious solution.
We left DC with extra time on our hands before our show, and began to casually check pawn and music stores
along the way. Anything of Sunn was of interest, yet we were really out to find the 2000S or model T for a good price.
Throughout Iowa and Nebraska we found only one piece of sunn equiptment, a 4x10 cabinet for $324. In a new music shop in Council Bluffs, Iowa,
we were told "NO, we don't have any old tube amps, just new Fenders."
We crossed the river to Omaha Nebraska and followed the enorous signs to Sol's, the pawn Mecca.
Inside sat one solitary musical item, a large Sunn horm speaker. We couldn't find out anything about it except that it belonged to
D Rocks music store. We arrived at D Rocks to find a large room full of tube amps; Ampegs, Musicmans, Fenders, yet the room remained cold
without a single Sunn to illuminate it.
We were approached by a youg clerk, so we told him about our search for Sunn amps. "They come around from time to time, but they never
last long. I guess people think they're pretty cool, so they buy'em up."
The next day we saw our first Sunn bass amp in Lincoln, Nebraska through a closed pawn shop window. It was a refinished Sorado
for $195. We were on the move and couldn't hang around until the shop re-opened in the morning.
Cheyenne Wyoming had no Sunn in the pawn stores. Amazing Music hasn't seen Sunn in years, they say. The store owner defensively told
us, "You're not going to find any of those anywhere." Well, not in Cheyenn, we thought.
Salt Lake City, Utah had a hundred pawn shops and vintage music stores, but not a single Sunn. The guy at Vintage Rockers, specializing in vintage equiptment,
said to forget that old shit and get a Trace Elliot. He wouldn't let any bass player in his band use a Sunn. "With bass, you want a clean, clear sound, and back in the
60's and 70's no one had c clue what they were doing. You want an amp that'll make a bass player shine. Trace Elliot's make bass players shine, or Eden. Forget that
old Sunn shit!" He did mention it was just "one guy's opinion."
Just about every pawn store we passed, we gave a look in, pulling off on obscure exits to scour the shops, newspaper classifieds and vintage stores. At this point I
was begining to question the rational behind all the energy going into the search, given I had never even seen the models I was looking for, much less heard one.
We arrived at our destination, Burining Man, in Nevada, played our shows in the desert, and ate dust for ten days. After the festival was over, we headed to the west
coast, still searching the Sunn.
In Santa Cruz, California, we happened along their main music store and found more Sunn gear in one shop than in all the others combined. Two concert bass heads, one
Coliseum head, one 200S head, and a 2x15 speaker cabinet. We tried out all of it. The concert bass heads sound decent, the Coliseum is great for its volume. The 200S with
matching cabinet sounded excellent with its full tube sound. It reminded me of my 100S, with the same amount of power. I needed more!
In Santa Clara, the Starving Musician had a Concert Slave for $75, and a 1x15 Sunn speaker. Black Market in San Fransisco suprisingly had only a lone Sorado head in
its vast room packed with vintage gear. A store in Rancho Cordova had a Coliseum 808 for $200.
We headed up to the redwoods with no success in finding the amp we were looking for. It was time to head back east, though we would continue our search on the way home.
We were tempted by a MONSTEROUS 2x15 cabinet missing one speaker. The shop would have let it go for $75, but we decided to retain our space in the van for sleeping instead
of hauling a half functional sunn speaker all the way home. Too bad!
The next day we stopped in Lawrence, Kansas, which we heard was the hip town of the state. We went to a handful of shops, the second being Richard's music, a small room with
vintage and used gear. We were about to leave when we saw a dark room in the back. We asked to take a look in it, the kid working said we could. To our surprise, a 2000S
sat quitely against the wall on top of an Ampeg cabinet! I kept my cool, although i was elated to finally find it. We walked back to the front of the store to ask the kid
how much it was going for, only to find out it was not for sale. He said it belonged to the owner's personal collection and was used only in his recording studio. We were not even
allowed to play it.
Continuing on our mad search, we stopped at a small coffee shop in Wheeling, West Virginia where someone gave us a tip to check out Nick's Music. "He probably has something like
that up there." We headed through town to find the shop. The place seemed to be a junkyard of used gear. A man in his forties, presumably Nick, sat at the doorway, blocking our
entrance into the place, and asked us if he could help us. We told him we just wanted to look around. He shook his head, as if that would not be allowed. I looked to the right of where
he stood and saw a Model T and 2x15 Sunn bass cabinet sitting under piles of paper and scrap parts.
I told him that i was looking for an old bass amp, he pointed to the thing, saying that was all he had, but it was
probably out of our price range. He said he wanted $900 for the pair. The only other things he might have that we could afford were a couple small practice amps. I told him,
that $900 was high, but i'd still like to hear how it sounded. He said he would pass on plugging it in for me, because if i wasn't serious about buying it, it was too much trouble to
go through. The guy obviously was judging me as someone who knew very little about what i was looking for. His attitude became very cold, and condescending. Sara stood at the doorway,
giving me looks, and finally said "let's go." I told the guy that i had been looking for a Model T and that the amp and cabinet were worth about $600-$700, maybe. He caught even more
of an attitude as we left.
Outside the shop we were furious and decided to photo copy all the information we had collected from the net on the Model T. He seemed to know very little about how much the
thing was really valued at and told us that new ones were going for $2000. We took the packet of information back to the shop and I went in alone to talk to him, as Sara was too
furious to face the guy again. I handed him the info and made him a final offer of $400, a low price, i know. He said, "Thank you, that's a very nice offer, but No."
We ate lunch across the street where we could see him reading over the information. After lunch, I went back in a final time to let him know i was serious about buying it.
He was a lot nicer this time, thanking me for the information. He said he had too much invested in it to let it go for under $900.
We returned home to DC without an amp.
Though we ended up with nothing to show for our search but the memories, we had a good time looking and checking out so many
music stores and pawn stores across the country.
I found out that Sunn was used for the Door's LA Woman album by their studio bassist.
Thanks for reading. We hope you found it enjoyable reading about my obsession with Sunn.
Nick and Sara news73@yahoo.com
