They way I heard the story, Sunn was financed by the Kingsmen, of Louie Louie fame. I first saw Sunn amps around 1965-66 when the were new on the market, and intended to compete with with the Fenders. In those days, there were many more opportunities to go out and perform live than there are today. Sunn was real big on JBL speakers, which Fender only had in the Showmans. Some of the early 60watt models were the 100S (1-15" JBL D-130 + a horn), 200S (2 15" JBL D-140...for bass), Scepter (4 12" speakers--JBL available as an option) and a 2X 12" 1 piece amp that was built "up and down" instead of "sideways". At that time, the 2 piece Fender Bandmaster was very, very, popular amp, but players were putting the cabinets on their "side" so the speakers went "up and down" instead of sideways, so Sunn used this design in their 1 piece answer to the Bandmaster. The 60 watt series was Sunns original line and it was very well received at the time. Supposedly, a lot of the electronic design work was done by Dynaco, and the 60 watt series had 2 6CA7 tubes, if I remember correctly, just like the popular Dynaco amps of that day. There also was a line of "120" wat amps that were the "bigger" versions of the "60 watt" models, with 4 6CA7 power tubes instead of 2, and model numbers such as 1200S and 2000. A lot of people felt that was where Sunn first started to get off track, since after a bit of initial interest in these models, Sunns were less and less being regarded as "cool". In the early 70's, Sunn, at this time owned by Hartzell industries, a company known mostly for their airplane propellers, went transister in a big way, and achieved some sucess with PA equipment, and large bass rigs. In spite of this and John Entwhistle's use of their equipment, they gradually faded away until nobody seemed to realize that they were gone, or even miss them. One of their more notable features of the early amps, were the middle controls and the "contour" controls, to attempt to give greater capabilities for better tone control.
