So thanks to the glory of Craigslist, I stumbled upon a find of mammoth proportions.
Ever since I ran lights for a production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch where the musical director brought in a Sunn tube stack for the guitarist, I've been wanting to try out some of their gear. I was impressed a guitar amp could sound so warm and fat, and expected their bass gear would even more so.
Found this ad listing a '67 Sunn 1x15 with an A.M.P. BH-420, and had to check it out.
Never heard of A.M.P. until I saw the posting, did some quick research, saw that people liked them.
This rig is MEAN.
(crappy focus cause I didnt have my good camera at the rehearsal space)
I was dissappointed to discover the cab was an 8ohm so I could only get 220 watts out of the BH-420, until I cranked it up.
DEAR LORD.
I previously used a 200W Acoustic B200H and an old 70s Eminence 1x15, and this made my old rig sound like a practice amp. Huge and fat, and with the parametric letting me set my middle 4 EQ bands, it results in deliciously big thick juicy grunt. The treble end of the amp isnt great, but you dont use a solo 1x15 if you play slap.
I was told it is so warm because it is an 'analog' solid state, not sure what they meant, perhaps that it uses transistors etc instead of microchips and digital modeling? I'd always taken analog to mean tube. Regardless, the dude who went on to form SWR obviously knew how to make great amps, I'm surprised how much I like it.
Anyone know much about the cab? I've not seen a Sunn cab before that had a shelf area for the amp like this one has, and its not an aftermarket job, the sides of the cab go all the way up to the top, all one piece of wood on each side. Its great because I can set my beer on top, rather than worrying about someone knocking it over into the amp.
However the obvious mod is that it no longer has the jack panel which would tell me a model # or SOMETHING about it (I don't even know how much wattage it is rated for =\). The jack has been removed, and a speaker cable directly wired to the speaker's leads, so there is a small length of cable sticking out at the amp shelf to plug right in, which is convenient but it means no jack panel. It has the 15" speaker at the bottom of the cabinet, and a small round port in the bottom right (looking at it from the front), the rest is sealed and empty.
