There's a (excellent) movie about the Stones' 1969 tour: 'Gimme Shelter'. The concert fragments from the first half of the movie were recorded in late November 1969, towards the very end of the tour. Especially during the song 'Honky Tonk Women' you can see very well the imposing backline. I count 9 SVT heads, four on Mick Taylors' side of the stage; five on Keith and Bill's side. Apparently one head each was used while another stood ready on standby. The Stones had blown their backline earlier in the tour and were saved by members of the Grateful Dead who brought in their (much smaller) amps from the nearby rehearsal place. You can hear Mick Jagger ridiculing their amps ('someone gave us old radios') on a bootleg. The preferred way to have these early and volatile SVT's function during the shows was to switch them out and let them cool off, according to Rick Mandela, their 'official' Ampeg man and tech. I'm also assuming they used a set of SVT's for Stu's keyboard playing? Or maybe just more spares. In any case, several more SVT's were made in 69...
If you were an amp company trying to re-invent itself into the rock world, and the Stones decide to take your amps on the road, you would certainly quickly crank out a few more heads to back up those first five that the Stones used in rehearsal. Another real possibility is that the famous 'five' were not the only 5 in existence: that they were simply the only 5 available to Ampegs office on the West Coast: there may have been dozens more in Linden, in various stages of completion, or awaiting shipment.
BTW the guitarists used the SVT on top of two Colossus (or whatever name those ss amps had) cabs loaded with four Altec 417's. What later became the early (pre-towel-bar) V2 cab. The SVT provides a great snarly pissed off guitar sound with those cabs. It is about as silly to use the SVT for guitar as it is silly to use a Fender Bassman for guitar...
The 100W V4/VT22 came along later: Ronnie Wood in the Faces had double V4 stacks. The Stones had V4's besides their usual V2 cabs starting in '72 I believe, sitting in their usual SVT backline, to complement their SVT-sounds.
These are all fantastic amplifiers, for either guitar or bass. If you don't believe me, try. Just put a cab underneath that can handle your specific needs. And they DO need to be cranked for correct sound! (No master volume 'sissies' here
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The V2/VT40 was Ampegs attempt at the half-stack. Strangely enough, these amps have the exact schematic of the V4 with half the output tubes EXCEPT that they run about 50 more Volts to the plates (590 instead of 545, but I measure even more) which gives them a sound all their own, and 20% more power. They are also known to fry poorly made tubes. Newer 7027's may or may not take the extra abuse. I challenge you to stick NOS big 6L6 (Sylvania or Phillips, not the smaller GE) and bias them correctly, and see if you can do the blindfold test with 7027's...
Anyway, I love these amps and love the Stones from that period, and wanted to chime in on the forum.
BTW Keith's sound: on what remain my favorite Stones recordings (Let it Bleed, Yayas, Sticky Fingers), Keith never used a Tele: it was all 3 pickup Les Pauls and Dan Armstrongs and semi-acoustics. The Tele came in for the overdubs of Exile on Main Street, after all his favorite guitars got stolen in France. Yes, a Tele will give you the later Keith sound. But the rauchy late-60's/early 70's stuff is all Tele-less. That said, Keith will always sound like Keith, and is a virtuoso in getting great sounds in the studio. That intro of Midnight Rambler... and Gimme Shelter, both done on a horrible Austrian or Italian semi-acoustic that broke after the 'money' take, into a Triumph solid state amp that was brought to the edge of meltdown?
Some prices on the 70s SVTs are getting absurd and beyond. The people on ebay are quite adventurous on pricing them. $1400 is reasonable, its what I paid for a 70s model in good shape a few months ago.
