Ampeg SVT-CL vs. SUNN 2000s

[bluesdogblues]

If you go with Sunn, and you eventually regret it, you can sell 'em and buy an SVT any day of the week.
If you go with the SVT, and you eventually wish you tried the Sunn, good luck finding another matching 2000s in your neighborhood without waiting awhile.

Maybe you're right... but the question is..is it worth it?..

 

[Jim Campbell]

Maybe you're right... but the question is..is it worth it?..

a grand cash,all day long....straight across swap for a decent shape svt/410 nope.....

 

[Korladis]

Me too. I recall a guy who had a Bassman amp that obviously didn't make the grade in a loud rock band. He bought a 200s head thinking he would get the performance of a 200S rig with his Bassman bottom. Nope. Only marginally better. The 200S was only rated 60 watts but they would bury any 100 watt 2x15 at that time. It was the efficient folded horn bottom with 2 D140's. ( I know, not a true folded horn, discussed many times.)
Same deal as the old Acoustic 360. Conservatively rated power through a speaker design that just maximized the effects of those watts.

Another vivid memory. I heard a band in a club where both guitar players had Twin Reverbs on top of 2x12 bassman extensions. Obscenely loud. The bass player had a Sunn 2000s and was not "lost in the mix" as the saying goes. That Sunn shook my bones and rattled my brain and I could hear and feel every note...clearly.

One of the limiting factors for a lot of small time players was that the 2000S was one of the top of the line pro rigs at the time and ridiculously expensive. If you saw anybody with one of those or a Traynor YBA-3A with 2 8x10s you just drooled in envy. The SVT soon followed.

Yeah, I think I read somewhere, maybe here, that the price of a full Sunn 2000S rig (which, like the SVT rig, was originally one amp and two cabs, and you couldn't buy the amp or the cab by itself), in today's dollars, would be about $10,000 or something obscene like that. It was a very top of the line system back in the day.

If you go with Sunn, and you eventually regret it, you can sell 'em and buy an SVT any day of the week.
If you go with the SVT, and you eventually wish you tried the Sunn, good luck finding another matching 2000s in your neighborhood without waiting awhile.

Yep. SVTs are (fortunately) everywhere. 2000S rigs are more rare.

Maybe you're right... but the question is..is it worth it?..

Well, right now, if the OP gets the Sunn rig and doesn't like it, they can always just sell it for what they paid.

 

[bluesdogblues]

Yep. SVTs are (fortunately) everywhere. 2000S rigs are more rare.


Well, right now, if the OP gets the Sunn rig and doesn't like it, they can always just sell it for what they paid.

it's rare. So do many thing.
And it's personal preference (to decide is it worth it or not).
If it's me, I'd not easily sell something of mine that I already know that is good (or I already decide that it's better - even if only from demo etc) to buy something that rare..that probably I'd sell it again soon. I'm not a trader. The comparison demo is enough for me to decide....
But the situation can be different if, say - I have enough money to buy the Sunn without having to sell my SVT-CL, ....YMMV.

But again, it's me,.. if you/the OP think it's worth it, please do it

 

[Korladis]

it's rare. So do many thing.
And it's personal preference (to decide is it worth it or not).
If it's me, I'd not easily sell something of mine that I already know that is good (or I already decide that it's better - even if only from demo etc) to buy something that rare..that probably I'd sell it again soon. I'm not a trader. The comparison demo is enough for me to decide....
But the situation can be different if, say - I have enough money to buy the Sunn without having to sell my SVT-CL, ....YMMV.

But again, it's me,.. if you/the OP think it's worth it, please do it

Personally, I think he should just dump the 410HLF and get the 2000S rig, and keep the SVT amp.

 

[bluesdogblues]

Good idea

 

[Jim Campbell]

Personally, I think he should just dump the 410HLF and get the 2000S rig, and keep the SVT amp.

If it were me, there'd be no contest, it'd be the Sunn all the way. $1000 is usually the price of a head alone, and that rig will end up more valuable than the SVT-CL to a good many people. Besides that aspect, I also just think the Sunns sound better than the SVT-CL (and SVT-VR) by a country mile. I've never played a vintage blueline or anything, but I've tested out plenty of newer SVTs, and I don't think I'd voluntarily play through one given the option to play through a Sunn (or Hiwatt, or Marshall, or Sound City, etc). However, this is all personal opinion, there is no objective fact that one is superior to the other. For my tonal goals, Sunns do it, Ampegs don't. Here's a sample of my 1200s, controls set vol. 5, treble 10, bass 2, contour 10, to give you an idea of what tone they can produce. That's just a precision with rotosound swing 66s.


As far as durability, the Sunns are built like tanks. The transformers are like having two grape fruits stuffed in the head cabinet.The insides are very nicely laid out PTP, and can be easily serviced by most competent techs, as the design is in part derived from old Dynaco Hi-Fi stereo circuits. Which leads to another point that should be considered when comparing these amps: the 2000s is rated at 120w, but people will say "it's a very loud tube 120w". What they are actually perceiving is that if we were to measure the 2000s by the same standard as the SVT or most MI amps, then a healthy one would more accurately be rated around 190w. Sunn rated their amps by Hi-Fi standards, quite a bit more rigid than MI standards, and thus the 2000s was 120 watts RMS continuous, 20 Hz to 15 KHz, within 1 dB of 120 watts with less than 1% total harmonic distortion. So it's 120w in the 20Hz to 15KHz frequency range, before any THD (or, well, 1% distortion), so you're getting 120w clean before any trace of breakup. Pipe that into JBLs, very effecient speakers, and you have a very loud rig despite it's relatively "low wattage". Trust me, I run both a 1200s and a 2000s into 2x2000s cabinets each loaded with JBL K140s. That's a loud freaking rig. It does feel as if the air is blowing from behind you. The SVT will still be louder, but it's not as big of a difference as it might be made out to be.

What would be important to discover is what speakers are in the cabinet. As Satori said above, the 2000s only ever came with JBLs (although artists could pretty much ask for whatever speakers they want, so there are supposedly some factory Altec loaded 2000s cabs), but who knows what condition they're in, or even if they're the original speakers.

what's that tune after led zep.....i'm drawing a total blank....

 

[D.M.N.]

That's our original, Slip Away. Wrote it a couple years back.

Here's our Fb, though I guess at this point we're on "indefinite hiatus". All the recordings are either a 2000s or 1200s: https://www.facebook.com/TheSonicVandals

 

[chadds]

Old Sunns are great but all I know is that they're still making SVT's

Without arguing market share & availability are not an arrow toward quality. Beta was better than VHS technically. VHS won out. There's no accounting for taste.

 

[Jim Campbell]

That's our original, Slip Away. Wrote it a couple years back.

Here's our Fb, though I guess at this point we're on "indefinite hiatus". All the recordings are either a 2000s or 1200s: https://www.facebook.com/TheSonicVandals

i like it....love the tone..... i can sorta get close with my svt /200s clone.....i'd like to find a 2x15 k140 but they're getting awful rare...i have 2 halves of a 200s clone made back in the day by banquox,a local company but the drivers are not original and some magician sawed it in half.........same baffle/port set up.....

 

[bobyoung53]

This is a gag post, right?

I had two 2000S bottoms years ago with JBL D-140's in them used with a Marshall Major head (200 watts), he is right, you could feel the air at 20' in front of them and I mean everything vibrated, your shirt, your cups, things would vibrate off tables. (I had a 2000S head but rarely used it, didn't have enough juice) One place I played used to call us "The Big Wind". Of course the Marshall was a lot louder than the 2000S head and eventually I blew one of the JBL's, the little wire that goes into the cone actually pulled right out of the cone from over excursion.This was in the early 70's. As far as the SVT vs 2000S head, there is no contest, The SVT is way louder and has much better tone controls, the 2000S had very little leeway as far as differing tones, and they are only 120 WRMS vs 300WRMS for the SVT. The SVT is far cleaner and controllable at loud volumes and has way more punch.

 

[bobyoung53]

Set up a Sunn 2000s crank it up and play in front of it and report back. Then we will be able to discuss from the same vantage point.... Until then any discussion will more than likely be fruitless. But until you get back to me with your own firsthand experience, I'll say that from my first hand experience of playing SVT's and having heard the Sunn 2000's ( I've never played through one - only heard/experienced it as an audience member) that again, there was no comparison. The SVT vibrates - the Sunn PUSHES.

Anyone who has seen my posts knows I'm an avowed Acoustic owner/operator and will also know I dont have much love for Ampeg amps, but I err on the side of being open minded (keeps me out of jail on occasion) and let my ears do the listening - and not my heart. I enjoy lowend no matter how it is birthed.. it's just that I seem to enjoy it more when it's not running through a "Baxandall boost and cut bass and treble, and the excellent active inductor based boost and cut midrange", thats all.

I've played my share of Ampeg's over the years and I always seem to have the same exact experience - Focus is lost, the tone is anonymous, the top end is like crinkly aluminum foil and the bottomend is slushy. Hearing the Sunn 2000's was the exact opposite of all these things AND could feel it's visceral impact in a way I've NEVER felt with an Ampeg. An SVT cabs lo- mid/mid response starts to drop off radically after about 20 ft ( the result of having 4 little infinite baffle cabinets maybe? dunno...) where as my experience with the Sunn was again the exact opposite. I'm not talking about vibration here, I'm talking about feeling the sound IMPACTING your body.

I now there are people on TB who kneel at the alter of Ampeg (I am certainly not one of them and I hope that doesn't make me a "bad person"), but the night I felt/heard the Sunn, I wasn't on a mission to bash another brand of amp... I just know what I felt.

You are comparing the cabinet styles not the heads. 2000S cabs were long throw kind of like scoops and SVT cabs are sealed. SVT cabs will seems to drop off in the low end if you don't set the head correctly, you need to add a little low mid, (set the mid switch to 220 hz and set the pot at about 8 or 9 o'clock ) and you'll get all kinds of punch. I've vibrated sound booths with double cab SVT's before at 50'.

 

[bobyoung53]

I would say that the SVT is definitely the more versatile amp. If I had a 2000S amp, I'd probably just use one setting on it with minor variations (mids cranked all the way, lows depending on the room, highs depending on how old the strings are). I'd only use one sound from it, but it's a hell of a sound.

I think my ideal amp would probably be a modified copy of the 2000S with a second, blendable channel that's just the mid control from the SVT, with the Mesa D-180's master/volume setup.


Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. The SVT will be loud on almost any cab, whereas the 2000S head really works best with the 2000S cab. An SVT on a 2000S cab would also probably be obscenely loud.


+1.

SVT will sound good on the 2000S cab, too.


Yep, though the SVT doesn't really have over twice the power of the 2000S. The SVT is rated at about 5% THD I think, whereas the Sunn is rated at 1%. Rated the same way, the 2000S head, as D.M.N. noted earlier, would be at least 150 watts for the older ones, and quite a bit more than that for the later ones.

SVT's (at least mine 1977 and 1976) are rated at 300WRMS with less than 2% distortion

 

[chadds]

Old Sunns are great but all I know is that they're still making SVT's

Kinda irrelevant. What sounds good has nothing to do with what the public likes. The Acoustic 360 is back yet it ceased to exist for decades. Was it a great piece? Oh yeah.

The Sunns and Ampegs are two different flavors of nice.

I owned and gigged all of these amps & cabs. When they were new.

 

[Wipsu]

Grab Sunn. Dan from BTBAM uses Sunn with ampeg 8x10.
I'd prefer Sunn and if you want to change later to Ampeg, I'm sure it won't be a problem. But if you choose ampeg and want to change it for sunn, you might have a problem.

 

[Sunnmon]

I voted with my wallet. My 1973 Magnavox is an awesome amp. I never "bonded" with it. Traded it for another 2000S rig. I did some A/B testing though. If it's just volume and headroom, then the SVT wins that contest for sure. And versatile tone stack settings, yes the SVT wins. But some of us are looking for a different tone. I just like the tone of Sunn better and the fatter, lush low end of the 2000S bin with D-140's. Each to his own, it's all good.

 

[Sunnmon]

2 heads, 8 x 6550A and 16 x 10" speakers easily eclipses the SVT in volume, headroom and Punch. Now we're equal in watts and cone area with 2 150 watt amps vs the SVT and 2 810E cabinets. The Test is done. The choice is yours my fellow bassists.

 

[Korladis]

I voted with my wallet. My 1973 Magnavox is an awesome amp. I never "bonded" with it. Traded it for another 2000S rig. I did some A/B testing though. If it's just volume and headroom, then the SVT wins that contest for sure. And versatile tone stack settings, yes the SVT wins. But some of us are looking for a different tone. I just like the tone of Sunn better and the fatter, lush low end of the 2000S bin with D-140's. Each to his own, it's all good. View attachment 1128091 View attachment 1128092

Did you ever hook up the SVT to the Sunn 2000S cab?

 

[Sunnmon]

Did you ever hook up the SVT to the Sunn 2000S cab?

Nope. But on the day I took delivery of my SVT I did run her @ 2Ω into a pair of OEM Sunn 200S bins. Through 4 D140's it sounded like a massive Dual Showman on steroids. It was bluddy awesome. If you bond with yer SVT you'll be most satisfied. You guys know all the gear I own, just not my cup of tea. Key thing: be happy, you'll play better.

 

[anderbass]

Holy overhang, how wide are those 2000s heads?