Polytone Custom Bass Amp

[62bass]

I remember they made a model (and still do) with two power amps and a 16" and 2x8" speakers. I haven't seen the exact model you mentioned though but it sounds similar. Yours could have been a custom model or a production model that never made it. I played through an old two amp 1x15" and 2x8" model a few years ago in a rehearsal studio. It was on its last legs and the 15 was starting to go, but it would have been okay if in good condition. Heavy as hell though. It had casters. I would never use one of those these days with so many lighter and more powerful amps available.

Polytone is no help at all. They are really tough to get in touch with except by phone and don't care about their history it seems. I did get an answer from them last year when I emailed them to ask about dealers for their amps in Canada.

As I said in my old post in this thread, I think, I bought a Minibrute 12 back in the 70s. Mine had the foam grill and that strange cloth covering. Wonderful sounding amp for recording and very small gigs. I tried a new Polytone in a store a year ago and it was much the same but had a 15" speaker and about 120 watts.

But for the money these days, you can do much better.

 

[DavidLopezJr]

Sorry for the really far bump but some guy is trying to sell me this same amp but with two 12's instead of 15's. He said that it needs work but has worked before and only the second channel currently works. I've heard that there are parts for these amps that are hard to get. Is that true?

 

[scabpicker]

Well, I used to own one of these monsters. I remembered blasting it at full volume with my EB-0 when I was young, and it sounded like pure awesome to me then. It was like they were made for each other. So, I was drenched in nostalgia and looking for info on it, just to see what the hell that thing was. I'd never seen anything close to it in real life. I'd seen the very similar one for sale in Italy (it's still for sale), and when I saw the pics of yours, I thought it looked exactly like the one I owned.

Then I checked the user name.

Then I checked the location.

And now I'm zombifying this thread yet again just to say: I'm the person you got that bass amp from. I don't remember what our bargain was, but I paid $180 for it when I got it, and it was in sad shape when it went into your possession, sir. (Three guitars running through it at max volume makes it blow up. Just because it has four inputs doesn't mean you should use them all.) I remember that in 1992 you said that the people at Polytone had no idea who designed or made that amp, and they could only speculate what it was. Even though it still sounded good after you fixed it, it was never really loud enough to deal with your band. I'm glad you fixed it, but to think it's worth more than $180 is a fantasy. If you haven't become vapor, are you still playing around town?

DavidLopezJr, I'm sure that amp is long gone, and you might be too; but the 215-700 in the OP got pretty much a full rebuild (iirc, power transistors and other components) in 1992 or so. 21 years later, it's sometimes hard to find specialty transistors that were exactly the same as a model put out 5 years ago. Once you get into strange tremolo or reverb designs, all bets are off. You can usually find a workalike replacement for the simpler parts, so power amps and preamps can usually be rebuilt. Effects designs sometimes require proprietary parts, like the reverb and trem on my 1484 Silvertone. Once the wrong part breaks in them, they're never coming back.

 

[Maurizio Bozzi]

Hi friends, do you know infos about this amp?