That's a MiniBrute III with the 15" speaker. I installed that circular metal grille...but 1980 (or maybe it was 1979?) was the year that PolyTone transitioned away from the convoluted foam grill that covered the entire square face of the baffle (like the one in your picture) and started doing a circular flat foam grill over just the driver itself. So the white baffle was always exposed like that, but I lost the original circular foam grille within a couple years of owning it.
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Weird Amps Nobody Remembers
- Thread starter Pablo504
- Start date
That's a MiniBrute III with the 15" speaker. I installed that circular metal grille...but 1980 (or maybe it was 1979?) was the year that PolyTone transitioned away from the convoluted foam grill that covered the entire square face of the baffle (like the one in your picture) and started doing a circular flat foam grill over just the driver itself. So the white baffle was always exposed like that, but I lost the original circular foam grille within a couple years of owning it.
Among the more unusual were the SG Systems amps put out by CMI which also owned Gibson at the time.
Oddball amp in that it had a solid state preamp wedded to a tube power amp. The opposite of how most hybrids were designed. Had some interesting features for its time - like high and low impedance input jacks. It came in a variety of cab configurations and included a built in Maestro PS-1 phase shifter. Very different amp. There’s still a small but active market for them.
They did a bass version too.
I only ran into one (the bass version) out in the wild a single time back around 1976-77. Otherwise tge only place I ever saw them was in music stores. The bass cab packed two 10s plus a 15! I thought it sounded really good. Very clean and deep.
Oddball amp in that it had a solid state preamp wedded to a tube power amp. The opposite of how most hybrids were designed. Had some interesting features for its time - like high and low impedance input jacks. It came in a variety of cab configurations and included a built in Maestro PS-1 phase shifter. Very different amp. There’s still a small but active market for them.
They did a bass version too.
I only ran into one (the bass version) out in the wild a single time back around 1976-77. Otherwise tge only place I ever saw them was in music stores. The bass cab packed two 10s plus a 15! I thought it sounded really good. Very clean and deep.
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Thanks to you guys for referencing Southwest Technical Products, and especially to you Francis, for providing that link. It's real trip down memory lane. The first time I soldered a component to a circuit board, it was to build one of their strobe light kits. I had never seen a catalog, but learned about them from the hobbyist magazines. Later, the first PA company I worked for had a "rack" of a dozen Universal Tiger amps that the owner had built himself -- about 10 of which could be counted on to work at any given point in time. Happily, I only worked with those a couple of times before they were replaced with six first-generation Crown DC-300s.
The Yamaha 2200 power amps referenced elsewhere had the greatest "VU" meters ever included in an amplifier, IMHO. I learned a lot about the logarithmic nature of the decibel scale from watching those meters... they even had a scale that indicated power output in watts. Very enlightening for me at the time.
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Lots of amps have big meters; it was the dynamics of the Yamaha meters that made them so effective at conveying information, IMO. Not exactly peak reading, but somewhat like that. And of course, they had clip indicators in the face of the meter as well. It's easy to duplicate the same display dynamics now with LEDs or whatever, but it still isn't as effective, at least to this old timer who grew up reading VU meter displays.
Didn't some of the SG Systems amps also include a manual "phase shift" control, or some kind of variable notch filter that they labelled "phase"-something? Or maybe I'm misremembering...
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Iirc, the meter driver has faster than VU attack and slower than VU decay times.
Not sure. There was something called a “waveform” control on one of its two channels. It’s been awhile (like 30+ years) since I last saw one so the memory is getting foggy on specifics. The waveform thing was a distortion or fuzz circuit with a notch or resonance filter of some sort. There were jacks for pedal controllers on the back. So if you could sweep that waveform setting that might be how you could have gotten a manual phase-y sort of sound out of it. But don’t quote me on it.
The one time a music store permitted me to try the one they had on display (probably only because I established sufficient ‘street cred’ since I was buying a JB at the time. Those sure were the days weren’t they?
) I was immediately impressed by the clarity and deep bass it could pump out. And it was certainly loud. And I really liked the control layout. and big knobs. More like something you’d expect to see on a Moog modular system than a guitar amp.
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Not a guitar amp, but the Tapco 6000 and 6000R preamp/mixers were once so common that about half the bands around where I was in the early to mid 70s were using them paired with a Crown DC-300A or similar as their PA system. This was in the days before real (and affordable!) FOH systems existed and local band PAs were mostly used just for the vocals.
Those of you whose band days extend back that far probably remember using, or at least seeing, these little mixers everywhere.
Those of you whose band days extend back that far probably remember using, or at least seeing, these little mixers everywhere.
TAPCO was, of course, Greg Mackie's first venture into inexpensive mixers. Like the later Mackie products, they had a couple of pretty OK sounding mixers for the money, and, as observed, they were fairly ubiquitous. I still have a 6100R with 8-input expander in a case, but it's unusable because someone attempted to clean the pots with some sort of "electronics cleaner" and rendered the whole board inoperable. You can't turn the pots with a pair of pliers -- they're basically welded in place.
I'll refute the inference that "real" FOH systems didn't exist in the mid-seventies, though. I guess it depends on how one defines "real", but I was operating SR systems by 1973 that were adequate enough to amplify the drums, bass and other backline, along with the vocals. It was lots of big ol' horn-loaded bass bins and aluminum sectoral or radial HF horns, but folks have been deploying real-enough systems for longer than that, IME.
I'll refute the inference that "real" FOH systems didn't exist in the mid-seventies, though. I guess it depends on how one defines "real", but I was operating SR systems by 1973 that were adequate enough to amplify the drums, bass and other backline, along with the vocals. It was lots of big ol' horn-loaded bass bins and aluminum sectoral or radial HF horns, but folks have been deploying real-enough systems for longer than that, IME.
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https://images.reverb.com/image/upl...90,w_620/v1516748383/qi1yqq3afmxcklarck5u.jpg
This one is best forgotten! …although I’ll admit I put a bunch of miles on mine
.
This one is best forgotten! …although I’ll admit I put a bunch of miles on mine
.
Nice!https://images.reverb.com/image/upl...90,w_620/v1516748383/qi1yqq3afmxcklarck5u.jpg
This one is best forgotten! …although I’ll admit I put a bunch of miles on mine
In my case: multiple busses including a monitor mix for openers. And one which provides the entire FOH sound with no help from the backline.
My first serious band started out with a Kustom 300 PA system whose speakers later got replaced with a pair of reworked EV Eliminator PA cabs. Someplace along the line they got professionally modded by a pro audio shop. Why? I have no idea. But I do recall they redid the crossovers for some reason. I think it was because they patched out the internal horns that kept blowing and set it up to use a pair of external horns made by Community Light & Sound. They also installed piezos on the front of main cab. This was around ‘75.
My later 70s era band used a PA based around a pair of Voice of the Theater speakers powered by (I think) a Quilter Sound power amp. I can’t recall exactly what model mixer got used. But it was made by Allen-Heath and had 8-in/4-out. No idea what model it was. We bought it as a floor demo, and the guy who sold it to us referred to it as a “portable mixer.” I thought it sounded huge. But I’ll cede further discussion's about PAs to those who easily know far more about this topic than I do. Running house sound was never much my thing. I was already busy enough as a co-songwriter, arranger backup singer, bass player, and somewhat reluctant assistant BL.
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From another thread, but here is my Ka$ino Snake Eyes rig. Every eq knob is labeled “ Bass “ LOL
When I play out, people dig the sound of my rig, but never understand what I have.
I always get, “never seen that before, sounds amazing”
Tech21 VT500 head.
Pretty odd, great head.
I always get, “never seen that before, sounds amazing”
Tech21 VT500 head.
Pretty odd, great head.
Did we really get to 10 pages with no mention of Harmony amplifiers? I guess nobody remembers those!
A guy in my band in 1974 had one similar to this:
...which, admittedly, was probably the last time I saw one. Or even thought of one.
A guy in my band in 1974 had one similar to this:
...which, admittedly, was probably the last time I saw one. Or even thought of one.
That reminds me of those Western Auto stores back in the 70s that sold some music stuff. I think they had amps called Truetone or something like that. I remember at about 12 years old seeing a few guitars and amps mixed in with the auto parts....
I have a Truetone 6 string hollow very cheap and plays great!
