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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 6:51 pm
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Mr. Nylon wrote:
You shouldn't be surprised about Fender's SWR raiding. Use what they want from SWR designs, apply them to Fender brand amps, and SWR sinks into the sunset. They did it to one of the most famous names in the history of amps,.... SUNN.


Yes I knew this,...it's really sad. anyway as you know I've been doing a lot of research for the last few months checking out many amps as I'm considering getting a back up head,..... I was considering the Rumble 350, Orange Terror 1000 or Gallien Krueger Fusion 500,....... then I started looking at the TC Electronic RH450 & RH750...& was really impressed with what they have to offer( I love their Demo video's).......I think their Bass amps & Cabinets are progressive & well thought out so at this point I'm going between getting a used SWR Head or go forward & get the TC Electronic RH750 ....I'm in no rush & this will probably happen later in the year..... :)


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 8:20 pm
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I had the GK700, and the Ampeg PRO3 before the RH450. I prefer the Tube Tone the RH450, and RH750's are capable of. The three memory on them is an added plus.

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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 10:03 pm
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Mr. Nylon wrote:
I had the GK700, and the Ampeg PRO3 before the RH450. I prefer the Tube Tone the RH450, and RH750's are capable of. The three memory on them is an added plus.

The 3 memory is a great feature, as is the Tube Tone, Tuner, Spectra Comp & Tweeter Tone. Do you use the RC4 Remote (optional foot switch switch) it activates the mute & three memories.


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 4:15 am
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James Coderre wrote:
Mr. Nylon wrote:
I had the GK700, and the Ampeg PRO3 before the RH450. I prefer the Tube Tone the RH450, and RH750's are capable of. The three memory on them is an added plus.

The 3 memory is a great feature, as is the Tube Tone, Tuner, Spectra Comp & Tweeter Tone. Do you use the RC4 Remote (optional foot switch switch) it activates the mute & three memories.


No, I don't use the pedal. The Ampeg was an SVT-7PRO, not a PRO3. :roll: It's quick enough, and easy to switch memories by just turning to the head and pushing the desired memory button. The head is pretty well lit-up from the settings I use anyway.

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Last edited by Mr. Nylon on Mon May 13, 2013 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 5:48 am
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Mr. Nylon wrote:
James Coderre wrote:
Mr. Nylon wrote:
I had the GK700, and the Ampeg PRO3 before the RH450. I prefer the Tube Tone the RH450, and RH750's are capable of. The three memory on them is an added plus.

The 3 memory is a great feature, as is the Tube Tone, Tuner, Spectra Comp & Tweeter Tone. Do you use the RC4 Remote (optional foot switch switch) it activates the mute & three memories.


No, I don't use the pedal. The Ampeg was an SVT-7PRO, not a PRO3. :roll: It's quick enough, and easy to switch memories by just turning to the head and pushing the desired memory button. The head is pretty well lit-up from the settings I use anyway.

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Pretty sweet little box. How is the sound on that RH450?

Art


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 7:30 am
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Art1 wrote:
Pretty sweet little box. How is the sound on that RH450?

Art

Here's a few reviews & demo's form You Tube:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... WHG1kiHLyY


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 8:51 am
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Whatever amp you decide to go for, I'm glad I went with the RH450. It's nice to use with headphones, in another room disconnected from the cab too.

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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 4:10 pm
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Mr. Nylon wrote:

You shouldn't be surprised about Fender's SWR raiding. Use what they want from SWR designs, apply them to Fender brand amps, and SWR sinks into the sunset. They did it to one of the most famous names in the history of amps,.... SUNN.


What happened to Sunn is not all Fender's fault. Lots of the damage was done before Fender SAVED the brand name in 1985. Hartzell ownership of SUNN had done so much damage to the brand that even Fender couldn't save the brand or make it competitive in the amp business of today, which is the business of volume sales. There is no doubt that the MODEL T head was one of the best amps ever badged with the Sunn logo and that came during FMIC ownership. Fender gave it a good shot and I don't think that all the blame for the demise of Sunn instrument amps can be laid at the FMIC doorstep. Some maybe, but it goes back to Hartzell's solid state stuff.


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 1:27 pm
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brotherdave wrote:
What happened to Sunn is not all Fender's fault. Lots of the damage was done before Fender SAVED the brand name in 1985. Hartzell ownership of SUNN had done so much damage to the brand that even Fender couldn't save the brand or make it competitive in the amp business of today, which is the business of volume sales. There is no doubt that the MODEL T head was one of the best amps ever badged with the Sunn logo and that came during FMIC ownership. Fender gave it a good shot and I don't think that all the blame for the demise of Sunn instrument amps can be laid at the FMIC doorstep. Some maybe, but it goes back to Hartzell's solid state stuff.


Hmmm....interesting, I didn't know this, I thought Fender had bought Sunn & then just let the brand sit. Thanks for the info Dave.


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 8:53 pm
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James Coderre wrote:

Hmmm....interesting, I didn't know this, I thought Fender had bought Sunn & then just let the brand sit. Thanks for the info Dave.


Yes FMIC bought the brand and left it shelved it for over a decade, but Sunn was not making anything at the time Fender bought the brand name anyway.

The "Cliff Notes" version of Sunn history. Norm Sundholm plays bass in a Portland band called THE KINGSMEN who has a hit record called "LOUIE LOUIE." Suddenly famous the formerly local band is booked on a 50 state tour. Norm wants a louder amp than anything available at the time for large venues and his brother Conrad Sundholm who is an electronics technician builds him one in the family garage. He fashions it by building a tube preamp which feeds two 75 watt DYNACO/DYNAKIT tube power amps that are intended for build-it-yourself HI-FI buffs and the amps push 2 15-inch JBL's in a folded horn cab. The tour goes well and other bassists who hear Norm play want his brother to make them one of these super loud bass amps. Orders start coming to the Sundholm family garage where the waiting list is served one at a time. Conrad builds some guitar amps and they catch on also. The waiting list grows until it is expanding so fast they can never fill all the orders from the garage. The business of SUNN amps that started as a partnership of the two Sundholm brothers outgrows the garage and moves into a nearby industrial facility. It also outgrows Norm's interest so he sells his share of Sunn to Conrad and concentrates on his real estate career. As sole proprietor Conrad grows Sunn quickly and soon The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Buffalo Springfield and other top acts are seen playing Sunn on tour. Almost overnight Sunn is the COOL brand for touring pros. Sunn stacks suddenly are in every high end guitar store and on stage at every major concert.

The rapidly rising Sunn catches the attention of Bill Hartzell who is president of Hartzell Industries based in Minneapolis. Hartzell makes Conrad Sundholm an offer he can't refuse. Mr. Hartzell moves speaker cab production to an established Hartzell facility in Kentucky but leaves amp chassis production in Oregon for a while and runs things from Minneapolis.

About the time Hartzell buys out Sunn, a brand called Marshall is beginning to take over the touring guitar amp business. Almost as quickly as they became the COOL amp for touring pros Sunn becomes unable to maintain their market share in the high end tube amp game or even to keep their top endorsing artists. Marshall is now the COOL brand for touring pros. As relatively quickly as the Sunn rose, the Sunn sets.

To reposition Sunn's price point toward more mainstream musicians instead of touring pros which they've written off, while also improving the profit margin, Bill Hartzell's Sunn abandons all-tube gear to go all solid-state. In exchange for huge power ratings, lighter weight and lower cost, those tube preamps Conrad Sundholm designed are abandoned. It turns out the Conrad Sundholm tube preamp designs are where true Sunn tone lived. Sunn amps are never the same after that.

When Bill Hartzell is killed in a plane crash in the early 1980's, Sunn for all practical purposes goes down with him as his estate doesn't know the first thing about the amp business and cares even less about keeping the now marginally profitable Sunn line going beyond the next payday. Production of Sunn products stops almost immediately after Mr. Hartzell is killed. There really isn't a lot of wailing about this at the time because Sunn is no longer a major force in pro amps anyway. There's no Internet for people to discuss it either.

A few years after Bill Hartzell's plane crash, FMIC buys the Sunn brand name from his estate. Sunn has been a dead brand for 2 to 3 years before FMIC/Fender takes the brand name over. This was not a case of FMIC buying Sunn and shutting it down because Sunn was already defunct.

Next in the Sunn story FMIC pulls the SUNN brand off the shelf to make a serious effort to revive Sunn as a professional level stand-alone amp brand, separate from their other product lines. FMIC launches the new era of Sunn amplification with a new MODEL T all tube 125 watt channel switching guitar head along with two high powered bass heads. The SUNN 300T head is an all tube 300 watt bass model piggyback head that is beastly and there is a 1200 Watt Hybrid 2 space rack model bass head called the Sunn 1200S that is one of the highest power mass production bass amp of the day. These stunning heads with their matching Sunn speaker cabinets make for a totally worthy and exciting relaunch of the once great SUNN badge with all new product designs that could seriously compete with the likes of contemporary Ampegs and Marshalls. This Sunn relaunch should go over great guns. It doesn't.

I can't explain for sure why the new and clearly fantastic Sunn branded amps fail to find their market. Perhaps the memory of the solid state Sunn amps left too much of a negative legacy to overcome regardless of how great the new Sunn amps actually were. For whatever reasons FMIC had difficulty moving them on a satisfactory scale to justify maintaining separate brand marketing. FMIC knew they for sure had two bass amps superior to almost anything else on the market. They were monsters. Meanwhile the market for high powered all tube guitar heads is not doing so great even for Marshall. So FMIC re-badges the SUNN bass amps to a FENDER BASSMAN PRO line. The last SUNN bass heads become known as the Fender Bassman 300 PRO and the Fender Bassman 1200 PRO. FMIC's Sunn Model-T channel switching guitar amp, a really great all tube guitar head in an era where most players want combos, is quietly retired.

As solid state bass amps go, the late Hartzell era Sunn solid state ones (the Coliseum for example) were among the most powerful on the market at the time and even today are among the most reliable of the mid 70's to early 80's solid state bass amps. However the inescapable fact is Sunn solid state amps lack the oomph of the vintage Sunn tube gear. Hartzell Industries took a Rolls Royce, turned it into a Chevy and charged a Cadillac price for it. They were well made. Today you'll see fifty solid state Sunn bass amps for sale before you will run across even one Fender CBS era Solid State Series Fender amp of the exact same vintage in either guitar or bass flavors. In fact so few examples of the Fender solid state amps of the same era survive today that when one does pop up somewhere people wonder if it is a fake because they never saw one like it before. So I'm not saying the SUNN solid state amps were "bad," I'm just saying they were not the same animal as the tube amps that made the Sunn name highly albeit briefly revered in the first place. As solid state stuff of the day went, the Sunn amps were the best. If I ran across a really good one, I might snag it for a backup or rehearsal rig. I'd have confidence in it working but I know it isn't the same as a Sunn tube amp tone-wise.

HAPPY ENDING TO THE SUNN STORY:

Today Conrad Sundholm makes all tube guitar combo amps ($2K to $3K per) plus he turns out a 12AX7 based rack mounted bass preamp ($700 per). His amp brand logo is "CONRAD" and the business is named Conrad Engineering. Like the early 60's SUNN amps from the family garage, each is hand wired by Conrad one at a time for a customer whose name has slowly worked its way up on a rapidly growing waiting list. History repeats up to this point, but I think moving to an industrial setting isn't in Conrad's plans this time. He claims he's having too much fun.


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 11:33 pm
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Great post Dave. Thanks for making Conrad and his gear known. Loved the story and history too.

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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 7:18 pm
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Great Post Dave!!......it eerily mirrors what Happened to Acoustic,... makers of the awesome Acoustic 360/361 ......& happily the brand is being resurrected, they even made the front cover of May 2013 Bassplayer magazine check out the article:
http://acousticbassusa.com/history/BassPlayer%20doc.pdf
Their website: www.acousticbassusa.com ( amps & cabinets on this site are made in the USA.)

I should mention that they have another website that sells Acoustic amps made in China:
http://www.acousticamplification.com/


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 8:10 pm
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James Coderre wrote:
Great Post Dave!!......it eerily mirrors what Happened to Acoustic,... makers of the awesome Acoustic 360/361 ......& happily the brand is being resurrected, they even made the front cover of May 2013 Bassplayer magazine check out the article:
http://acousticbassusa.com/history/BassPlayer%20doc.pdf
Their website: http://www.acousticbassusa.com ( amps & cabinets on this site are made in the USA.)

I should mention that they have another website that sells Acoustic amps made in China:
http://www.acousticamplification.com/


Interesting...and expensive. $5k for the 360/361. The head is just a preamp, the power amp built into the cab is 400 watts. Should be adequate if you have 3 to 5 of them for most outdoor things. Maybe 6 would be better. LMAO


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 10:28 pm
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brotherdave wrote:
nteresting...and expensive. $5k for the 360/361. The head is just a preamp, the power amp built into the cab is 400 watts. Should be adequate if you have 3 to 5 of them for most outdoor things. Maybe 6 would be better. LMAO

Yeah interesting & $$$..... Acoustic was also at Namm this year ...... I have to say when I was just staring to play bass back in the late '70's guys like John Paul Jones,Jaco & John Mcvie were using Acoustic amps & I used to say to myself......."when I get good,...the Acoustic 360 w/ 361 Cabinet is gonna be the amp I'll be getting ......... well being a teenager on a budget I ended up getting a used Kustom amp.....with the classic puffy foam /black vinyl covering on the Head & cabinet,.........anyway it will be interesting to see what happens with Acoustic ... though I wish them well & all the power to them,.... I don't know how successful they'll be as many bassists are going the Micro head & Neo Cabinet route ........ I guess that's where Acoustics made in China heads & Neo cabs come in.
The success of the 360/361 is gonna rely on bassists nostalgia of wanting to own a classic piece of the past .......


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Post subject: Re: The Competition
Posted: Wed May 08, 2013 5:33 am
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It may depend on what the cabs are made with. The Acoustic 1X15's, and 4X10's are made with Medium-density fibreboard. One reason I went with the Ampeg SVT-410HLF, Baltic Birch Plywood.

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