Music Man 212 Seventy Five

I purchased this Amp in 1979. I beleive it was made in 1974 or thereabouts. It has two channels one of which can go through the Phase shifter to get different amplifier sounds. It has a nice tube clear sound that I liked and I used it for rythm guitar.

I used a Gibson Victory guitar. One of Gibson's attempts to copy the fender Strat. I didn't use much distortion except from guitar pedals. The sound was good. I would have liked to use it with my electric acoustics that I have now for a nice clear mellow sound.

I used this amp in many gigs, however because it's a tube amp, I took extra tubes and fuses. I've had to do some repair on it when the 100 ohm resistor would burn out on occasion. Replacement of tubes is costly and now I've lost the main power for the unit and it's useless for many years since I haven't tried to get it repaired. I only get a low volume fuzz like distortion on it currently and I hope to sell it or part it out to someone that likes to repair things.
jb Aug 2005

There is no customer support as I know it. I've had it repaired by service people once, then I repaired it the other times myself. I saved the schematic and it's been useful for such repairs. My repairs were not under warranty so it gets costly now.

I've been playing since the 60's. I now use a Peavy Stereo Chorus for my guitar, but I often use my Martin, Takamine, and Dean electric acoustics straight into my Peavy XRD 680S sometimes with an effects pedal, which suits me fine these days. I think I'd like to have gotten a fender twin reverb if I had a second chance to buy again. I had to keep a close watch on pricing at the time.
Anyone want to buy this old amp? I haven't had the heart to dismantle it. It still looks cool and has those 12inch Altec Lansing speakers in it that are great.

i sold my hiwatt head and replace it with the music man seventy five head. my hiwatt was too clean for my taste. the music man can get a little distorted sound when played heavy. and keep a really good clean sound when you play notes. which is something i do enjoy a lot as i hate pedals.

i have a gibson sg / it sounds great, not as loud as my hiwatt head for sure. but at least i can get a distroted sound without cranking it too much which is a good thing when recording. only little problem is that i found it was feedbacking more easyly when using my rv3 delay/reverb pedal than with my old hiwatt.

seems like a good amp, no problems yet.

nothing

i had a hiwatt head for 10 years that i had to sell because i needed money and this was a good amp for me that cost me half of the price i sold my old head.

I believe this amp was made in the late 70's. It is a hybrid solid state preamp with tube power amp section. After some modifications this amp is now versatile enough for all of my styles--Top 40, Lite Jazz, Standards. Built reminiscent of a Fender Twin and Pro Reverb combined--two 6L6GC's but 75 watt output. No channel switching but has spring Reverb and Phasor. Also has no effects loops so you have to run your pedals into the amp input in series with the guitar but thats pretty normal. I wish it had the pre-driver 12AX7 as the older Music Man amps had --they seem to give a warmer sound. But this amp has plenty of power for the types of gigs we do which can be anywhere from 2 to 9 pieces.

I use Fender Strat, Paul Reed Smith, and Gibson 335 guitars through this amp. Sounds great with all of them. The amp doesn't have a whole lot of variety in sound but it seems to make the guitar sound the way the individual instrument should. Leo Fender changed his design in the frequency response when he created these amps and in my opinion -lost the Fender sparkle (maybe he legally had to). As an engineer I was able to easily modify the frequency response of the amp more closely to the Fender signature sound and also changed the integrated circuit amplifier type. Now this thing sounds like all tube and regained that Fender sparkle! The amp magically came alive!

This amp is VERY dependable. I take it on any gig at any time! The only thing I had to do with it after I bought it used was bias the 6L6GC tubes. No one had bothered to do that and the amp sounded really thin. Now after that and my mods it has a FAT Fender sound and it has never broken down. Sounds as good as A TWIN and may be a little cleaner. I tried a Fender Hot Rod deVille and it broke down the first time out. Back to my Music Man!

Since MM is out of business there is no report on their service. I service the amp myself and parts are readily available from the web. The schematics can also be obtained that way. Any good tech would have no problem servicing these amps--really straightforward.

I have been playing for over 30 years and I think this is one of the best amps made. I also tried a Marshall (including the Valvestate) and it just couldn't compare with the meatiness the Music Man has. No wonder Eric Clapton replaced his Marshall heads with Music Man amps. I give this amp a 9 out of 10 since I certainly haven't tried every amp out there. But if you are looking for a reliable basic amp that you can actually hear the tone of your guitar through, these are the best. If you want distortion, wah, flange, and all the toys--just add your favorite pedals. Write me if you are interested in what mods to make to get back the Fender "sparkle".

It is a '72 Music Man with 4 inputs, 2 guitar, 2 bass, it has the standard for knob control, but very responsive

Since the amp comes with out distortion, it is great for my jazz, and light swing. It has one of the warmest sounds i have ever heard, it is great for running effects too, i run a zoom 707, a vox wha, and a morley wha-volume-distortion, with out a flaw

when i bought the amp used in jan '00, it looked like it had been to hell and back, but after some hardcore cleaning, and replacement of tubes, you would think it was made yesturday! it can take a serious beating, and go anywhere. Never even worried about it not starting up

no longer in bussiness

nowadays, they dont make amps for sound, because people thrive on distortion. for my jazz i couldnt ask for anything more,, it is also one of the loudest fucking amps ever great for my bass too

This amp have lots of features, although I find many of them to be useless, for my style. It has two channels with two inputs into each channel, making a total of four inputs. There is also tremelo and reverb. The reverb is good, but I rarely use reverb. The tremelo is terrible!!! This is the worst sounding version of the worst sounding effect ever. However it can be used to give chorous or delay like effects to your signal, so its okay. There is a footswitch shich turns the reverb and tremelo on and off. This amp also has a high and low power switch. Brightness switch makes this amp sound like the best.

Awsome. With two el34's and a 12ax7a this amp sponds great, not like a Fender or a marshall, but more like a HiWatt. No distortion, but use pedal and you will be happy. This amp doesn't sound as good on low power setting as it does on high power. The brightness switch makes it sound even more like the Vox and Hiwatt amps which it was designed after. Tremelo sounds bad, but there are some settings which are cool because it can be make to sound like a delay pedal, a chorous pedal, or sort of like a wimpy flanger. Great sounds.

I don't know. It is old and the company went under in the eighties. I just bought mine, but I must say that it look solid. It also weighs a ton!

I don't know

I wanted a hiwatt or a vox. The voxes were all broken at the store, a fifty watt Hiwatt would have run me about $800. This amp really, really counds like a combination os the best features of those two amps in one affordable package. It is awsome, now all I have to do it prtactice. I will answer any questions.