Sound City SC 10

First amp, bought in '86.

From what I remember, it have volume, bass and treble, an input and a headphone socket.

God it was awful.....

It made sound - that was about it. It was loud enough, but this very much falls under the category of "I would like to amplify the sound of my guitar without any consideration of the sort of tone I would like".

Which is fine - there's always got to be a place for people to start. Just don't spend too long with it.

I combined this fine piece of equipment with an equally stunning Rocktek overdrive pedal. Sounded like a wasp in a jam jar. I imagine my mother must have enjoyed it greatly when I was home, bashing out my first chords on my Marlin Sidewinder. Altogether now...."strum, strum, strum, strum, ooh chord change....hang on, I can get this one......"

Never broke down. Can't remember what happened to it - did I sell it, throw it away? Who know? Maybe the Red Hot Chillie Peppers are using it as we speak, laughing at their good fortune.....

It's an amp. It made a sound. It was quite loud.

I could rest a cup of coffee on it.

I'm giving it a 5 because I don;t want to be too harsh on something which lets people start playing electric for not much money.

But please don't make me ever use one again.

3 controls - bass, treble, and volume. Not much fucking about required with this one. Which i like.

Using a Mex Strat with a SD Hot Rails pickup the following sounds where obtained :

Clean - Nice clean sound with slight sparkle.

However when i connected up a Marshall Jackhammer pedal, the 10 watt bastard got heavy with one suprising great sound for recording shit.

The amp has never broken down, possibly because it's an old school amp which is made without deliberate faults.

The amp came with the Heggie Spit Handshake (the local dealer's guarantee). I've never been back to kick his ass.

As you know, it has that one great sound with the Marshall Jackhammer pedal and a useable clean as far as practice amps go.
If it was stolen, i would pick up another (if i could find one) as they are dirt cheap, if i could steal one i would as well. Maybe that could become part of the overall criteria "Would you steal this amp and risk police prosecution?"...Sorry, i'm getting old...

This is just an update to my earlier submission (see below).
Firstly a correction - it was made in East Germany (GDR), not West.
Secondly, I have included my e-mail address this time.

This is a single-input 10-watt solid-state practice combo, made in West Germany in (I guess) the early 1970s. It has Treble, Bass and Volume Controls. It has a fully-enclosed cabinet with an elliptical speaker. It's very light and portable. That's it.

This one's strictly for practice, as the sound quality isn't really that good. The Treble and Bass controls are fairly wide-ranging, and you can get an acceptable sound at modest volumes from most types of 6-string guitar.
The closed-back cabinet means it actually works much better as a vocal amp (with a high-impedance mike, of course) - for speech rather than singing, as there's no reverb - and I am forever lending it out for this purpose. It's OK with keyboard, too, within the limitations of the speaker.
HOWEVER - I tried connecting it to an external speaker (a PA cabinet with 12" woofer and horn tweeter) in place of the on-board speaker and got very good results, with electro-acoustic guitar, bass guitar and keyboard. My son used it as a bass guitar practice amp like this for a while.

I guess this one dates from the early 1970s, and there's nothing much that can go wrong as long as you don't overload the speaker. It seems to have it's own cut-out if you overload the input channel (you just switch off and on again to reset it).

N/A - Sound City are no more.

It's really a good little 10-watt tranny amp with a not-so good speaker. Connect it up to a decent size speaker and there's a surprising amount of power.
There are a lot of these around in the UK, so it obviously sold in fair numbers at the time. They can be picked up for 20 or 30 pounds in junk shops. So it's been good value for money, and has been put to use for a wide range of purposes over the years. I've been playing for over 20 years and I bought this amp nearly 10 years ago just to have a spare amp around the house when other guitarists come to call. If I had to replace it I'd probably buy something with more power and more features.