Sundown Formula 50

Basic 6l6 tube amp output with 4-12ax7s in the preamp section. Excellent reverb. Outstanding reverb! 2 channel, clean and distortion. Channel switching. Built in attenuator/governor. The more you crank the gov. to zero, the louder the amp in the 2nd channel. You can get plenty of distortion at low volume levels, if you are into that. Cool. Built like a tank. No effects loop, headphone jack, nothing fancy, just damn good construction all around. Myself, being a blues/jazz/rock player, I don't really need many features. Too many knobs and I wind up not playing guitar enough. Play more with the knobs, you know what I mean? I also own a Reverend Hellhound. The size and shape of this amp reminds me of the Hellhound, but the amp tone is much cleaner than the Hound. All the features I need, but I don't need much. Just Tone!!!!!!! Duh!

My main axe is primarily a vintage '64 Strat, sweet as can be, also play a Dillion Les Paul quite a bit. I have been playing a total of 35 years with my primary focus on blues/jazz with a bit of rock and teenie bit of country thrown in. This amp runs extremely quiet in both channels, can crank it to ten in the clean channel and barely any noise. Incredible. The clean is as clean as ANY Fender I have ever played and I also play thru a '68 Fender Super 4-10, and this baby is as clean if not cleaner! The distortion channel has a lot of very useable gain, (I don't require much). I would have to say that the gain channel does sound more like a Mesa Boogie than a Fender, and I am not a huge fan of Boogie amps. I suppose if you like to rock hard with lots of sustain you would enjoy the distortion channel. Is kind of fun once in a while. Clean channel stays clean at 10. Overall tone is great, although I do wish it had a bit lower end. I keep the bass pot at ten, the treble at 2, and the mid at 2. If not, IMHO, the bite from the amp is just too much to handle. I suppose a guy could monkey around with the tone pot caps, add more capacitance for a darker sound on the bass pot or treble pot. I am going to look into that. I could absolutely get more volume out of the amp that way too, by being able to achieve the tone I like and cranking up the treble and mid without so much bite.

The long spring accutronics reverb was working spotty, so I removed the pan and had a look. While I was ohming out the little bitty transformers a little bitty wire came off in mind hand! Fixed it! I love fixes like that. Makes you feel like a genius. Absolutely no other problems. Like I said, Built like a tank, just solid.

Spoke with Dennis Kager about the amp. Cool dude. Had a question about the reverb before I took a look at it. He said I should replace one of the caps in the reverb circuit with one of a higher dc rating, otherwise it make take out the transformer (small one) some day. You can get the support if need be from Dennis at Reverend.

This amp could and has stood the test of time and gigging against other big name amps just fine. Easily sounds as good as the so called botique amps. May need to tweek it a bit to suit your personal needs if you are into that. Other than that the amp was one hell of a good deal. I cannot imagine anybody that knows anything about guitar playing or a good sounding amp give the amp a rating of 6 in the sound/tone category. Are you deaf?! Would purchase another one with no qualms at all!

80s 1X12 combo with Celestion G12-80. Plenty versatile for me. I use a Guyatone overdrive pedal so the channel stays on "rhythm" (clean) at all times. Very simple & user-fiendly. "Governor" would be very cool if I needed it to keep the drive channel thick at low volumes- works great.

I play an Eastman archtop & a custom Tele w/ Fralin pickups. Swing, rockabilly, vintage country as well as traditional southern style Black gospel. This amp is extremely quiet on all settings with any pickups. I don't change my settings after set-up & I prefer a "one trick pony". This amp delivers beautiful, chimey clean tone even with dual humbuckers at high volume. Distortion sounds a bit mushy for my taste, but I don't care.

Seems like it's very well built & looks to be easy to service. Been gig-worthy so far.

Dennis Kager is reputed to be very helpful & responsive & willing to service these out of production amps.

I don't know what the previuos reviewer's talking about. I've owned a lot of mainstream combo amps by Fender, Ampeg, etc. & this is one of the best I've used, with quality equal to a Mesa Boogie at way less $$$$. Played guitar since 1962 & I've made my living at guitar repair for 11 years now. If you can't afford a boutique amp like a Carr or Victoria, this worth a look.

This amp is a 50 watt head, with reverb and channel switching. The amp uses 2 6L6s and four 12AX7s. Also there is a Govenor controll which is common to all Sundown amps as far as I know. This control lets you crank the amp way up but keeps the volume level at reasonable levels. From what I understand this control is not a reactive or resistive load, I have heard it is a post inverter tube master volume. There is one speaker jack the impedence is not labeled, and a external speaker jack.
There are two channels, clean and overdrive. No effects loops, but there is a footswitch jack. No headphone jack. The EQ is pretty simple, just your standard bass, mid and treble. No presence control, I wish it had one. This is a no frills all tube amp.

The clean sound is excellent. It gets very loud without distorting, which is something I like, (that's what the over drive channel) but the distortion is awful. Very gritty, thin and fuzzy. It sounds like ther is a really bad fuzzbox in there. Changing the Chinese Mesa tubes to 5881WXTs helped a little but not much.

I didn't have the amp long enough to worry about it, but all of the Sundown line is built very well.

The Sundown amps were made by Dennis Kager, he is an increadibly helpfull friendly guy. He knows his stuff and has been in the biz for 33 years. As this is a used amp, warranty is not an issue

This amp was in pretty bad shape when I got it. I really loved the clean sound, but hated the distortion. I ordered unseen and unheard as I am a Sundown fan. I wish it had a better distortion sound. This amp is but it only has one decent sound: clean. I would buy another if the price was right (very low) and it was in good shape. Even the builder of this amp warned me off of it, he was right. He said that there were several compromises and the amp wasn't up to the quality of the of the rest of the line at the time