Sunn Beta-Lead

DON'T CARE WHEN IT WAS MADE.AMP SOUNDS LIKE SHIT FOR ALL STYLES.2 CHANNELS WITH ONE WORSE THAN THE OTHER.AS FAR AS FEATURES I WISH IT HAD WOULD BE A CHASIS FROM ANY OTHER AMP.THIS AMP SITS IN MY CLOSET ALONG WITH OTHER RELICS LIKE ATARI AND MATTELL VIDEO GAMES

I CAN'T STAND THIS AMP

BLEW AN OUTPUT 1 HR AFTER PLAYING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO DEAL WITH FENDER THESE DAYS? THEY CAN'T EVEN HANDLE THAT OVERPRICED RE-ISSUE LINE OF THEIR OWN

I'VE BEEN PLAYING 34 YEARS AND THIS IS THE WORST AMP I'V EVER SEEN AND I'VE HAD OLD KENTS, KAY EVEN SOVTEK MIG 50 KICKS ITS ASS. IF THIS WERE STOLDENT HE THIEF WOULD BE DOING ME A BIG FAVOR LIKE THE CAR THIEF ON SEINFELD THAT STOLD THE CAR WITH THE BBO.

Bought it new in 1980 for about 750 bucks. Warm tubey sound, some band mates thought it was a tube amp. With pre-amp ins and outs you could send the signal from one channel output to the input in front and get more tone levels and gains. Makes for easy stereo with another amp (or two). Also has power amp input and output. Has drive, level for each channel and master volume controls. Has four 16 ohm speakers. Incredible. Tons of bass. Great midrange tone. Treble not harsh. Used it for 15 years, sold it to a friend and bought it back again five years later. I still use it every week. Had the transistors replaced in '93 and the sound was great again. If your's sucks, get it fixed. Channel switching/blending possibilities are awesome. Sounds good enough for a monitor amp (my experience), enough power for a bass amp with the right speakers, of course. Reverb unit died, but everyone has a stomp box for that, right?

Used it for rock and country with a 1986 Japanese Contemporary Strat (S-S-S) and a 1974 SG Custom (dual Humbuckers). Has always been quiet, no hum, used it a lot in the studio. The clean sound stays clean and this amp can be incredibly loud. My Yamaha acoustic sounds really nice using the amp with a good Eagle Works (Portland, Oregon) monitor cabinet with a 15 and a horn.

I always liked setting one channel clean and the other dirty and having both sounds at once for solos. It made for a nice solid sound.

Had it serviced once after 10 years of weekly gigging (150 dates a year--yeah we made some money). The sound quality had degraded. After serving, it sounded good as new. The transistors can vibrate their way out of their sockets so I used some tacky stuff to hold them in. The shafts on the pots are plastic, so they break off, but you can still twist them--a unique guitar player skill. One of the pots wore out (on channel B's level control) but I only need one channel. I have a replacement and schematic, just too lazy to replace it. This amp stays in my church without a backup. I use a Carvin MTS3212 for lounge and concert gigging (another awesome amplifier).

I had it repaired out of warranty (like I said after 10 years of hard gigging) by a Sunn authorized repair shop when I lived in Portland. The Sunn company headquarters were in a near-by town. I went to their headquarters once by accident for a job interview, and the guys were great even though I was there for the wrong job.

I've been playing since the Beatles hit it big. I've owned a Kustom blue tuck and roll 200 watt amp (louder than 1000 army tanks rolling into Hell on Armageddon Day), blonde '65 Fender Bandmaster and '65 Fender Bassman amps (why oh why did I sell those two?), Marshall JCM 900 head (sold for Christmas money for the kids, otherwise a beautiful amp), little practice amps, and my main darling, the Carvin MTS3212. Current main guitar is Carvin DC200T solid maple body.

I did buy the Sunn Beta Lead twice! Overall, I like its smooth sound and versatility. I wish Carvin would make an SX model with this amp's features. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

70s solid state, head version. 50? watts, 2 channels, reverb, footswitchable. For the time a feature loaded amp, pretty good even by today's standards.

Ummm, this is without a doubt the nastiest sounding amp I've ever owned (although I've heard bad things about the PV Butcher). Not cool nasty, not grunge or punk nasty, just nasty. Reverb is OK, clean is usable, if you buy it cheap it'll be a better gig amp than using your old stereo...

Never had trouble. ONly owned it 6 months and never gigged.

Long gone.

Only get it if it's all you can afford.

-the Beta Lead 2x12 combo was made in the late seventies during the red logo era of Sunn. the date stamp on the power transistors is 1978. although some say its made closer to 1980.

-This amp has a pretty unique tone, whatever style of music you used it in, it would work, and add a really original tone quality. i play noise rock, and this amp is perfect, but i've also started using it for my solo clean electric stuff as well and it works well.

-2 channels, each with identical controls [drive, bass, mid, treble, reverb, level], channel switching with footswitch, as well as a BOTH CHANNELS setting, which, even though the amp isn't a bi-amp, sounds like the signals are split between speakers[which are mounted at a 90 degree angle, facing each other - very cool], its not of course, but it has a separated sound, very cool, especially if you get outside the clean channel/drive channel box and combine drive/drive or clean/clean, playing with different levels of bass/mid/treble/level you can get some crazy sounds, the way the amp takes a dump when its cranked and you've combined the channels as drive/drive, is really nice. effects loops exist for both channels seperately, and it has a master loop, all loops are series.

-it would be nice if the amp had better reverb, but its not a big deal, the reverb is ok by solid state, spring reverb standards of the late seventies, it has decent reverb and thats what matters.

-this amp has plenty of power, it 100w solid state, but its really really loud, as most sunn solid state amps are, the resistor in the r23 spot on the schematic has been taken disabled, that might have somthing to do with it being as loud as it is, but i would imagine its just as loud with in connected.

-use it with a strat mostly, sometimes a teisco del-rey, playing noisy dissonant melodic rock, it works beautifully, as playing crazy noise rock pushes an amp to its limits, this amp pushes right back.

-not too moisy, a little hum when you're using a lot of drive, but no more than any other amp really.

-this amp is capable of being used in almost any style of music i think, like i said, unique tone, and thats good.

-clean does distort at VERY high volumes, but this can be fixed by backing off the level knob.

-the distortion kind of reminds me of a cross between a fender deville and a boss ds-1, if you can imagine that, not mega syrupy, but very sustainy, it is a solid state amp, you're not gonna get tube distortion, but its darn good distortion for solid-state. clean channel is really nice, the highs dont break up really at all, its really midrangey and bassy, very sunstainey on cleans as well.

this amp is a tank, as most 70's solid state sunn amps are, when i got it it seemed like it had sat in a garage for 10 years being used as a saw horse, i had to replace the filter caps because i think it sat so long, but its 25 years old, i'm not complaining...

no need for a backup amp.

sunn was bought out by fender in the very early 80's and soon went under, they are back, and have reissued one amp, but i dont think warranty's from pre-fender sunns are valid.

find a vintage music store...

i own one other sunn amp - the concert lead head. and i play it through an open back sunn 2x12 cab with celestion 75s inside. until i bought these two amps, only weeks apart, i had never owned a sunn amp. i also HATED the idea of owning a solid state amp, but now i have two. go figure. sunn amps rock. if this amp is ever stolen, i probably wont ever find another one, but if i do, i will buy it within 20 seconds of seeing it.

I don't own this amp anymore, but it's not because of the sound. I'll admit i'm a little wierd in that I really do like some solid state amps, but this one I really liked. The distortion was nasty, the cleas were brash, and the combination of the two channels is a feature I wish most high end channel switching amps had. If you like solid state sound and a 2x12 combo that produces tons of sound, this is your amp.

This is the real reason I wrote this review. I like the amp, but it was SERIOUSLY FLAWED!!! All the vents were on the underside of the chassis. When the chassis was installed in the cabinet, all the vents got covered up. I had this amp for about 18 months and it would burn up transistors every week or so until I began taking the chassis out and propping it up a shoe or something to allow it to vent properly. I'm sure anyone with some ingenuity could have altered the cab, or intalled a fan or something, but I just didn't want to put up with an amp that kept burning up, so I sold it. These days I play and orange amp. It rules.

It's solid state, which for some people by definition sucks. I happen to like this particular amp more than most solid state amps because it doesn't seem to be designed for good tone. It's a "loud maker"... thats all. I would actually like to get another, but I caution against getting one unless you are prepared to play handy-man. I think that sunn generally rocks, but I have to believe that these amps are part of the reason they went out of business.

this amp has basic features nothing extravagant

i love the drive-distortion that is has and the bass i play semi-rock-grunge

ive had it for a couple o years its a reliable amp

ahh i had never heard of sunn but heard it was bought out bby fender?? but its awesome if love doing stuff urself

this is an awesome amp BUT NOT PERFECT! I was in the mood for a marxhall but didnt have enough money so i figured i would get a peavey or something like that. I went out looking for one, but i while i was looking at a peavey half-stack i saw this old dusty kinda big amp i played on it with a gibson les paul and i thought it sounded kinda crappy. the guy at the shop said he would clean and repair it for me for $20 extra,i said ok, the next day i took it home. i own a Fender fat strat and a Fender Mustang i played it for a while i was dissapointed but a couple o days later i set the switches right it was the best amp i have heard next to a marshall!

A rather large and boxy looking solid-state, 100 Watt, 4X10 combo. It has two channels and a third input that makes a combination of the two. Channel A on this particular amp seems to be either broken or just plain broken as it seems much too bright to be normal. Has full Bass, Treble, and Mid selectors and even Reverb and Drive. All controls are duplicated for both channels so it seems that this amp could be used almost as a guitar amp and PA. Also has a seperate effects loop for each of the two channels which I have not tried yet but will come in handy. Being that I use this amp as a practice unit, it has more than enough power for my whole apartment complex. I wish it had a headphone jack.

This amp sounds beautiful and bassy and I almost dare say 'tubey.' Low end on this amp is simply flawless. I play clean most of the time just to enjoy the bass response. I can sit there and pull off Stevie Ray Vaughan low-E open slap notes all day and be happy. Channel A is much too noisy and bright for my taste so I stay in B. Since controls are duplicated for both channels and are accessible from both channels nothing is missed by remaining in B all the time. The Reverb is not the best or the deepest or richest I've ever heard but it does enough to warrant its presence on the amp itself. A Master volume over the Level selector is just that and nothing special. the Distortion, called Drive gives out a good smooth bluesy overdrive that doesnt harm the original tone of my Strat single-coils in the least. The distortion at mid-levels manages to stay in control based on how hard you play.

I probably wouldnt rely on it at a gig, so it falls into the category of LARGE practice amp. To be fair it hasnt failed me yet although the drive knob needs replacement soon.

n/a

For $75 I'd buy two of them. The low-end response itself is worth twice that much and is worth every penny. One of the better sounding Solid-State amps I've heard. I'll settle for this until a nice Fender Twin becomes accessible.