Sunn Concert Lead

Red/silver/black one. I don't have a footswitch.

Using this with a Les Paul copy and a few pedals. Does cleans really well, and the distortion is good by itself. It's not pristine, but sounds pretty good. I use a couple of pedals to get really ugly tone and lots of horrendous feedback. The amp takes really well to pedals, and I would definitely recommend buying a good one if you want yr sound to be pristine and sharp. I bought this amp because I wanted something that could crank out lots of feedback and ugly tone, and I didn't want to pay for tubes and getting my amp serviced all the time. As far as "quality tone" goes, you're better off with a Marshall, but this thing cranks and does it's own thing.

Full disclosure: I prefer Beta Leads. I think they sound better, but with the vintage market blowing up the value of formerly cheap and awesome gear, beggars can't be choosers, right?

I've heard that the oil based transistors in this amp dry up, causing lots of problems. I've also heard rumors that these things are pretty much worthless once they're broken, but I haven't experienced that yet. Both of mine are broken in some way, but they still sound good. The distortion on one doesn't work at all and the other one isn't nearly as loud, but I suspect the boost is engaged on one and not the other. I guess we'll see.

I've got two of these. Bought them both because they're cheap and loud. I don't give a **** about the tone, really. If I wanted a great sounding amp, I would've gotten something tube...yet these hold their own in their own way. Solid state amps definitely don't come like they used to. Not as great of a value as they once were, but still pretty good as a backup amp if you're picky about yr sound, or great as a primary amp if the music you're playing is nasty and loud.

Correction to my recent review: The Sunn Cabinet Model # is 412LH (for Loaded Horn). Sorry about that gang.

1975 Single Channel Sunn Concert Lead. I ordered/bought this new in 1975 with the behemoth 412L cabinet (bass ported/loaded horn). This is !!LOUD!! It's rated around 100 Watts into a 4 ohm load, 200 Watts into a 2 ohm load (insane). It sounds more like 150 Watts into a 4 ohm load. This is my main big amp. It's solid state with FET's in the preamp section (FET's are resistant to Nuclear Radiation, if that means anything to you). Before I bought this I tried everything on the market back then, Marshall,Fender,Orange,Traynor,Acoustic and so on. This is the only amp that when you turned the tone knobs you got a very definite tone change throughout the assigned spectrum(i.e. bass, mid, treble & bite me bright switch). The distortion has this "razor edge" sound to it that I love. Close to Iommi's sound on Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, yet, distinctively different. A confirmed Marshall believer friend of mine borrowed it when his Marshall fried. He cried when I took it back, "It has so much harmonic color"! OK? Enough said. Style: Old School Heavy Metal, Jazz/Fusion, R&B, Rock. Very versitile. I use it with my Guild S300D. Controls: Volume, Bass, Mid, Treble, Bright switch, Distortion switch, Distortion level control, Boost switch, Reverb Depth, Reverb Tone. The footswitch has an Amphenol 7 pin conector on it. It can easily be broken, so I've cut out the cover to an old plastic 35mm film can to pass the cable through and store it in that. There's three(3)levels of volume to this amp. Level 1: Distortion & Boost off. Level 2: Either Distortion or Boost on. Level 3: Distortion & Boost on (ludicrous speed). I played an outdoor concert in New Hampshire back in the 70's, the amp was on "4" (vol) and the Distortion was on at "7". The cops came to shut us down. They said, "We can hear you 7 miles off". I tried to blame my brother the bassist as he almost always had his Sunn Concert Bass rig w/215B on full blast. I'll never forget this; the cop turned on me and yelled in my face, "NO, IT WAS YOOOUUU"! (Ha,Ha,Ha! I still laugh about it). So, that should give you a good idea as to how loud this S.O.B. is. The secret to get a really good rock/metal sound with this unit is to use a controllable boost pedal between the guitar and amp (not a Fuzz). I use a 70's Morley Power Wah Volume Boost unit. There's an effects loop on the rear panel, be careful though, as there is no level control for this, the only down side to this amp. The reverb is a very fine U-Line brand, quite Fenderish. I played this setup (guitar/wah/amp for years. It has served me well.

This amp can be brilliantly clean all the way up (very suitable for country style). Incredible bottom end definition, especially with the Sunn 412L bass ported/loaded horn cab. A warning about this cab, though, it'll overproject the sound in a small club. All you'll hear is your pick strokes thumping and everyone will swear you're dropping bombs in the restrooms. That's how it was described to me. Distortion: You're in Black Sabbath terrain here.

Always dependable. No backup needed. The only trouble I've had over the years was a loose reverb mounting standoff once, and a broken footswich jack from being stepped on.

Never dealt with Sunn when they were in business before or after being acquired by Fender. The loose reverb stud was fixed by the dealer way back then. Fender shutdown the Sunn operation some time ago. It had a lifetime warranty, however when the company changed hands that killed that, leagally.

I've been playing since the early 1970's. I have many Sunn & Supro amps, and Guild guitars. I would replace the Sunn Concert Lead if anything terminal happened to it. However, it's built to withstand a Nuclear Holocaust, so, what else could you ask for?

update to an earlier review of the Sunn Concert lead - earlier 70s grey faced model. after some tinkering with the amp & footswitch I finally got the distortion to work after 2+ years owning this thing. and - its a GREAT distortion! of course this means I also got the boost function to work as well. "boost" is not quite the word here, how about "volume doubler"? a serious 'boost' anyways. so, what was once a great but one-dimensional head for me is now seriously kicking ass in every department. every dept. i need it to kick ass in anyways. this is what's great about older equipment. it has its downsides sure, but you can open it up and play around. no worrying about blowing yourself up or invalidating a warranty. so, now i'm boosting the 'features' mark up by one. it would be the best if the distortion and reverb could be used at the same time, but that's the only complaint I can think of.

so now, sound quality of the distortion and the boost.

i expected it to sound kind of tinny, fuzzy, and like, old-rock sounding. i was very happilly surprised, its a mean distortion. at higher settings, the with volume at about 2.5 - watch out. it rips. kick in the boost - ouch. wailing! immediate complaints from the neighbors, sorry y'all! i can now very hapilly switch from perfect clean to loud and blistering. i usually have at least 3 overdrive/distortion pedals at work as well, i may adjust my overall setup a bit though. when i just had the one channel, i needed more of a selection. i used a zoom hyper lead in combination with the distortion and it became so high gain and thick, not quite enough 'guh' for metal, but it had a sabbath-like, tube-like sound. you won't get nu-metal with this but there are plenty of amps out there getting that sound. this is a classic, superior hard-rock / noise rock head.

can't mess with it

none

still the best, now ever better!

Early 70's rig with grey cover and a sparkly grey/silver grill cloth on the cab. Few features that I ever used, since I don't have the foot switch to change from the clean to distorted channel and never tried another to see if it cold be done...it had built in distortion (I imagine it had a very Mountain-esque sound to it), reverb, and bass, mid and treble controls for both channels. The reverb is pretty decent, and overall the amp is louder and cleaner than anything I've ever played through...I used to bill it as the loudest half stack in South Jersey, and not too many people argued with me! lol! It's rated at 100 watts RMS, and I bought it with a matching Sunn flat front 4x12 cabinet that is totally bullet proof!

Excellent clean tone, sounds good with my minimal effects setup too. I loved it with my Epiphone Genesis run through an Ibanez Tube Screamer Sound Tank, and sometimes an old phaser (forget what it was, it only had one knob on the top and it was bright yellow). I've had it up to max volume and still feel the sound is very clean considering, no background noise whatsoever! Oh, and it's loud enough to play Madison Square Garden without miking!

This was my main amp for many, many years. It was great, all the way until I played a backyard gig in the middle of a lightning storm...the head started to fry little by little after that, first the clean channel and then the other, until it finally died...RIP old girl! I still use the cab, loaded with three of the original speakers and one EV bass driver, it sound huge to this day! I'll give it a 10, since I am the one who killed it....

doesn't exist

This amp made it with me through the mid 80's and my metal years, all the way through the late 90's until I foolishly killed it by exposing it to some really bad conditions. I miss it more than anything, it had my signature tone! I wish I had another, but a.) I just don't have the cash to buy another one right now and b.) I can't haul the cabinet around anymore since I wrecked my back in a collision with a tractor trailer in 2004 (which explains why I don't have the cash to buy another...can't get gear when you can't work). I still have the whole deal, the amp is living in my garage on top of the cab, waiting for a miracle in the form of me becoming healthy enough to join a working band again and get back out in the clubs! I've thought about bringing it to someone to see if it can be restored, but once again, funds are tight....

has decent features, all you could really need from a head.

Quality, yes, that's what this amp has going for it, sound quality. Its always audible, its consistant, amazing clean sound, and I use pedals for other sounds. I will never get rid of this thing, in fact I'll probably buy another one or two when I can. If something happened to this I would just want another.

As good as musical equipment gets in the reliability dept.

Oh, there is no customer support, and don't believe anyone who tries to convince you otherwise! The 'lifetime warranty' is in fact, no longer in effect. Take heart though, it just doesn't matter!

follow up review, now that i've had the chance to a/b this head against another couple of amps in live situations - bottom line, this thing rules! i had a fancy tube combo which I thought would be my main gigging amp (carvin mts 212), and it is a great amp in its own right, but live...it just didn't cut it. either at 50 or 100 watts, the dirty channel just died out in the mix. couldn't hear it myself on stage, and listening to the recording, even though the gain and volume were way up, just...nothing. barely audible against the drums. the sunn concert lead, however, never a problem. this thing is up in the mix no matter what. i just played a show in a fairly large room, and the sound man wouldn't let me turn this thing up above 3 and a half! THAT is how LOUD it can get. and I wasn't even using the boost! OR the brite input! If you're playing by yourself in your bedroom, its trebly-ness may be bothersome...but that's what makes it a perfect live head for a lead guitarist especially. it takes a back seat to nothing, it demands to be heard!

I own two black and red models from 76 and 77 I think. 200 w solid state beauts. I don't have the foot switch for either, so I can not comment on its reliability or usefullness. I bought one around 87 and one in the early 90's. I bought the matching 610L cab (original speakers) with the head in 87 and I bought a silver grilled 610L (from an earlier year)empty. I blew the original speakers and no one would re cone them so I filled both cabinets with Eminence Mojo Tones and Celestion Legend 10's mixed equally. The reverb is standard with a tone knob, it has a nice dark verb with the treble dow
. The boost is a large midrange/mid high decibel boost, I personally never use it as the amp has plenty of volume. High and low imputs. Distortion switch with knob, I set mine on 10, it's not distortion like a ProCo Rat, it's more like overdrive/presence/tone filler outer. It has an effects loop, I tried using it but it added huge amounts of noise and reduced volume levels?! It's better to run effects in front. I've used these puppies on stage and practice.

I play a p-90 loaded guitar and haven't recently played a humbucker or strat type. I play loud obnoxious rock. I have been using a nice yamaha dg-stomp multi effect floor unit(very nice indeed)for distortion and other effects. But recently I feel the need to fork the distortion and let the amp breathe, let the amp get up into it's higher volume range and shove the speakers into overdrive land. Here the tone of the amp isn't too clean and sounds great for everything but leads. High notes are shrill and have the effect of a dentist drill on my ears. I think with a warm soft pick up maybe I could live with the high notes. The black and red 610 cab with the in-slant config has a port on the bottom of the cab and has a wonderful tone with lots of headroom-the silver covered older cab is lacking the port and has less headroom and a pronounced mid range tone.

Dependable? Nothing more dependable ever built. I have had both heads serviced and it cost nothing because anything that was in need of repair was basic/easily/inexpensively fixed. The original speakers in the cab had a nice long life before "my amp goes to eleven" treatment.

Sunn no longer exists. boo hoo. I have been able to find competent repair companies. I do not hold this against Sunn. The amps have lasted a long time. That I hold agaist Sunn, support? build'm right the first time! Thank You.

The only thing that ain't great about these amps is the high note tone. My next amps will prolly be 50w tube heads with 4x12 cabs. Great volume, clean tones, rhythm tones, spring verb. Cabs are retro-wacky-cool.

1976 OLDER SILVER AND BLACK VERSION. 210 WATTS RMS. 2 CHANNELS. BASS TREBBLE VOLUME DISTORTION ON #1 REVERB ON #2. BOTH HAVE BRIGHT SWITCHES AND NORMAL HIGH INPUTS. Got this from a friend of mine who bought it new. Had to change the filter caps cause they were leaking, and causing a static noise especially in chanel one. The connectors for the footswitches are RCA. There is one for reverb and an A/B for distortion. A simple adaptor from RCA to 1/4 inch or homemade spst switch will work here just fine to turn them on and off.

Fantastic sound quality. I think this is due to the fact this unit uses field effect transistors FET's And something Ive never seen before A Choke transformer which has multiple taps in line with the Power transistors. Believe this is the trick that gives the sound some compression to emulate the tube sound. Amp is very quiet since I changed the caps. It was a littel hard to find the right values though. If you havent done yours yet it is a wise thing to do before you cant find the right types. I used 1100uf in the preamp power supply. Decided to go for bigger vs smaller physical size. The smaller even though the right value still let some AC through. The really amazing thing was the guy who repaired it before me put the caps in backwards and it was working. Took me awhile to figure out why the new caps wouldnt work. Thank god for circuit diagrams.

Hopefully I wont have to service it again for awhile. But it was very simple design. Luckily it was only the caps. The FET's might be real hard to find. Like I said A guy who doesnt change caps every 5 - 10 yrs at a Buck a piece is looking for trouble.

Out of business. Fender bought the name and are remanufacturing some of the stuff but doubt they will honor the older warrenty

Amp is great for anything Keys Guitar Bass You name it. Been playing 33 Yrs and have Tons of equipment. Like this sound over my Marshall and Fenders. because of the great range on the tone controls. Might put in a channel switcher which would really fix it up. Other than that it all comes down to your ability to handel a fat cat like this.

Kinda lacking, no line out, limited by weird footswitch. Whatever!

I use 3 different guitars; fender strat, gibson blueshawk, epiphone les paul jr. w/evans el-2 pickup. Amp has gorgeous clean sound. I use pedals for the distortion, and always keep it plugged in to 2nd input for reverb. So loud, a bit of buzz at low volumes, but able to crank out seriously high quality, high volume sound. Well made amp!

so solid. However, I bought the correct footswitch for it, and it worked, a little, for a week or so and then ceased to make any difference. that sucked. would give higher rating otherwise

???

I use it with an Ear Candy Buzz-Bomb. Between the Sunn's beautiful treble, and the Buzzbomb's growling bass and added sustain, I feel as though I've got just about as good a sound as I could get, no matter how much I were to sound. Great sound, straight up.

My amp is a late model, "Red-Face" single channel version of the Concert Lead. It has some very progressive features, even for an amp of today, which is saying something since mine was manufactured in the late 70's. It has 200W of olde tyme tranistor power, the basics (distorion, volume, bass, mid, and treble knobs), an on/off switch for the distortion, a boost switch for the distortion, 2 inputs (brite/normal), an effects loop, 2 knobs for Reverb (tone and depth) and a brite switch. It's very light, weighing in only at 35 lbs., making it very easy to transport. I also read in an interview with the amp's designer that this series had completely active tone controls, which means you have complete control over bass, treble, and mid frequencies, which I think is very cool. I currently use this amp through a tiny Hartke amp (I don't have a cabinet large enough to handle it's power section) just jamming around and writing song demos. Cosmetically, the amp looks great, giving off that "70's vintage synthesiser/computer" vibe, as well as having very very attractive and minimalist red, white, and black coloring. No trashy gold faceplates, wire-mesh grilles, enormous logos, or diamond plating to be found here.

Currently, I'm using this head with an Epiphone SG (made out of Korina, so the wood is at least nice), with a crappy sounding Seymour Duncan Distortion pickup installed in the neck position. No effects whatsoever. (I didn't install it, someone else did before this guitar was under my possesion.) I have been playing music for a total of three years, starting on bass and moving on to guitar. It sounds great with either instrument, the bass sounding alot like Flipper or Weedeater (Dixie Dave uses Sunn, what a coincidence!) I play a variety of stuff, although my staple is mid-tempo to blidningly fast, heavily distorted hardcore (think Rudimentary Peni, A.C., Buzzov-en, Doom, and you'll be on the right track.) although I thoroughly enjoy doing various clean guitar sonics, Pink Floyd-esque psychedelia, slow droning songs, mock folk and world music, and general noise. (Just about anything far out or extreme) And I would gladly sandwich any of these elements together. The cleans on this amp are wonderful, especially with the brite switch on, sounding somewhere between a Fender Twin and a Roland Jazz Chorus. (Plenty of tonal headroom, lots of sparkle, you get the picture.) The reverb is pretty good, but just tends to sound like you're playing the guitar in a bathroom. (Like all Reverbs do essentially.) The distortion is definitely something you either like or don't like. Whereas most distortions have almost a "beautiful" quality, like a violin or a pane of glass, this amp sounds like grinding metal on metal, or some other horrible atonal noise. (Think Greg Ginn's tone with Black Flag but alot more detailed, and you're on the right track) The versatility of the distorted tones I can achieve are incredible. I can get a low rumble, which sounds very lo-fi, and incredibly noisy, with plenty of sustain, or I can hit the brite and boost switches and get a fast, distorted attack with a messy breakup that definitely makes the Dual Rectifier crowd look like the retards they are. Also, the distortion responds quite well to picking dynamics, so it isn't full on "attack" no matter how soft I hit the strings, which is a very appreciable quality in any situation. However, this is not some "magic switching amp" and I can't conjure up "scooped-mids at the push of a button" or "BROOTAL ZAKK WYLDE LEDAS!!11!!@1!22!" out of thin air. It takes a bit of time to figure out good settings (although in my opinion they're all good! ;-) I wouldn't have it any other way.

This amp is older than I am, and it will probably outlive me. There are no real technical problems to speak of, and I'm confident it could be throughly used and abused for many years without any need of service. I don't know if I bought this from the original owner or not, but they said had purchased this as a backup amp for another Concert Lead, but since the other one was so reliable, there was no particular need to have a spare, that seems to match up quite well with all the stories of this amp and Sunn's reliability in general. That fills me with confidence.

The original Hartzell owned Sunn company is long dead. The Fender owned Sunn company is also long dead. I doubt Fender would know what the hell to do with my amp even if they would service it. Not that I care, since this thing will probably never break down.

Nothing really makes me more proud than having a cool as hell amp that I got for incredibly cheap, which puts all the boutique retards' overpriced crap to shame. I can't think of anything else I wish it had, and wouldn't alter it in any way. I love everything about it, and I don't have any fear of theft, since vintage transistor Sunn doesn't fetch a pretty penny on the used market anyway. If it were somehow lost or stolen (that's inconcievable at the moment) I wouldn't "track down and murder the person who took it" or torture them or whatever. Going to jail for a long time certainly isn't worth a $200 amp. I don't think I would buy the same thing, but maybe another vintage Sunn product, like a Beta Lead or an Enforcer if I could find one anywhere.