Sunn Spectrum I Head

Well Now: This babe was a clone (home made) in 1970's. SUNN copy of a Spectrum. 2 EL34 power tubes, 1 12ax7a preamp tube. Tube rectifier. Basic Dynaco curcuit. 15" Gauss/Fender p.s. 15 speaker. Single channnel with volume, treble, bass , contour controls. The Literiture states 125 watts RMS.( see the Unoffical SUNN Site for details). I will never trade or disown this amp. It's to clean and loud. I have this amp set up in my back bedroom with a 35' cable hook up to a Digitech RP2000. I have never had the volume past 4 (1 to 10 scale). I play to a 100 watt stereo and this amp overpowers it from a room away. Blues ,jazz, fusion, or any true sound from a pedel.

I use a Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennesean. This guitar is very versitile for many styles. WIth the low impedence of the HiLotron pickups, and the clean powerful tone of the amp. Any clean load sound is possible with no distorsion.( that your ear can here ) I would need a gymnasium or large hall to find this amps distorsion.

After 20 yrs of being fucked up I had this amp overhauled by a very good local TubeAmp Man. Excellent job. I noticed that it ran Very hot so i installed a CPU cooling fan. Now it runs cool. Warm to the touch, should save it's life.

See the UNofical SUNN Website. The original designer often answers questions here.

If I lost this amp, I would look for a Fender Vibrosonic amp. or a SUNN head and make my own cabinet.

It doesn't really get much better than this amp. It's originally a bass amp, but sounds equally as good in a guitar rig. Does that sound familiar...(see Fender Bassman)...
I believe this one is a 70 or 71. It's a single channel amp powered by a pair of EL34's. It's also got a 7025 and I believe a 12AX7 and then a tube rectifier as well. What I mean is solid tube here buddy...no ss rectifiers to muddy up the tone. The controls are simple...volume, bass, treble and contour. No fiddling around with other knobs and rocker switches on this one. Just plug in and dial in the bass or treble and go. Good tones guaranteed. I think this amp puts out about 100 watts...not really sure though as I'm no amp tech and have no test equipment. Information on the web is pretty hard to come by for this model as it was only made for a few years. One interesting feature is that there are two choices for plugging in your cabinet...either 16ohm or 8ohm. That's very handy.

I've used this with a bunch of different combinations and it always sounds good. It usually sounds very good to great for just about anything. It works well with effect pedals as well. That can't be said about every amp out there. Again, given the basic controls of this amp, it's not going to give you a bunch of things like reverb or tremelo, but what it does is give you a simplified circuit that means you get nothing in the signal path that you don't want. You want some of those other effects or even more eq, then use a pedal or a multieffects box. I'm sure we've all got them nowadays. For those of us that still prefer the sound of a well made instrument plugged into a well made tube amp....look no further. It will break up at higher volumes, but don't look for a modern type of distortion. Think more blackface bassman sounds....sweet tube compression. Pick softer and it's cleaner, dig in and it'll growl back at you. These Sunn amps are known for a bit of hum in general, but this one's got a polarity switch that seems to help. Heck, it's rock and roll...a little hum's not going to hurt anything. If you don't want hum, then get a Peavey or some other solid state amp.

This amp is approaching 25 years old. Probably older that most reading this....
Sunn are very reliable...always were. It's got tubes, so you need a bit of maintanence occassionally, but that's all. I'm sure mine could use some caps, but I'm not doing it until I have to.

This amp has a lifetime warranty from Sunn. Oh, wait a minute...they've been out of business for a few years. Who's life is that anyway?
Just kidding....if you need it fixed, anyone can work on these things.

Great amp. If you're looking for a killer amp with vintage tones that also doubles as a guitar amp or if you're a guitarist looking for a great amp that will also double as a bass rig, then this is your guy. How much more versatile can you get? Man, when are people going to learn that there's more to vintage amps than Fender, Marshall and Ampeg VST. There are so many sleepers out there...Sunn bass and guitar amps, Ampeg guitar amps, etc....for now, it's just a select few of our's secret....SHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Don't tell anyone.