Sunn Stinger 20 (1x8, 20W Combo)

This amp is extremely basic, solid state. It's a combo, with a single 8" full-range speaker. It has line in, headphones out, a speaker mute switch, a power switch, bass/mid/treble, gain, and master volume; add a power plug and that's about all there is to it.

This amp was produced after Fender bought Sunn. Mine was made in 1987.

It's for practice only and doesn't make really good clean sounds, but if you want a little dirt or a lot of dirt, diode-distortion of course, it does that nicely.

Now, all of that said, I use two of these on small stages with a Digitech RP-200, and it sounds pretty darn good. You get your nice stereo, and the output from the RP-200 is high enough that you don't have to turn the gain on the amp up far enough that it starts to distort. You can use the "TU BE" or "Blackface" settings with an acoustic-electric, even, and it still sounds pretty good. And if you want truly radical distortion, you can crank the gain on the "Stack" setting, crank the amp gain, and as long as you don't crank the master and blow the amp up, get some truly gnasty noises out of it.

I use this with a dual humbucker 335 copy, and with a classic 3 single coil strat copy. I like it a lot better with my RP-200 than straight in.

If you like distortion, you'll like this amp; it's truly nasty all by its lonesome with the gain cranked. If you want clean sounds from your Takamine 12-string, this amp is not for you. Surprisingly for such a small amp, it will wake your neighbors up if you live in an apartment, unless they are very heavy sleepers. There is a certain amount of hiss on high treble settings, as one would expect, but other than that it is pretty quiet, particularly in terms of power hum. The bass response is even more amazing than how much volume it puts out; I have not encountered a low-power guitar amp with such good bass anywhere else, ever.

The pots tend to get dirty and start crackling quite easily, so be prepared to make extensive use of pot cleaner; it's cheap at Radio Shack.

Other than the pots tending to get dirty easily, this amp has not had a single problem, and I have abused it thoroughly. And I do mean thoroughly; the top is currently held on with angle brackets. The handle has never come off. The front covering for the speaker is a steel mesh grille, so it would be difficult to damage the cone or surround. It has only two weaknesses, and compared to most such items they are minor. First, the casing is made of fiberboard; this is, however, common on even relatively high-end amps, and it is properly covered with textured amp cloth. Second, the power cord connection is not only two-prong, but the cord slides in and out of a slot on the back cover, and there is no strain relief.

On the other hand, this is no pansy cheapie amp. You'll know that when you go to pick it up and feel the weight of its speaker and transformer. It is a substantial piece of equipment, and unless you blow the speaker or the power transistors by overloading it, or the inputs by putting inappropriate signal levels in, you should never have a single problem with it.

For the techies and EEs among us, the design is extremely clean, and uses not only extremely common parts, but also uses traditional biasing instead of weirdo active bias schemes trying to save one metal-film resistor and take 3/4 of a cent off the manufacturing cost. If something goes wrong, you'll have no trouble with finding replacement parts, desoldering the old ones and putting the new ones in, and no problems with biasing or needing transistors that have some certain base curve or something off-the-wall like that. There is very little in the way of adjustment, just a couple pots to set the bass and treble rolloffs. IIRC there's one to set the max headphone level too.

KISS really does work, and this is a very simple and highly reliable design.

Never needed it. I think that's a recommendation all by itself. :D

This was my first amp; I've had it almost 20 years. It has stood the test of time, and has served me at least as well as any other single item I have ever owned. If it were stolen, I would not be able to get another; however, if they were still making them, I would seriously consider it.

The single improvement I could think of would be a reverb, and it's impractical because the unit is too small to hold the coil. If you want a simple, durable, highly reliable, small, easy to handle practice amp in the 15-30 watt range, this is you. It's a real shame they stopped making them. For what it does, it does it as well as anything made today. I give it a 10 for how well it does what it does; obviously, this amp would never directly compare with over-30-watt serious equipment, but in its range, it kicks ass.