Sound City Amps

[SpeedDemon]

Ok. I have been looking all around for a fairly cheap Non-master volume, loud, and clean as hell amp. I found the Sound city 100 and 120. Some of the guys on another fourm I go to say these things are awesome for clean headroom and a good base for pedal users(Something I am). I plan on using a pedal for my distortion so no problem there. Just how loud and clean are these things? and how much do they usually go for?

[Rich_T]

Re: Sound City Amps

Ultra-mega loud, with the active eq section. They are really good amps for us guys, i was thinking of getting one myself, they go pretty cheap over here in the UK. About £150 for the 120 watter, 70 quid for the 50 watter.

[SpeedDemon]

Re: Sound City Amps

Ultra-mega loud, with the active eq section. They are really good amps for us guys, i was thinking of getting one myself, they go pretty cheap over here in the UK. About £150 for the 120 watter, 70 quid for the 50 watter.

DAMN that is cheap, I was expecting them to loud so thats good news. Any clue on prices in the states, or canada?

[flank]

Re: Sound City Amps

they are mega loud, like a Hiwatt (strong connection to Hiwatts in the beginning)....they are clean and hifi like hiwatts too, super clarity......ive seen a few of those L120s around here for $450-$550 for heads

[kevlar3000]

Re: Sound City Amps

The 120 is a tricky beast, very hard/stiff sounding and has lots of reliability issues, still have great iron though. No Hiwatt connection at all. Folks do however 'Hiwatt em' and can get much better sounds than stock, just takes a bit of work to get there. Plus you have 6 freakin power tubes, good luck finding a matched set!!. If you can find a 100, that is your Hiwatt connection. Those fetch much more $$ and would be very cool to own. Vastly superior amp to any other Sound City design.

For the same bucks, (actually less) a vintage Traynor is a vastly superior amp IMO. Relability, tone, and ease of working on are all hugely in the Traynor corner. Easily tweaked to hang with any vintage amp out there. Among the sturdiest amps ever built.

[LesPaulRules]

Re: Sound City Amps

I used to own a Sound City 120. One of the cleanest amps I've ever played through. Sounded great, but was loud as heck.

The big downside came when it was time to retube the thing. I'm not sure how many it had, but it wasn't cheap!!!

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Sound City Amps

The SC 50, 50R, 50+, 120, and 120R have active EQ sections are are not as HiWatt like as some guys would have you belive, the 100 whoever is very close to a Hiwatt...the 50+ and 120 are the most common SC amps you'll find and a 50+ can be had for 400-600 while the 120's bring a tad more. A 50R or 120R will bring even more as Reverb was a special order. People also talk about how much and often they break down...pure BS...I own a Sound City 50+ and it is a great amp that is built very well...handwired, high quality parts, Partradge transformers...all in all KILLER amps, not quite as clean as a HiWatt but far cleaner than a Marshall. The active EQ takes some time to get used to but once you do it is quite useful. trust me, I have one and I am always looking for another one...I want a 100, 120 and a 50R to go with my 50+!

[kevlar3000]

Re: Sound City Amps

The SC 50, 50R, 50+, 120, and 120R have active EQ sections are are not as HiWatt like as some guys would have you belive, the 100 whoever is very close to a Hiwatt...the 50+ and 120 are the most common SC amps you'll find and a 50+ can be had for 400-600 while the 120's bring a tad more. A 50R or 120R will bring even more as Reverb was a special order. People also talk about how much and often they break down...pure BS...I own a Sound City 50+ and it is a great amp that is built very well...handwired, high quality parts, Partradge transformers...all in all KILLER amps, not quite as clean as a HiWatt but far cleaner than a Marshall. The active EQ takes some time to get used to but once you do it is quite useful. trust me, I have one and I am always looking for another one...I want a 100, 120 and a 50R to go with my 50+!

Reliabilty is a big issue with these amps, there is a reason no major band toured with these amps in the 70s and there is a reason Dave Reeves left the company. He thought they were building poor quality amps and did not want any association with them. SC are a cool, quirky amp, but they have many more issues in their basic design than many amps of that era. Cost cutting is the number one reason why. Stramp, London City are a couple other good examples of amps of that era with many of the same reliability issues. Sound City has surely caught the fancy of many folks, I think the biggest reason is the Hiwatt connection. Those Partridge transformers are among the best ever built, but I don't think you will find many folks in agreement with you regarding their reliability. There is a world of difference between MK 4 era SC ( Reeves was gone after the MK II) and Hiwatt.

Here is a good read from the Plexi Palace

http://www.plexipalace.com/plexiboard/viewtopic.php?t=21109

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Sound City Amps

Dave left SC because he had his own designs which were cleaner sounding amps and Dallas Arbiter did not want to change, not because the SC was of poor quality. Very few (if any at all) major band has ever toured with Traynor amps or Trainwreck amps or Kendrick amps, or Stramp amps or Sundown amps, or Kitty Hawk amps...does that mean that they are of poor quality? SC amps are of no more "poor" quality than an old Plexi Marshall or an old (or new for that matter) Vox that will fall apart if you look at it wrong. I also suspect that you have never owned a Sound City and if not then you are simply re-telling what you have been told or heard off the internet which as we all know is mostly BS. Im an saying first hand that my SC is as solid as just about anything else I have ever owned (which is a pretty long list running from Marshalls to Fenders to Traynors to Gibson to Silvertone and thats just a few). A buddy or 2 of mine has also gotten a CS since I got mine and also think very highly of them. Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, both Pete and John from the Who owned and used SC amps and they all did have an isseu with them but it was not reliabilty...Jimmy and Jimi thought they they didn't crunch fast enough while Pete and John thought that they crunch too quick.

[newking70]

Re: Sound City Amps

sound city=sound sh!ty

[kevlar3000]

Re: Sound City Amps

Having played three with hopes of purchase I walked away beacuase of the sound. MK 1 and MK 2 are Reeve's design, which is what Pete and Jimi used. Those are great amps, and very rare, I would love to own one. The MK 4 years are full of pre-amp quirks, oscilliation issues, hiss issues the 120 is a bias nightmare having 6 power tubes widely varying degrees of component quality and value. You can read the thread, so you can at least see some good assements about these amps, and issues related to them.

To bring Traynor in the mix, these amps were stage rental amps, which means these amps filled the concert halls around the country with their amps for tours that came through. Rental amps had better be reliable or they will be out of biz. Traynor passed that test and still do with a much better design and build philosophy. There is no comparison as to which is a sturdier and better built amp.

I have 12 heads right now, 11 dated 1963 to 1972, I have off brands like Silvertone, Multivox, Hilgen and Montgomery Wards. In addition to Traynors, Gibsons and a Laney. I can tell you w/o hesitation the SC I played ( concord, 120 and 50+ are not even in the neighborhood of stock tone that any one of my amps have. The active EQ is a huge turnoff IMO. Each was brittle and noisy as in hum. I am a picky man when it comes to what my amps sound like. Please feel free to post some clips of yours in action so I can hear it.

You may like the brand, but to liken these amps to Marshall in terms of build quality is a mis-statement IMO. Too many design quirks in their stock design to even begin to make a comparison. I would ask that you read the thread I linked and at least offer me some effective counterpoint to those who have voiced technical issues with them.

[kevlar3000]

Re: Sound City Amps

Here is a little tidbit from the SC site.

"In order to make this business model work, all the products Sound City sold had to be marketed at price points that made them attractive to buyers who often had little more than return bus fare when they walked into a music store. While this makes sense, the resulting costs of materials used and of workmanship applied to these products had to be held at reasonable levels such that retail costs of these same products could be correspondingly reasonable. Remember, a Sound City L100 stack with two 4x12 cabs sold for substantially less than $1000 at that time, which was unheard of in comparison to a Marshall stack of the same era, and Marshall was Sound City's admitted competition.

As a result, and as the company's primary design engineer, Dave Reeves felt that Sound City's production values suffered and that the materials used in the amps, and especially the workmanship that went into them, were less than they could have been given a less aggressive, more focused business model, and a subsequently more flexible budget for materials and manufacturing. It's been suggested that what Dave Reeves disliked most was not necessariily the business plan itself; rather, it was the effects brought on by that plan: the lack of quality control. Dave wanted to create and build the best possible amps he could, regardless of cost, and he didn't feel he could do this at Sound City.

Consequently, unable to influence the narrow direction he felt Sound City was taking, feeling powerless to boost the level of quality, and seeing no other alternative, Dave Reeves left Sound City and started Hiwatt (and Hylight Electronics), using a combination of the model "One Hundred" and model L100 Mark 2 amps as the foundational designs for his new company's products".

[joelap]

Re: Sound City Amps

I've got a Sound City 50+, bought it for basically the same reasons as you... needed a tube amp head that can get loud, stay relatively clean, but also crunch a bit.

If you've got the master on 10 and your using humbuckers, it will not be clean. I should mention that the 50+'s have a "sensitivity switch" on the back that lowers or raises the cathode bias resistor value. Basically, that gives it two seperate modes. With the sens switch one way, it will be VERY clean, very little breakup when using a strat and mild breakup with humbuckers when dimed. With the sens switch the other way, humbuckers get really dirty and strats get some good crunch too.

I think a Sound City is perfect for what you're looking for.