Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum

Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: Frank on May 12, 2010, 08:35:19 PM

Title: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: Frank on May 12, 2010, 08:35:19 PM

Been over at my dad's house today, doing a bit of work which involved me climbing up into the loft to fix things. Among the usual decaying junk you'd expect to find in a loft, I stumbled (almost literally) across something I thought had been thrown in a skip years ago - my ancient Sound City 120 head, dusty and in a bad state of disrepair and generally looking like it's been at the bottom of a river for six months.

Wasn't able to bring it down, these things weigh an absolute ton but my mind's already made up and this is going to be my summer project ... it hummed badly when I got it 20 years ago and it's in need of a LOT of work but I'm determined to get stuck into it. If you've never heard one of these things in action, they're frighteningly loud with so much clean headroom it's actually difficult to overdrive the thing without risking permanent hearing loss.

Pic isn't my amp - mine's in far worse condition and I wasn't exactly able to start taking photos up there.

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: FernandoDuarte on May 12, 2010, 11:00:57 PM

Cool! Hope you can get it in shape!

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: sgmypod on May 13, 2010, 10:06:53 AM

Ouch the 120 understand why you cant get to overdrive before hearing loss

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: Heritage Softail on May 13, 2010, 11:02:54 AM

Will you have a treasure trove of old tubes?

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: Frank on May 13, 2010, 11:14:01 AM

Quote from: Heritage Softail on May 13, 2010, 11:02:54 AM

Will you have a treasure trove of old tubes?

It's a bit of a bottle bank, power amp uses six EL34s. Clearly the designers went a bit power-mad on this one.

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: Jonny on May 13, 2010, 05:26:05 PM

All the best- in getting it down from there.

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: maverickf1jockey on May 13, 2010, 06:25:59 PM

I've got one of those too.

Lovely amp.

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: Frank on May 13, 2010, 07:39:59 PM

Quote from: maverickf1jockey on May 13, 2010, 06:25:59 PM

I've got one of those too.

Lovely amp.

You couldn't give them away a few years ago, now they're on ebay for ridiculous prices (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sound-City-Valve-Amp-/160432925469?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_MusicalInstr_Amplifiers_RL&hash=item255a8c2b1d)

Title: Re: Surprise blast from the past
Post by: gordiji on May 13, 2010, 08:28:21 PM

i think they use the sound city as a benchmark 'clean' tone model on line 6 amps.i'm sure it's worth renovating