no, you dont want one, because i want one and that would make you my competition =P
just kidding... not really... but heres what i know about my favorite sounding amp
About Sunn amps, they all sound like very generic fender type chime, saggy overdrive vintage amps, EXCEPT the model T... which is an entirely different entity.
there are 2 versions of the Model T: the original 70's, and the late 90's fender reissue.
the 70's version is 150 watts, has 5 inputs. Normal Channel in and out inputs, bridge input (both channels), and bright channel in and out.
Now, you would think that 150 watts is alot of headroom, but it doesnt like to stay clean unless you have very low output pickups. The clean is super chimy, and warm. Think fender twin reverb with more bells and chime. Easily my favorite clean tone out there... i love bands like Pelican and Sunn O))) who use it.
The dirty, is, as you know, doom tastic. It is kinda loose and saggy, so it wont do speed metal or anything technical, but $%&#, who cares, thats not what its for. It was designed for 70's rock (Hendrix used it), but when cranked does doom quite well.
Controls are: brite volume, normal volume, low, mid, high, presence, master.
Thats right, no gain controls, your channel volume doubles as your gain. Ouch.
Fun fact, it can handle 2 ohms of cabs... LOUD :).
Downsides:
(for some) shared EQ, personally, i dont give a shite.
3 gain stages per channel. Basically, it has the amount of gain of a vintage orange or a marshall bluesbreaker... not alot.... so how do the doomers do it? Theres alot of ways... use the bridge input to get both channels, and then you get 6 gain stages (though they're parallel and not cascading). The way i'd do it is plug into the brite channel, and connect "brite out" into "normal in" which would effectively get me the cascade effect... oh the fun of 5 inputs. The other way is to dime all the volumes so you get poweramp distortion, which with those 6550's is $%&#in sweet, its what gets you that super crazy doom tone.
Last downside, new they were 300... and up until last year, they could be found on ebay for 400$ US. Now since bands liek Sunn O))) and Pelican are getting popular, they've inflated to 1200-1700$ US... its balls.
Now the 90's fender version.
Single input, 2 channels, footswitch available. Clean and dirty channels: fender clean, and sunn dirty. Separate EQ's. true bypass tube driven fx loop (very sweet). 6 12ax7's, 4 6l6's, redering it into 120 watts. Club arena switch. Changes it from 120 watts to 29 watts. (everybody says 100 to 20, or 25, but they dont know what the $%&# theyre talkin about). Now, this magic switch does this by doing 2 things. It takes 2 powertubes out of the circuit, effectively reducing power by half (60 watts) and then runs the tubes in triode mode instead of pentode (basically disables of 2/5ths of the tube, halving power again to 30 watts). Now my marshall does this, and it VERY effectively murders all of your bass definition, a huge load of gain, and clarity. It essentially turns your amp into a quiet(er) hunk of shite. The gain on this puppy is more controllable though because it has a gain knob and more gain stages... allegedly has more chunk than a mesa.
Downsides: 6l6's... they do NOT like to break up, theyre good for clean, but not distortion, i'd probably toss them for a set of el34's, 6550's.
and the distortion is quite fenderesque... whcih some people like, others dont...
these things are sex machines, but they NEED high volume to sound good. Attenuator and earplugs reccomended.
if you eve rmanage to buy one and cant get enough gain, just throw a tube screamer infront of it.
