cabinets

product rdf: 

Loudspeaker_enclosure

Diaz

César Carrillo Díaz was born in Puerto Rico was playing guitar by age six. He moved to the USA in 1969 (aged 18) where he played guitar with Johnny Nash before joining Frijid Pink.  During the seventies, César was involved in the developing market for vintage tube amplifiers and became known as "The Amp Doctor" for his tube-amp restoration skills. He found and restored numerous vintage tube amps. His skills brought him into contact with some of the great guitarists of the era, including the unsigned Stevie Ray Vaughan, who  César supplied him with amplifiers and cabinets in 1979. As the 1980s rolled by César was a technical advisor to Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan. César even played around 50 dates as Dylan's guitarist. 

Darius

Darius amplifiers were made in the 1970s by Arc Musical Instruments, a division of Ahed - a Canadian company owned by Phil G. Anderson. Ahed was established in 1969 and became the Eco Corporation in 1978. There was a complete range of Darius amplifiers and PA systems ranging in price from $40 to $600 (in 1972). The Darius guitar and bass amp heads are immediately recognisable by their bright colored face plates - the 1000 series had orange face-plates and the 2000 series had lime green.

Source: Darius catalog 1972

Source: Ahed wiki page (8 March 2017)

 

Suhr

John Suhr founded JS Technologies Inc in 1997. Suhr started out doing repairs at Rudy's Music in New York. His first Suhr Custom guitar was made in 1984, before he teamed up with Rudy Pensa to make guitars under the Pensa-Suhr brandname. In the early 1990s John Suhr moved from New York to Los Angeles and from 1995 to 1997 worked as Senior Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop. In 1997 Suhr joined forces with Steve Smith to form JS Technologies - a small factory building custom guitars to order. Suhr now offers a range of electric guitars and basses as well as amplifiers and effects. John's son Kevin has now also joined the company.

Source: Suhr guitars website (25 February 2017)

Sundown SD412

Sundown SD412 cabinet

The Sundown SD412 was made in the USA from around 1984 onwards. The SD412 is a professional quality, 200—Watt speaker system utilizing 4 12” Celestion 12550 speakers. the slanted straight baffle design of the SD44 2 provides driver coupling and sound dispersion. the heavy—duty construction prevents unwanted cabinet resonances at high output levels. The SD412 is covered in high quality Tolex and is outfitted with heavy-duty  hardware, including recessed handles.

Read more ...

Sundown

Sundown amplifiers were made in the USA by Sundown Technology Inc. Sundown Technology also owned the Rocky brand. Sundown was founded in 1984 by Denis Kager,  his first Sundown Amplifier was designed as a combo with a 12" speaker that could produce a wide range of tube sounds, but was small enough to fit in a road case or put in a car. This amp was the first true discreet channel switching amp - previous dual channels layered circuits on top of each other. Kager got a patent for a biasing circuit that allowed it to be manually adjusted from 100 watts down to 15 by turning a dial (the RMS control). He also trademarked the amp's Governor circuit – a post-phase inverter compression circuit and Master Volume that could blend textures of overdrive.

Bedrock

The Bedrock Amplifier Company was founded 1984 by Brad Jeter and Ron Pinto in Nashua, New Hampshire. In 1988 they were joined by Jay Abend and Evan Cantor. Jeter and Pinto left in the early 1990s and the company moved to Framingham, Massachusetts where it was run by Cantor and Abend until it folded in 1997. Bedrock Amplifiers were all handmade from the cabinets to the electronics and were typically based on Vox AC-30 type designs.

Source: Bedrock amplifier tribute page

Sound City

Sound City was originally an Arbiter Electronics music shop in Rupert Street London. In 1966/1967 Arbiter's PA and amplifier line was designed and built in the rear of the shop and was branded "Sound City". When Dallas Musical Ltd merged with Arbiter in 1967 all of the Sound City amps and cabinets (as well as Arbiter Electronics' other products) were relabelled from Arbiter Electronics, Ltd. to either Arbiter Sound City or Dallas Arbiter, Ltd.

Link: Sound City history

ELK

Elk was a Japanese guitar, amplifier and music-electronics brand during the 1960s and 1970s. Elk instruments were built by the Miyuki Company and were mostly distributed within Japan. Miyuki reportedly stopped making ELK amplifiers (and possibly the guitars as well) in the early 1970s and manufacture was taken over by Hoshino Gakki (the owners of the Ibanez brand).

Elk mainly exported amplifiers but a few guitar models were distributed and were reputedly of good quality. For example the Elk 1972 English language catalog only lists three guitar models: a thinline semi acoustic, a solid-body electric and a bass. The 1972 Japanese catalogue has a lot more models.

Ruby Amp in a Magic 8-ball

Submitted by guitar-list on

Ruby Practice guitar amp housed in a magic 8 ball

The Ruby Amp is a great little battery powered solidstate practice amp. The design is based on the Little Gem design which in turn comes from the Smokey Amp designed by Dave Stork on www.blueguitar.org. The design uses relatively few components and is a good DIY project. Cigar box guitar maker J.K. built a Ruby Amp but found himself hunting for a suitable enclosure for it. Then he noticed an old magic 8 ball that looked just right with a perfect sized hole for the speaker.

Is this a good amp? ...<Shakes ball vigourously>... Signs point to yes!

BOSS

BOSS is the division of Roland Corporation most easily recognized for its line of colorful guitar and bass effects pedals.

For over 25 years BOSS has also developed innovative multi-effects, rhythm machines, personal digital studios and other easy-to-use instruments for musicians of all types.

Trace Elliot

Trace Elliot originated in 1979 in the Soundwave music shop in Romford, Essex. The Soundwave owner, Fred Friedlein, and staff which included Alan Morgan (sales) and Stuart Watson (design engineer) were building and hiring out PA systems. Musicians began using these amplifiers for basses and the Soundwave staff went on to developed range of products that using MOSFET output stages driving large cabinets, including 15” drivers, and a 4 x 10” cabinet, now an industry standard for bass amps. The brand became Trace Elliot: by 1989 they were also making acoustic amplifiers. The company was bought by Kaman in 1992. It was sold again in 1997 as a management buy-out and again in 1998 to the Gibson Guitar Corp. By 2002 UK manufacturing had stopped & Gibson moved production of any remaining products elsewhere. By 2015 Peavey had aquired the rights to the brand.

Source: Trace Elliot website (14 January 2021)

SWR

Steve W. Rabe founded SWR Engineering Inc.  in 1983. His aim was to make a bass amp with a full range and hi-fi, clean sound. SWR's first “hybrid” full-range bass amplifier, the PB-200 (later to become the SM-400), appeared in 1984. The first five units were made in a garage. The PB-200 had a warm but highly accurate tube preamp, a stereo solid-state power amp and a low-noise, integrated circuit-driven tone section. It was used for the famous “We Are The World” session, at which a direct-input signal was taken from the amp (as opposed to using a direct box), a then unheard-of bass recording concept. In 1986, SWR released the Goliath, a 4 x 10" full-range speaker cabinet with a built-in horn tweeter, a first for bass cabinets.  In 1997 Rabe sold the company and it was sold again in 2003 to Fender Musical Instruments Corp. Fender discontinued the SWR brand in 2013.

Sound Enhancer

Sound Enhancer was founded in 2002 by Harold Smith Jr in The Woodlands, Texas.  The company was founded to introduce Manifold Horn Technology to the combo amp market. Their main product - The Enhancer, was an amp stand that could redirect sound from the open back of the combo amp to the front. According to the company: "The Enhancer™ is a rear loaded horn cabinet for a removable speaker assembly, using the existing speaker already mounted in the combo amplifier. Redirecting the sound emanating from the backside of your open back combo amp, expanding volume and frequency response. It also lifts and tilts the otherwise small combo amp cabinet for better sound projection." It came in 5 different sizes to fit different amplifiers.

Source: Sound Enhancer website (archived 2007)

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - cabinets