Were there ever a brand to garner a following that borders on the religious, it's likely Sunn. Maybe it was the brand's act of introducing the world to the prospect of pure, unadulterated volume in rock music. Maybe it was the refinement and innovation on solid state amplification technology. Maybe it was the cultural adoption of the Sunn name into the cult of doom and drone that cultivated such a following. Who knows?
Whatever elevated the Sunn name to its legendary status, there must be a reason its name is so ubiquitous today. There must be a reason one of drone metal's biggest acts adopted the name verbatim. Today, we're talking about Sunn Amplification, their past, their present, and all the things that stack them up to be one of amplification's most monolithic names.
Today, Sunn rises once again.
Sunn It Rises
Sunn Amplificiation History
"Louie Louie"
Let's turn back the clocks. Let's go back to a time before loud rock music was a thing. We know – hard to imagine, right? To be specific, there was a strange sweet spot in the early 1960s between The Day the Music Died and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan where rock and roll was in its infancy. The sound wasn't all there yet. We had begun the shift from westerns and rockabilly toward more rhythm and blues, but we were still firmly in Cricket country. Enter a band called the Kingsmen.
Back in the day, apart from the matching suits, all you needed for a successful rock band was a signature cover song. Portland, Oregon's Kingsmen were one such example with their striped jackets and cover of singer Richard Berry's "Louie Louie". The band quickly gained notoriety for their marathon performances of the song specifically for live dance competitions. As the band picked up steam with "Louie Louie", they found themselves on the road playing to bigger and bigger audiences with a distinct problem: No one could hear them. Truly, the guitar gear of the early '60s left a lot to be desired in terms of power and output to accommodate bigger crowds hungry for this newfangled rock and roll music.
The Brothers Sundholm
Kingsmen bassist Norm Sundholm was hardest hit with this Bermuda Triangle of live tone trouble. Sadly, bass amps had not yet been suited to hit heavy and fill a room – again, hard to imagine today, right? Sundholm turned to his brother Conrad in Tualatin, Oregon, a high school physics teacher with a knack for homebrewed engineering and a horde of vacuum tubes collecting dust, for help. "I need more power," Norm asked him. As you could probably guess, Conrad delivered.
Out of Conrad's suburban garage emerged a brand new bass amplifier. This model hit the road with Norm and word spread fast about his powerful new rig. 1965 brought the brothers together formally under the Sunn Amplification Equipment company name as the operation grew too large to be run out of the family homestead.
It's a bit of a hike between the smiley jukebox rock of the '60s and the dower doom metal of today, so let's bridge that gap a little.
Sunnrise, Sunnset
When rock got louder and drifted further from what you might recognize from the squeaky-clean '60s, Sunn shined brighter. Jimi Hendrix's Noel Redding was among the first to famously brandish the Sunn 200S bass amp in 1968. Later, bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Rush, KISS, and Mountain joined the Sunn wave with The Who even recording a radio ad for the brand and utilizing exclusively the Sunn Coliseum PA system for their 1971 U.S. tour.
As is commonly the story with the rise of '60s and '70s rock and roll, the late 1970s meant the party was slowing down and soon to stop. Shifts in the market, changes in corporate hands, and evolving musical trends meant, like many famous names and brands among the time, Sunn began to set. Though of course, as we know now, that was far from the end of the story.
Salute the Sunn O)))
Sunn Amplificiation Amplifiers and Speaker Cabinets
In 2023, the Sunn name triumphantly returned. Led by a band of passionate heads from places like Mission Engineering, Charvel, Fender, and Bose, and former original Sunn personnel, today's Sunn Amplification seeks not just a re-do or a revival but a spirited stomp into the future. Today's Sunn amplifiers and speaker cabinets are all built in the United States to continue in the name's legacy as an all-American brand.
Let's talk about some of today's new, official Sunn offerings.
Sunn Amplification Beta Lead and Beta Bass Amplifier Heads
Before industry shifts in the late 1970s and acquisition in the mid-1980s shuffled Sunn into the shadows, one of the brand's most important innovations came in the form of the Beta Lead and Beta Bass solid state amplifier heads. These amps, retroactively dubbed as perhaps the first "great" solid state amplifiers, became the fixations of guitarists like Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins and Kurt Cobain near the tail end of the '80s. Though Sunn was all but shuttered, many Sunn models found their way into the hands of underground guitarists through secondhand sales in pawn shops and the classifieds.
Today's Beta Lead and Beta Bass heads retain the same innovative design that made their originators so beloved. Both heads come together with two-hundred watt solid state power and a Class D power amplifier shaped through Sunn digital CMOS technology and an analog MOSFET preamp. Two channel inputs allow for intricate mixing and melding of Beta series solid state tones while onboard FX loops and footswitchable controls open up the experience to more modern sensibilities.
Sunn Amplification Speaker Cabinets
Probably around here is where we can start mentioning the vertically-stacked, fifteen-inch-speaker-loaded elephant in the room. Undeniably part of what makes the Sunn name relevant even today is its adoption by the evolving metal movement toward the late 1990s. One act found the Sunn sound so integral to their identity that they went ahead and named themselves after the models that backed them up onstage. Not for nothing, but were it not for said band and the cult following they garnered with years of work with the brand's legendary amps and cabs, we may not even be having this conversation.
Today, Sunn Amplification continues in their tradition of producing some of rock's most formidable speaker cabinets. Historic models like the Sunn 215S drop in in modern Sunn production alongside cabinets like the Sunn 312T and Sunn 212S – the latter of which staking its claim in the brand's newly designed line of Sunn Modern products. The cabinets in question are large, imposing, and pack all the incredible punch we've come to know from their decades in and out of the limelight. Truly, they're a force to behold and a lineup that must be seen to be believed.
A Day in the Sunn
With a brand like Sunn, there's clearly passion on display at every level of operation. From the top-down brains keeping the lights on well into the name's sixth decade to the boots on the ground who sustained the Sunn legacy through its more understated '80s and '90s that really made it what it is today, Sunn continually proves to be a brand equal parts sonic innovator and labor of love.
Could there be a "casual" Sunn player? Well, there certainly could be, we suppose. If history has taught us anything though, it's that your average Sunn player is truly fanatical and ready to welcome you to their mode of music, their point of view, their way of belief. Maybe that's the reason Sunn endures – even in the dark, Sunn still shines.
