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Sound City - Higher watts than Hiwatts
Sound City amps were always over-shadowed by their Hiwatt cousins (both designed by Dave Reeves), but more recently they’re been recognised as fantastic amps in their own right.
In their time, Sound City amps were used by both the Who, and Jimi Hendrix. Jimi, being turned on to them by Peter Entwhistle, used them as a high volume clean sound, alongside his usual distorted Marshall.
The MKIV line has it’s detractors, as the preamp comes with an active EQ circuit. However, it’s fans claim that if you know that it’s an active EQ and treat it as such, then you can get beautiful sounds out of this amp.
Hosting 6 EL34’s in the power amp to produce 120 watts, the L120 is a bit of beast. To control this, there is a power reduction switch on the back, which allegedly changes the amp from insanely loud to just incredibly loud.
In the preamp there are 4 × 12AX7/ECC83 tubes. One-and-a-half are used for gain stages and the rest for the active EQ (still gain, but you know what I mean). A final ECC81 is then used for the phase inverter.
The photos and condition report supplied with the amp show that it’s in really good condition with huge partridge transformers. Once it hits our shores we’ll give it a service and rebuild and then it will be ready to rock!