We’ve featured loud rigs. We’ve stood strong in front of Matt Pike’s octet of Oranges, been washed over with waves of volume from Angus Young’s nine Marshalls for AC/DC’s “small gig setup” in an arena, trembled from J Mascis’ three plexi full stacks, and even withstood Bonamassa’s barrage of seven amps at the Ryman, but nothing prepared us or compared to the Godzilla-rising-from-the-Pacific roar that is Sunn O)))’s auditory artillery. And it’s more than the sheer sight of 14 amps and 16 cabs or the dishing of deafening decibels; it’s the interplay of these characters and their conductors.
“The third member of the band is the amplifiers!” laughed Greg Anderson in a 2014 interview with PG. “We use vintage Sunn Model Ts from the early ’70s. They’re a crucial part of the show. I’ve got more amps than I have guitars.”
Stephen O’Malley takes a more metaphysical outlook to the connection between him and the thundering Model Ts. “My philosophy is that I’m just part of this bigger circuit of the instrumentation,” he says. “You have, of course, the amplifier valves, the speaker, effects pedals acting like different and various voltage filters, the air in the room, and the feedback generated from all this equipment, so who’s in the band is immaterial.”
We learned more about O’Malley’s perspective when, following a 90-minute drive southeast from Nashville to Pelham, Tennessee, and a short descent into The Caverns, the Sunn O))) guitar tag team welcomed PG’s Chris Kies onstage for an amplifying chat. O’Malley details his signature Travis Bean Designs SOMA 1000A, while Anderson explains how a broken guitar led him to his beloved Les Paul goldtop. Both pay homage and reverence to the eight Sunn Model Ts that form the band’s foundational tonal force, and explain why the LM308-chip Rat influenced their Life Pedal collaboration with EarthQuaker Devices.
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Silverburst Slugger
This is Stephen O’Malley’s signature Travis Bean Designs SOMA 1000A that he co-designed alongside Electrical Guitar Company’s Kevin Burkett and late luthier Travis Bean’s wife, Rita Bean. Burkett revitalized the brand in the early 2010s with the guidance of Rita and Travis’ longtime business partner Marc McElwee.
First off, just like the original TB models, these feature a single piece of 7075-T651 aluminum alloy that runs the length of the guitar’s backside that makes up the headstock, neck, and the rear half of the body. Its scale length is 25.5", the neck radius is 12", and it has a brass nut set for the band’s use of A tuning. The handwound high-gain TB humbuckers are built to Stephen’s specs. The build includes CTS pots, Sprague caps, and Switchcraft hardware. The silverburst finish covers a koa body.
Stephen’s thoughts on the collaboration: “Being honored with a signature model is great, but the bigger achievement or accomplishment is having an interaction with Kevin and the Bean family, who produced an instrument we’re all proud of.”
Strong T
Here’s the standard eye-catching T headstock and brass nut featured on all old and new Travis Bean instruments.
Stephen’s Specter
This transparent devil is an Electrical Guitar Company Ghost that has a 1-piece aluminum neck that covers backup duties for O’Malley. Fun fact: this has the same pickups in it as Steve Albini’s high-output single-coils in his Travis Bean Designs TB500 signature. They are RWRP (reverse-wound, reverse-polarity) to reduce the 60-cycle hum.
Greg’s Lucky Goldtop
While touring with Boris in 2008 or ’09, Greg’s main 1989 Gibson Les Paul goldtop endured a neck fracture. On their next day off, he wandered into the nearest Guitar Center and walked out with the above 2005 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. It originally had mini humbuckers, but Anderson felt they were “thin-sounding.” So, he swapped them out for a set of DiMarzio P90 Super Distortions, that are actually humbuckers housed in P-90 enclosures for replacements that don’t require routing. He loves the violent output and grind provided by the P90 Super Distortions.
Sonic Protagonists
“The amps are certainly the main characters of the band,” concedes O’Malley. The main protagonists for Sunn O)))’s sonic saga are the eight Sunn Model T heads they set onstage. (Six are on and plugged into, while each member has a dedicated backup.) Stephen mentions in the Rundown that he prefers lower-wattage speakers, but when requesting backlines or renting gear from SIR, they can’t be too picky with the vast amount of cabinets they need. O’Malley runs his Model Ts and ’80s Ampeg MTI SVT through either 4x12s from Sound City or Fryette. The silver-panel Ampeg SVT-VRs flanking both ends of the semi-circle, are being slaved by each member’s MTI SVT, and that signal is hitting their matching Ampeg Heritage SVT-810AV cabinets outfitted with 10" Eminence drivers.
Stephen O’Malley’s Pedalboard
“My concept in playing this music for tone involves many, many, many different gain stages that are all intonated differently depending on the pitch of the sound. There are slight shades of color saturation or grain as if it’s a paint—the shorter bandwidth color gradation or the density of the paint.” All these subtle sweeps of saturation, sustain, and feedback are enlivened and exaggerated with Stephen’s pedal palette. His current collection of slaughtering stomps include the band’s most recent collaboration with EarthQuaker Devices (Life Pedal V3), an Ace Tone FM-3 Fuzz Master, a Pete Cornish G-2, and an EarthQuaker Devices Black Ash. For subtler shadings, he has a J. Rockett Audio Designs Archer.
The EQD Swiss Things creates effects loops to engage the FM-3, G-2, or the Black Ash. In addition, he runs a Roland RE-201 Space Echo through the Swiss Things, too. O’Malley uses the Aguilar Octamizer as a “fun punctuation that comes on once in a while. It abstracts the guitar into minimalist electronics [laughs].” The custom Bright Onion Pedals switcher keeps the amps in sync with phase controls and ground lifts. A Peterson StroboStomp HD keeps his Travis Bean in check. Off to the side of the board is a Keeley-modded Rat that initiated the band’s core sound, plus a Lehle Mono Volume. (Stephen is a Lehle endorsee.) This circuit includes the heralded LM308 chip and was the basis for their partnership with EQD and the Life Pedal series.
Space and Time
Elevated off the stage floor and secured by a stand are O’Malley’s Roland RE-201 Space Echo and Oto Machines BAM Space Generator Reverb.
Greg Anderson’s Pedalboard
“To be honest with you, I try to keep it pretty simple now because I love pedals and have fallen down a lot of rabbit holes with them, but I found myself troubleshooting and having more issues than my sound warranted. When I started with this band, it was just a Rat and tuner pedal, so I try to just bring what I need,” says Anderson. He found a potent pairing with the EQD Life Pedal V2 acting as a boost and running into a vintage Electro-Harmonix Sovtek Civil War Big Muff that creates a “powerful, chewy, ooze” tone. Like O’Malley, he also has a custom Bright Onion Pedals box and an Aguilar Octamizer set to unleash a “ridiculous, beating, fighting, chaotic, sub-bass sound.” An Ernie Ball VP Junior handles dynamics, a Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner keeps his goldtop in shape, and an MXR Mini Iso-Brick powers his pedals.
RatingsPros:Superb and distinctive tones. Vast tonal range via simple controls. Extraordinary dynamic response. Quality build. Cons: No master volume. Street: $2,395 Sound City SC30 soundcityamp.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use: Build/Design: Value:  |
When I was starting out on guitar a few too many decades ago, I’d sometimes spot used Sound City amps in guitar shops—and run the other way. It was solid-state crap—just the sort of stuff a shifty salesperson would try to unload on an ignorant kid.
And I was an ignorant kid. I had no idea that Sound City had made cool amps in the 1960s. Those original amps were created for and named after Ivor Arbiter’s London music shop. Playing catch-up with fellow retailer Jim Marshall and his bold new amps, Arbiter hired Dave Reeves to design competitive models. But not long after, Reeves moved on to create the historic Hiwatt brand, while Sound City amps slid into mediocrity.
Second Sound City
Last year Steve Fryette and Neal Ostberg of Fryette Amplification acquired the Sound City name. The 30-watt 1x12 SC30 combo is their latest effort. It’s not based on a particular vintage model, but it definitely provides a mid-1960s playing experience, with an emphasis on power tube distortion. The SC30 doesn’t sound quite like an old Marshall JTM45, but anyone who digs “Bluesbreaker”-style amps should feel right at home here.
The ’60s amps that inspire the new Sound City line have separate bright and normal channels. Here, though, there’s a single input, with separate controls for the internally jumpered channels. There are bass, mid, and treble controls, plus a wet/dry knob for the amp’s juicy spring reverb. That’s it—pretty darn simple.
Nonetheless, the SC30 provides a phenomenal range of tones. Its clean colors balance formidable low-end girth and airy sparkle. They’re hyper-articulate, transmitting every dynamic variation, every brush of fingernail or scrape of pick. Nuanced players will love these nuanced sounds.
Tones get crunchy when you raise the two volume controls toward their midpoints. You can summon many shades of distortion by adjusting the relative brilliant/normal levels. At high volume, tones are massive, with glorious power-amp saturation and seemingly eternal sustain. Yet even with the volume knobs cranked, tones retain powerful upper-mid presence and snappy response. These sounds aren’t tight in the modern hard-rock/metal sense, but they get closer to that sensibility than many ’60s-style combos.
Roar, Not Buzz
The lack of a master volume control is a double-edged sword. It means you’re working with rich power-tube distortion, not buzzy preamp gain. But it can be hard to access low-volume crunch without adding a power attenuator or load box. The SC30 is loud for a 30-watt amp, and it sounds so good when it’s working hard that you’ll probably want to let it. This is a hot amp in every sense—you can feel the heat coming off the chassis. (The power tubes are cathode bias, which results in higher operating temperature).
The tone controls feel … curated, for lack of a better word. Their ranges aren’t vast, but their usefulness is. High bass settings provide extraordinary wallop for an open-back combo. High treble settings are bright but not sadistically shrill. With both gain and treble cranked, you get vicious, glassy crunch that maintains its musicality. The SC30 excels at the brutal-in-a-cool-way sizzle you get from, say, overdriven Tele bridge pickups. (I give the tone controls a workout starting at 06:55 in the demo clip. I play a series of similar riffs on a single humbucker bridge pickup, changing nothing but the tone knob settings.) In short, SC30 merits that highest of amp accolades: “It’s impossible to dial in a bad sound.”
Valve Job
Some of the SC30’s character stems from its dual KT66 power tubes. (You can substitute 6L6s or 5881s without re-biasing, though I didn’t test these options.) Compared to, say, the EL34 tubes found in many Marshall amps, KT66s are slower to distort. Their highs have more chime, and their lows have more punchy definition. It’s a hi-fi sound relative to, say, the grinding, midrange-forward character of plexi-era Marshalls.
The SC30’s relatively high headroom and wide frequency range should please players who tend to sculpt tones from their pedalboards. But it’s not as if you need stompboxes to make the most of this amp—especially given its remarkable dynamic response. You can veer from vicious to crystalline using only your guitar’s volume knob. I’d have no qualms about gigging with nothing more than a guitar, the SC30, and a cable. Well, maybe a beer.
The warm-toned, 3-spring Accutronics reverb tank isn’t too strongly flavored. There are no pesky resonant peaks. It does nice surfy/splashy sounds, while modest settings complement the amp’s assertive, ultra-present character.
Board Stiff
Peek inside the SC30’s chassis and you may be surprised by how … normal it looks. Small components are arrayed on one large circuit board plus three subsidiary boards. Heavy-duty standoffs secure these thick boards, and none of the amp’s potsor jacks are board-mounted. Circuit board construction keeps costs down, and Fryette reinvests where it matters most sonically: the custom speaker and transformers and the glorious-sounding Gold Lion power tubes.
The solid-wood cabinet feels reliable. The vinyl covering and grille fabric are handsome. The amp’s compact dimensions (approximately 24.5" x 19" x 9") mean easy storage and transportation, but at 48 pounds, this may not be a great choice for the hernia prone.
The Verdict
The SC30 is a minimalist monster. The controls are simple. Bells and whistles are conspicuous in their absence. There’s no effects loop, no channel switching, no footswitch control—not even a standby switch. Nevertheless, you get a huge range of tactile tones distinguished by crisp presence, rich overtones, and superb dynamic response. The use of circuit board construction in this price range may disappoint some players, though I suspect any misgivings will evaporate about 10 seconds after plugging in. I adore this bold and versatile amp.
Watch the Review Demo: