Guitar gear heads. Tone question.

[kbrisso]

Hello-

I spent a pretty penny on a hot rod Marshall Plexi. Therefore I can't justify buying a Sunn Beta pre amp. What pedal if any will get the Sunn Beta tone? I do have a solid state ISP amp that can handle a pre amp, I'm thinking a good pedal would sound great through this.

[Dumpster D]

Hello-

I spent a pretty penny on a hot rod Marshall Plexi. Therefore I can't justify buying a Sunn Beta pre amp. What pedal if any will get the Sunn Beta tone? I do have a solid state ISP amp that can handle a pre amp, I'm thinking a good pedal would sound great through this.

Some details on the amp specs and mods please.

If you want Sunn Amp tone, get a sunn amp. Simple as that.

The 'Acapulco gold' has a dessert rock stoner 70's feel, it's supposedly the front end off a Solid state Sunn amp. Basically two IC's in series stacked Op Amp. But it's hot enough to blow your amp if you're not careful, and it's only got one big Knob, if you want to dial back the distortion you have to actually roll back on the guitar volume, which you might not like unless you have a treble bleed or mods on your Plexi that will give you more transparency at high volume.

Otherwise it's pretty solid for how simple it is if that's the kind of sound you want right off the bat.

The 'Lifer' pedal is another 3 in 1 effect to emulate the guys from the band 'Sunn'..It's basically a Rat, green ringer and some kind of Linear power booster stacked together.

You could probably build one of those yourself in a 'kit' form, it's a beginner level build with a small parts count. You would have to do some research to find it online, as it would be a 'clone' pedal, and hides under a different name than the acapulco gold for copyright reasons.

I find it's a very wooly tone at louder volume, and you'd need something like a Green Ringer and boost.

Again, it's got excessive volume, it WILL blow your amp if you aren't careful.

The others you'd have to build yourself, there's a few Sunn Pedal layouts on the Effects pedal layouts blog.

They might have some of those PCB's in stock, there were two but very advanced level build and you have to order your own components.

This is probably what you're looking for, but it's advanced level build, for people with a lot of experience.

https://effectslayouts.com/product/sunnbeam-v2/

[kbrisso]

Hello-

I spent a pretty penny on a hot rod Marshall Plexi. Therefore I can't justify buying a Sunn Beta pre amp. What pedal if any will get the Sunn Beta tone? I do have a solid state ISP amp that can handle a pre amp, I'm thinking a good pedal would sound great through this.

Some details on the amp specs and mods please.

If you want Sunn Amp tone, get a sunn amp. Simple as that.

The 'Acapulco gold' has a dessert rock stoner 70's feel, it's supposedly the front end off a Solid state Sunn amp. Basically two IC's in series stacked Op Amp. But it's hot enough to blow your amp if you're not careful, and it's only got one big Knob, if you want to dial back the distortion you have to actually roll back on the guitar volume, which you might not like unless you have a treble bleed or mods on your Plexi that will give you more transparency at high volume.

Otherwise it's pretty solid for how simple it is if that's the kind of sound you want right off the bat.

The 'Lifer' pedal is another 3 in 1 effect to emulate the guys from the band 'Sunn'..It's basically a Rat, green ringer and some kind of Linear power booster stacked together.

You could probably build one of those yourself in a 'kit' form, it's a beginner level build with a small parts count. You would have to do some research to find it online, as it would be a 'clone' pedal, and hides under a different name than the acapulco gold for copyright reasons.

I find it's a very wooly tone at louder volume, and you'd need something like a Green Ringer and boost.

Again, it's got excessive volume, it WILL blow your amp if you aren't careful.

The others you'd have to build yourself, there's a few Sunn Pedal layouts on the Effects pedal layouts blog.

They might have some of those PCB's in stock, there were two but very advanced level build and you have to order your own components.

This is probably what you're looking for, but it's advanced level build, for people with a lot of experience.

https://effectslayouts.com/product/sunnbeam-v2/

Thanks for the info. I ended up getting this on sale.

https://www.hilbishdesign.com/shop/sol-invictus

I will post how it sounds. It seems like an interesting pre-amp. They sell on Reverb for $250. 

[Dumpster D]

 I'm curious what else you might need? Sounds like you got the right pedal for the job.

It says it *IS* a Sunn beta pre-amp. There you go.

If you can find the Schematic or Layout of one of those, and compare to the Pre-amp section of a Sunn Beta lead you could compare the specs, generally the reviews are looking pretty good, like the fact that it will actually run quieter than a 50 year old beta lead, already makes it a good deal.

 $250 is relatively inexpensive for something like that.

Worth doing some research and experimenting to dial that pedal in with whatever kinds of Amp/guitar you're running it with.

PS. I meant the 'acapulco gold' is for beginner builders...The Lifer clone pedal from PedalPCB.com is not for beginners.

[Dumpster D]

There were 9 Sunnbeam PCB's in stock when I posted that link a few hours ago, now there's only 6...Haha...Some ambitious people in here, but don't be PM'ing me for build advice if you make a mistake... good luck with your shopping lists guys.

If you've never built an effects pedal before, this would NOT be a good place to start, especially if you don't know how to wire it up.

It's a HUGE build, about 40 resistors and 30 capacitors, even though the layout is modern standard, this is one of those builds that could break even a builder with a reasonable amount of experience. 

My best advice? Save yourself the stress, and just buy the Hilbish pre-amp pedal...Straight up.

If you'd like to build your own pedals, start with something simple like a classic fuzz, or the Acapulco gold, wouldn't be a bad place to start.

[Dumpster D]

Check it out...Here's a Univibe build from a few years ago.

This was not a build for beginners. (and it's a LOT smaller than that Sunn pre-amp) Put it this way, the kit I ordered came with the wrong components, because there was some confusion in the part values that are very similar and I had to re-order the correct parts that were missing with my kit. If you're careless or inconsistent in any way, or not paying attention, you will make mistakes.

Even the pro's made a mistake putting this kit together for me. 

The Sunn pre-amp you have to order your own individual components, if you don't have experience with that, then you're gonna have a bad time. That is a HUGE shopping list!!!!!!

You can't 'sort of' build it...It's 100% perfect or it doesn't work. No room for any mistakes.

I spent a long time prepping/studying this build before going ahead, even with many years of personal experience building.

Look here, this Univibe....it's not even close to the size of that Sunn pre-amp, like I said, don't kid yourself, that's a staggering amount of work.

Not that I don't believe in you, of course you can do it!! Just start somewhere a little easier on yourself, or you might get turned off trying to build your own gear, going too huge on your first build.

For those of you here, who DID buy that Sunn pre-amp? Word of advice:

***PRINT THE BUILD DOCUMENTS!!!! KEEP THEM ON FILE.***  Do this immediately.

So many time's I've built pedals or ordered kits from places that go out of business or defunct, and you can't get any online support for those builds anymore, if you bought the PCB and don't have the documents, then it's useless.

Years go by, and I've had times when I've needed to know specs on pedals I've built in the past, such as how many milliamps does the adaptor need to be, and those kinds of questions don't have answers 15-20 years down the road...unless you have the documents on hand.

[Dumpster D]

Looks like Aion electronics has a version of the Sunn beta pre, prettymuch same deal as the Effects pedal layout PCB except with a different layout configuration.

Okay so thats good, it means these things are out there in many flavours.

I'm guessing the Hilbish pedal is probably very similar to these, but I'd have to study it and report back.

REALLY good news is this Aion build comes with a Mouser spreadsheet to help order the components for it, that should save you a LOT of headache and time. Wow, so that's probably why I'd be picking this over the other just for that reason alone. Then AGAIN...There's some build notes you'd have to check, There's a bit of an update to their CMOS drive IC's where you might have to jumper a few pins, that's kinda sketch factor if you don't Socket your IC's and it says otherwise they run HOT!!!

***Ok, so There's a bunch of nerd science stuff to check first.*** Thoroughly read through the build document PDF. to make sure you can get your head around that info.

I'm sure there's probably at LEAST $150 worth of parts to order at my wildest roughest estimate.

Another thing about Mouser, I think they only sell in bulk, you can't just buy 'one' of any particular resistor, you have to buy 10 of each, so you generally wind up with lots of extra components.

You'd have to compare both build documents and bill of materials and go down the list to make sure the parts are the same to know for certain whether it's completely identical or not.

 It's the same pedal I think from the review, basically, give or take a few resistors or Capacitors more or less.

Time to do some more homework and compare. 

You'd have to research whether or not there's any changes to headroom because this one steps it down from 15V to Standard 9V, and claims it doesn't affect the sound overall, that's something I'd be researching and making sure I understand before choosing a PCB project I want to build.

 Aion has been out of stock with a lot of stuff I've been looking at, you'd have to contact them for an update.

Lots of people want these things apparently. To be honest there's lots of other really nice 70's era pre-amp circuits out there, that are great sounding overdrives. People just want this because it says Sunn(((0)))) on it.

https://aionfx.com/project/beta-preamp/

[kbrisso]

Looks like Aion electronics has a version of the Sunn beta pre, prettymuch same deal as the Effects pedal layout PCB except with a different layout configuration.

Okay so thats good, it means these things are out there in many flavours.

I'm guessing the Hilbish pedal is probably very similar to these, but I'd have to study it and report back.

REALLY good news is this Aion build comes with a Mouser spreadsheet to help order the components for it, that should save you a LOT of headache and time. Wow, so that's probably why I'd be picking this over the other just for that reason alone. Then AGAIN...There's some build notes you'd have to check, There's a bit of an update to their CMOS drive IC's where you might have to jumper a few pins, that's kinda sketch factor if you don't Socket your IC's and it says otherwise they run HOT!!!

***Ok, so There's a bunch of nerd science stuff to check first.*** Thoroughly read through the build document PDF. to make sure you can get your head around that info.

I'm sure there's probably at LEAST $150 worth of parts to order at my wildest roughest estimate.

Another thing about Mouser, I think they only sell in bulk, you can't just buy 'one' of any particular resistor, you have to buy 10 of each, so you generally wind up with lots of extra components.

You'd have to compare both build documents and bill of materials and go down the list to make sure the parts are the same to know for certain whether it's completely identical or not.

 It's the same pedal I think from the review, basically, give or take a few resistors or Capacitors more or less.

Time to do some more homework and compare. 

You'd have to research whether or not there's any changes to headroom because this one steps it down from 15V to Standard 9V, and claims it doesn't affect the sound overall, that's something I'd be researching and making sure I understand before choosing a PCB project I want to build.

 Aion has been out of stock with a lot of stuff I've been looking at, you'd have to contact them for an update.

Lots of people want these things apparently. To be honest there's lots of other really nice 70's era pre-amp circuits out there, that are great sounding overdrives. People just want this because it says Sunn(((0)))) on it.

https://aionfx.com/project/beta-preamp/

Thanks for the pedal info. Unfortunately I have zero time to build one. Hilbish gear gets good reviews and I got a great deal one the pedal I bought. I hope this works out. I just jam in the bedroom so it doesn't need to be loud.

Buying used gear has its downsides. If I really fell like spending money in the future, I would consider Hilbish Sunn Beta Pre reproduction. I'll let you know how the pedal sounds when it gets here. Thanks again.