I’m potentially selling my beloved Soniccord Bantam #1 amp. I’d like to get $800 for it.
This amp was built by Steve Boudette in Massachusetts. The amps were featured in several large guitar magazines. I think John Scofield was playing one for a while, and I heard something about Jack White picking up one (although that might be incorrect). This one however is different.
Steve built this as his prototype amp that he was trying things out on.
Photos of the insides are here: http://whatisnoise.com/2007/09/more-soniccord-photos.html and http://whatisnoise.com/2007/09/soniccord-amp-insides.html
It has some weird features, including wheels on the bottom, a hole in the top to put a threaded lead pipe in so you can roll it around easier, easy to access handles (its heavy), and spring mounted controls on the front.
He also put in some neat stuff to tell if the polarity of the power is screwed up, or if the amp is ground lifted (potentially dangerous and always good to know).
On Steve’s advice, I put in the best speaker that I could find for the amp. It’s an Emminence Red Fang 12″ now. The stock speaker was a Jensen if I remember right and it just didn’t break up early enough or have enough low end response. The Red Fang fixes that nicely.
The grill cloth is made of burlap or something like that, and is a bit torn up from my cat thinking that it was a great place to scratch her nails. Keep it as it, or replace it (easy).
Sonically, its a really neat and unique amp. It’s rich, dark, but with a nice cut to it that will work well on stage. There are only two controls, “tone” and volume along with two inputs “studio” and “stage”. With the stage input, the tone knob effects how much distortion will come in when the volume is cranked. The knobs are very interactive and there is no bad setting. It is a loud amp however and there isn’t really much for a super-quiet setting.
Definitely a killer rock amp. I wouldn’t suggest it for your nu-metal band, but for anything else it works great.
Why am I selling it? It’s a bit loud for my apartment and I’d like to get something with a wider tone pallet. I have my eyes on the Egnater Rebel 20. Perhaps not as much of a solid vibe with the Egnater, but it will work better for studio stuff I think and at low volumes for me. I don’t care about getting money even if I can get the Egnater amp + cab in some sort of deal.
