jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

It's where the manufacturers demo their new gear for professionals and retailers. It's really fun to attend.

Sure you can rat out another user! Can you link me an example of herscam? I'll give her a slap on the wrists if you show me what she's doing.

nah, I don't attend NAMM for the gear, it's about the people... so if I don't go I barely care unless I need a specific tool and there's new options

tony black telling it like it is...

https://youtu.be/zaygEwLF0ac?si=ywhw_v8t5_1XG7qM

goin' full savage

https://youtu.be/6gkEYThGrZA?si=wKkJ-Lr_h4y-69aj

he even wore the hat

oh, you guys went this year despite the fires?! OT, but was Bob Clearmountain at the Apogee booth with his wife? A mutual friend told me his home studio just burned down :-(

I've not seen that personally, but the whole site is being overhauled so it might just be a temporary situation if Michael and Giulio are changing the wishlist code or gui. Wait a few days and if it persists please reply to this thread. My wishlist link is working fine this morning which is odd if they're changing code. Wouldn't we both get a 500?

Give it some time the admins didn't say they fixed it yet. This happens all the f@rk!ng time.

I've been really into Tony Black lately when I get tired. This is a good one:

https://youtu.be/-RipgXjBFFc?si=ygZpbCj3tQwrdCzj

That's happened to me before, its admin turf, I made Michael and Giulio aware of your case.

I don't think I can merge artists :( Has that changed, @Michael ???

Welcone. I've been into the cocteau twins since my teen years. It's cool you've created some easy patches for people, gear takes up a lot of rack space and you'd better have some other uses for it ;)

I didn't exactly say that. Some records have gobs of processing. I doubt this live record has highly processed guitar. Nevermind doesn't sound all that processed when you compare Andy and Butch's mixes, however the guitars are highly layered, that's Butch's thing. I'm sure the neve that was at sound city colored the sound as did the tape, but these effects are overstated to sell vintage gear and plugin emulators. Microphone choice and placement has more effect. A lot of times the processing on a live guitar track is to compensate for a poorly placed sm57, which isn't a good enough mic to place willy nilly like live guys do. Ok, not willy nilly, but live mics tend to be positioned for minimize bleed and the deficiencies in the sound get made up with eq to mire closely approximate the sound in the room.

Not everyone needs to be a recording engineer despite what people seem to think these days. It would probably be better for music if less people DIYed their recordings.

As I said above, a strat with a humbucker, a mesa studio preamp and a crown amp into a 4×12 with gt65s, g12m70s, gt75s or cl80s (kurt probably used all of those at the time in one cab ir another, dude did not care) will get there if you can intuit the settings beyond "I turn the midrange all the way up." Good luck, the mesa studio has a lot of controls to fiddle with. The missing ingredients will still be kurt's caveman playing and massive, deafening volume. Kurt played loud. I never really liked Kurt's tone anyway, every other seattle band had a better, or at least more interesting guitar sound.

As far as the audio from the concert video the OP mentioned goes, I would bet that the guitar was gated to mute bleed when kurt wasn't playing. It's common practice to high pass the guitars so they don't eat into the bass. A live track might need low passing above like 6k ir so if there's cymbal bleed. A lot of folks will notch out some low mids, scoop a little 3k and shelf up 5k to redistribute the harmonics if the sound at the microphone is muddy and/or ear fatiguing... maybe compression to even things out a little, that might help with Kurt's clean tone. In this type of music you would be surprised how little mix processing was employed at the time. Even on nevermind. Andy Wallace mixed that and he doesn't use much in the way of outboard but reverbs and delays.. everything else is judicious use of dynamics and eq on an SSL. The minimalism can be heard when you listen to Vig's mixes and realize the finished version isn't all that different. A live nirvana recording isn't a frickin journey record. I think Kurt really percieved more polish in the mix than there actually is. I think what kurt objected too most was the kick and snare samples Andy triggered which isn't a very punk rock trick but sometimes it really helps out.

The guitars are probably not tampered with all that much, probably not any more than whatever theFOH guy sent to the PA and that's what the audience heard. I'm not trying to be totally dismissive, often guitars are heavily processed in post production, I just doubt that happened here. And it usually pains a good engineer to heavily eq a guitar track... if the guitarist likes his sound and is satisfied with the capture, the last thing you want to do is make it into something else, you do only what's needed to get everything to sit together and put the song over.

In late 91 hes probably using a mesa studio preamp live. Its set clean and bright, not sure if he used the graphic eq, you would want to consult Google,, I'm sure there are lots of reddits where nirvana obsessedkids discuss it in depth. That preamp is like all the 80s mark amps, a modified blackface fender circuit.

Actual amplification was probably a crown solid state stereo power amp intended for pa uses. No idea about the cabinet or speakers but as Nirvana blew up that year he bought a number of stock jcm900 era marshall straight 4×12s. Thd key here is that all the tone is in the pedals and fendery preamp... and his strumming style. Not a great guitarist but certainly distinctive. A piece of Kurt's sound wss that he was Kurt. A fender head and a marshall cab will get you close but if he was using the graphic eq then I dunno. If you have a fender with an fx loop you could stick an eq pedal in the loop and fiddle around? His live rig was weird as hell. Nirvana was also notoriously loud. Tons of stage volume. The crown he had could easily pump 800 clean watts into an 8 ohm or higher load if he bridged the channels. You would not want to stand in front of kurt's cabs without shooting headphones. The extreme spl is a big part of that sound.

Edit: I also just remembered kurt saying in a guitar magazine interview that he cranked the midrange knob all the way up, so whatever you're playing thru you could start there. Mids at 10.

yes, if you go on my profile you'll see it in action, although with the current redesign it may be temporarily disabled, not sure... mine is setup already and shows up by category

I would always go with an FRFR and engage the cabinet models for something like and axefx unless I was going to use a tube power amp. Why? If you drive guitar speakers with a solid state power amp they will be heavily damped. This is desirable behavior for sound reproduction and tube hifi amps often have more complicated circuitry in an attempt to keep up with the excellent speaker control (damping) of solid state.... guitar amps can't damp the speakers for sh!t, but its not reproducing sound, its converting electrical energy into mechanical energy, sound, so a really exagerated response to the signal is desirable to most of us, like a lively spruce topped acoustic... this is one of the things that make them "lively and touch responsive"... the modelled cabinets in something like axfx may get closer to the feel of the real thing and then a solid state power amp and full range cabinet (essentially a hifi speaker) can do what it does best; reproduce faithfully... anyway, just my electrical .02

I guess school music programs have changed a lot since my day :) the telecaster us hands down the most inherently tuning stable classic guitar model. And they sound good.

I've dealt with a katana before. It sounds best through the line out. Not good not bad. The thing a real tube amp has in spades that even an axfx is weak on is touch response. No one has faked that to my satisfaction yet and some tube amps are more responsive than others... and different designs respond to your right hand technique in different ways. It's the other half of your instrument as an electric guitarist and selecting an amp us like an acoustic player selecting a body size, shape and combination of woods

If you're studying jazz and also aspire to session work the typical choice would be a thin line hollow body. Good alternatives to a 3500usd gibson 335 would be an Eastman, d'angelico, 70s lawsuit tokai or greco, a yamaha etc etc

Strats are indeed superb mod platforms. Ibanez prestige models are really a cut above other ibanez guitars but you have to be into skinny, flat necks as they all have what they used to call the "s profile" IIRC... or the Wizard orsomething? I'm not into that so I wpuld probably buy the nicest used strat i could afford and mod it. For jazz you might find a telecaster to be better. The neck pickup is smoother than a strat neck pickup... you could also consider a 70s style tele custom or deluxe to get a wide range humbucker or two. The new ones are just normal paf type humbuggies in disguise but they sound cool and you have the option to mod it with a set of creamery wide ranges for authenticity uf you want that... the real design is a cool pickup. Most session opportunities are in Nashville. LA is a pretty closed shop and a tele looks the part for country, though its looser than it once was down there. For session work you will want to invest in a very high quality tube amplifier, less for the great sound than for the street cred. You have to market yourself and irs more than just chops to break in.

But if you're playing in a big band, the band director always wants to see a hollow body of some sort... it's less about the sound than the appearance. It always seemed dumb but there it is. Maybe things have changed since my jazz days though. I dunno.

Good analysis, Jim. Someone had to say it.

well thanks. economics isn't my background but it's easier to understand than something like ground (earth in the UK) potential... I can elaborate if you want, and I can tell you that either candidate was largely irrelevant in a strictly economic sense across the broad scope of history against which politics is almost like a fast hihat pattern against a multi-bar drone, but that's neither here nor there.

Michael, I gotta say, without politicizing, that regardless of the appatent value of the deal, this holiday season is probably the time to buy anything you need. I'm burried in gear at the moment. I can barely work in my cramped home studio and my priority is moving to more spacious digs, but I advise everyone else to buy now. Even if inflation has driven prices up. For music gear loaded with imported semiconductors and often made affordable by entirely offshored surface mount pcbs under the hood, these prices are probably the lowest you will see for years... and some small manufacturers may cease to exist if they're forced to pay wholesale prices inflated by tariffs on imported components with little or no domestic production. I'm not getting into the overall logic of the incoming administration's stated economic policy, maybe it'll be a terrific overall strategy. I'm just saying that our infrastructure for electronic components, particularly the sort you find in pro audio products, is not yet ready for this plan. If you want or need a piece of hardware, this is probably a last chance fire sale. Don't hesitate.

If you aren't an American you're probably okay for another year or so, although in europe you're probably paying more already.

Happy Thanksgiving

If you find yourself in the Baltimore/DC corridor be sure to spend an afternoon at Atomic in beltsville. Very friendly, all used inventory including some fine vintage guitars and amps. If you don't see what you want ask what's in the back.

yeah, older, pre-dx7 yami synths are killer, I just fixed up a giganntic old yamaha string organ machine and its got a sound alright!

Its lite, so light on features you get in the pay versions, but if you can't make some sort if a record with it you probably aren't ready to make a record.

If I were rich I would go try out a 59 burst but wouldn't buy it. I would rather give to cancer or parkinsons research.

ding dings ding we have the correct answer!

You don't need to be rich to try out a vintage guitar. Just polite and relatively decent at playing it. Most brick and mortar dealers will let you try anything despite the fact that you can't afford any of it. Display your chops, knowledge and nerdiness when you arrive and they typically break out the nice stuff and shoot the breeze with you :)

There's nothing expensive inside 90% of pedals... but having PCBs etched (or surface mount boards completely assembled) and boxes professionally drilled and finished adds up. Getting the best price on semiconductors, switches, pots etc is best done in gigundo orders which means more money up front in order to reduce the cost per finished unit. There's an economy of scale. What's your time worth to you?

I'll have to watch the video (I'm sure Josh is a nice enough guy but he gets on my nerves) but I would say that it depends on the pedal and the markup. Keep in mind that in order to take advantage of those economics of scale a budding manufacturer needs to take a substantial risk. You could be stuck with a garage full of merchandise if your latest, greatest tubescreamer slayer fails to catch the eye of the fickle influencers in this crazy market. Maybe you pull it off for a little but then someone reverse engineers your circuit and either grips it off or discovers you stole it yourself... word travels fast and has broken a lot of pedal entrepreneurs. Then there's those tariffs coming... most semiconductors are chinese right now. Josh has a good thing going for himself but at any time he could be ruined by circumstances outside his control. I was actually just talking about this topic with a techy friend of mine... neither of us even do repair work for anyone but ourselves anymore. It's too hard to give an accurate quote or even be sure parts are currently available.

I think it takes brass ones to jump into the world of pedals.

Wheew

podcasters + streamers category

I'm actually good with this. A separate category kinda warns you that you're dealing with a mixed bag of seriousness and should also alert you to the fact that the artist you're looking at may get some gear for free or even be paid to use certain pieces of gear in their videos.

You can choose light/dark mode by looking for this icon in the Community menu and the footer.

https://imgur.com/a/VpuIWaZ

Ah ha! So it just defaults dark. Got it.

I gotta be honest, I'm going to miss the white backgrounds. Otherwise cool.

you are insanely persistent, so I predict you have a bright future. You might want to apply your persistence toa field that values that quality with proper remuneration... like accounts receivable.... or just flat outcollections. J/K

I hope everything works out for you. If you need a great mix on the cheap let me know. I haven't done a hiphop cut in a while and I miss it. You don't get to wail the sub bass the same way even on house :-)

Cheers

It's an actual artist, there's actual music and songs from the artist

It's an actual artist, there's actual music and songs from the artist

I didn't say you weren't an actual artist. There was no need to change your username from CobraMaltase to KingCobra. I must admit to feeling a little gaslighted :( I've been in this business a very long time and I understand how important it has become to establish a viable search engine presence for press purposes. It's easier to release music to a wide audience than ever but it's never been harder to get their attention. I feel ya :)

I was just telling you what our guidelines are at this time. It's a guideline, obviously we would like it if submission guidelines were followed since there are good reasons we wrote them, but if you don't... there won't be any consequences. @Michael, correct me if I'm wrong.

I put a line out to an admin to resolve your 500 error. The site is undergoing an overhaul so I can't offer you a timetable. Equipboard is a labor of love by a group of like minded musos, we all have to earn our living elsewhere.

A glitch like this indeed needs an admin to look at the offending code... @Michael

That said, it seems you're trying to add yourself and if you look at our submission guidelines we ask that users do not do that at this time. Thanks for your cooperation :)

No review comments?

Otherwise I can get used to it. It's hard to judge it aesthetically until the whole site has been overhauled. It feels weird now but there's no context.

Gibson standard models have Gibson binding if it's a guitar that historically had binding and Gibson binding always has the nibs. I love them, so smooth! I'm not hard on frets so a refret will be someone else's problem.

Well then I'll just make sure anything I buy used has a lot of good years left on the frets and not worry about it.

If you get a special or an epiphone it won't have the fret nibs. You could also look at old tokais and grecos.

Maybe I'm destined for a baritone...

Or a bass6

Gibson standard models have Gibson binding if it's a guitar that historically had binding and Gibson binding always has the nibs. I love them, so smooth! I'm not hard on frets so a refret will be someone else's problem.

A stock Gibson nut should handle 11s no problem and likely 12s. If you want to go higher then a new nut will be in order. A lot of gibsons shipped with their brand of 11s in the 90s. Sometime in my mid 20s they switched to 10s and may have changed the way they cut the nuts. I've owned various gibsons and used anywhere from 9 to 12 gauge on them without issue. Usually I de-burr the saddles on a tune-o-matic anyway and I find a lot of string binding is a product if that bridge style and the Gibson string break angles, tuners and nut are blamed erroneously for tuning stability issues. A set if jeweler's files from harbor freight are an excellent tool for smoothing out those string grooves, just be gentle and don't screw with parts that aren't problematic. If you want to get fancy, try graph tech saddles.

EDIT: Regardless, I always just try the strings I want to use without changing anything but the setup. I'll just adjust action for optimum sustain and minimal amplified buzz, make sure the heck is as straight as I like it, then after 24 to 48 hours at my desired pitch, if the neck hasn't moved I intonate the guitar and live with it for awhile. I don't like to do more work than is required to an instrument, even with electronics I will spend up to a tear with stock parts before I'm certain I feel dissatisfied, then I really think about what I'm missing and how to get it. I'm really fussy about guitar tone, but if I get used to something then it's fine. Why out mire thought into it? If something keeps bugging me more every time I play a guitar then I get out my tools.

Thanks Jim :) So I took that knowledge-bomb and I did some digging. This great video let me hear & see what you've been educating me about. They compare the 50 Plus to a range of other doom-adjacent amps in what is a fairly meticulous apples-to-apples comparison as far as doomYT goes. The Sound City with the active eq really does sculpt and scoop it's way into different territory, and when it sounds most unlike the other amps, it is sounding very EW.

Screwing around with amp and fx controls is a really british thing to do. Its something in their DNA.

Your boy Ricky B is also a fan.

Rick is a great player and one of the tube tone cognoscenti. For a guy who rarely if ever wields a soldering iron he really gets it.

Also, I'm glad to be workin' overseas right now, because back home... this would be tempting me right about now

She's a beauty at a very fair price if it's been recapped. That amp will take your head off with volume though. It's definitely not designed to be played at 1. For your own home amusement you'll want a load box.

I didn't mean to imply your amp would break, sorry if that's the way it came across. I know you'd build a brick#$%^house of an amp.

I always like the way you could drop a blackface fender and it would work fine. I always use those fender eyelet boards to organize the small components because you can get a lot of solder on the eyelets to survive shocks and drastic temperature shifts. Some of it I'll do point to point and I use pretty heavy hookup wire and ground bus.

So I'm betting I'll like the SGs with the beefier neck, which right now is the Standard, not the vintage-spec stuff, correct?

My SG standard has a baseball bat neck with a real stable neck joint. Every 61 reissue I've played has a slim taper and this vintage neck joint that's wobbly. My understanding is that Gibson modified the SG mortise and tenon due to stability issues but for the RI they went vintage correct for the purists. I wouldn't put heavy strings on a 61 RI. I've had 11s on my standard, no problem. My experience with actual vintage small pickguard SGs is that the necks vary a lot. The larger necks are more tuning stable despite the wobbly neck joint.

I know Gibson really went through a rough patch sometime after grunge died, but they're at least PLEKing everything that comes out of the USA factory now, right? Could a new(ish) one (post-robot) really be that bad?

I've certainly never liked any new ones as much as I like my pre-robot. Also, the plek machine is a bandaid for problems like sloppy tight bond application in the neck pocket. It gets around swelling issues but they always come back as the guitar ages. As gibson has become more of a profit vampire the brand has strayed from its roots. The current management is a far cry from Ted McCarty. I would say Gibson's modern heyday is about 89-90 to 05-07 but YMMV. SG humbucker specials from that era are typically big necks unless it's a special run in a weird finish, then it might slim taper or extra wide fingerboard, really its whatever the lp studio of that special run got. You won't see many limited runs like that in the 90s. Gibson went crazy with that stuff after the success if the gothic series.

No wonder no one models this thing. The average Helix or AxeFX user will be scratching their heads if they made it behave accurately.

OK, well that explains why nobody has attempted an emulation yet. Impressive knowledge-drop, Jim. Do you wager there's a single magic setting for the amp that we're hearing on the EW albums, with changes to the FZ-2 settings, mic placement, etc being the main tonal diff song to song, or are they deftly able to milk a bunch of great sounds out of this wacky preamp design?

Wow, that's an insightful question. My experience with a 120L was that it had a huge range of sonic sculpting power on tap usually only available from pedals and rack gear. I found it to be funny f oi r a few minutes testing the ranges of the 3 bands but intensely frustrating after that. The response of the amp was great, fast and snappy! I couldn't get a clean tone that was me although all of them could be good if recorded in the right context. For overdrive I settled on the simplest thing, turn up all the controls and then disl back bass and treble to eliminate harsh overtones and too much thump. These amps have the ability to do bass guitar well. Think john entwistle tones.

So after all that, let me stop digging the question. I suspect that Jus Osborne is really patient with tweaking the fz2 and sound city to the compliment eachother. The fz2 scoop mids switch inherited from the superfuzz combined with boss's active treble and bass circuit offer too much range so there are a lot if potentially bad tones hiding in there. Thus us true of the sound city too, but I would think that the combination of the 2 would allow you to attenuate anything you didn't like from the pedal or boost stuff you like that the pedal only produces with wonky knob positions. I think the guy must have the patience if a saint... or at least of a kevin shields. As to mic placement, that's usually stuff for big budgets. For heavy rock a lot of guys these days follow the Albini approach over the Jimmy page approach. For a record like dopethrone I would expect that 1 or 2 mics straight at the best sounding speaker at an optimal distance would be the method.

You're a true prince, Jim. Thank you. Your demo of the amp sounds great... and it would be awesome to own an amp where I know exactly who to call when it breaks :D

I've only made 2 of them and only my prototype amp has ever had issues because it was a test bed for all my ideas and some spots were soldered and desolder dozens of times. The one I made for a friend has like 5 years in without a hiccup. The goal is to make something that won't need service within the owner's lifetime unless its regularly abused. If you want a brit tube amp that's going to be in the shop in 5 years just buy a blackstar or jcm2000 series. Or a f*cking mesa. I won't even work on mesas made after 87. I make a lot of decisions based on durability and resistance to occassional abuse like overvoltage or short term impedance mismatches... bad grounding etc.

...that said, first, I gotta acquire a guitar, make sure I'm actually enjoying myself on 6-string again, THEN worry about the rest. I'm loving bass at the moment, but 6 string, especially one tuned down, played with a pick, etc, is such a different instrument.

Whatever you buy, plan to eventually gut it. Buy some early 70s gibson t-top humbuckers at a guitar show, take the cover off the bridge and put in 500k bourns pots. If you want more jangle from the neck use a 1meg pot for volume. Gibson and epi have been using 300k pots for years now and they load a humbucker too much for optimal tone, particularly when down tuned. Or maybe I'm just fussy as hell.

You might not be a USDA certified lunatic so a good stock SG could be fine for you. I hear positive things about Korean made epi SG400s.

Personally I would buy a well loved Gibson USA SG special (modern humbucker version) that's 10 to 20 years old when QC was still high and the fingerboard were always real rosewood. I really prefer the standard but I'm a sucker for overfret binding, for most unbound fretboard aren't important, but I always go for my standard over my special.

Sound City heads trade for about a grand right now in the USA, up to $2k in good condition, which is more than double what they were 10 years ago. That's a pretty big appreciation so I would say the cat is out of the bag. Also, there are now current models.Steve Fryette bought the trade name and has been producing his take on the L100 and a 50 watt model. That will raise awareness and prices.

As I said to Ken, if you live in the USA I can make you a customized hiwatt/soundcity with a more useful master volume and all manner of preamp voicing and tone control mods. If you buy a kit or a suitable donor amp so I have a drilled chassis, sockets, some extra pots (I don'tkeep every value on hand), switches, pilot light and transformers that fit the chassis drilling, i have plenty of good quality loose parts to tailor the basic circuit to your needs. I've done it before.

This recording is my personal "jim-watt" which started as a traynor PA head and became a 50 watt rocking machine with late 70s hiwatt inputs, modified vox treble and bass controls and a sound city mk2 presence control and a choke in the PSU like the Jimmy page hiwatt:

https://on.soundcloud.com/5ejkf2uUTT2zg2o86

Just doing a pete impression with some buds a few years back, nothing special. Everything is at 5 including the master... plugged straight into the normal channel. Various mods can be made to vary the headroom and voicing.

If you have built an amp before I can walk you through a kit build and what components to alter to get your tone. It's a complex circuit that requires some knowledge to understand and a little extra care to get working correctly. The basic dave reeves design us really configurable in a number of places to produce different shades of 70s butt whomping goodness. I think there are more hiwatt and sound city variants than any other brand of amp.

I peaked at the equipboard for the other guitar player from EW, Liz, but I think she joined after Dopethrone. She plays a 1st generation laney AOR 100 which is basically a jcm800 2203 so you can get her tones pretty easily with readily available plugins.

I also looked at the schematics for the mark 4 Sound City heads, it had been awhile. That preamp is nutty. It has 1 gain stage per channel followed by the volume controls and mix resistors, then after the 2 channels sum there's essentially a 3 way passive crossover feeding 3 parallel gain stages. The treble, mid and bass controls act as separate master volumes for each crossover frequency and are then bufferedby a final triode to drive the phase inverter. It's not your typical 3 band baxandall like you would expect in an active tube eq. It would never even occur to me build something like that, it's incredibly wasteful but unlike a baxandall it doesn't require a low source impedance to avoid loading the high end of the signal, on the other hand the tone knobs have unrestricted attenuation and if all of them are set to minimum they act like a single master volume control and send all if your signal to ground. WTF? That must have frustrated a lot of guitarists over the years. Even if you just turn one down full minimum you get a really steep filter rather than a shelf or bell. You're just muting a pretty wide frequency range above and/or below those turnover frequencies. Woof! No wonder no one models this thing. The average Helix or AxeFX user will be scratching their heads if they made it behave accurately.

EDIT: If you wanted something new with the general vibe of the SC amps I could build you a 1 channel 50 watt Jim-watt voiced up to your liking with a more sensible active tone section on the bones of a ceriatone heywhat?!504 or weber 6H50 kit or a suitable donor amp like a PA head with good hammond or tried iron. A baxandall hi/low shelving and 1hz bell could be built right into the existing gain stage and cathode follower that drives and biases the hiwatt phase inverter. It'll give you the vibe of the sound city without the quirks and would save a gain stage that could be made a boost or an OD mode. The inputs for the 2nd channel would be replaced with a bright switch and the aforementioned 'boost' switch. The master would be my post phase inverter design that varies global negative feedback to avoid fizzy artifacts although we would want to eliminate the presence knob since the Jim watt version acts in the preamp unlike a fender or marshall and would be replaced by the active hifi type 3 band tone control.

Shipping from the kit company to me and then out to LA oncebuilt might be a bear though. I personally wouldn't charge much for the build time on top of the parts. Its fun.

I can tell you that not long after dopethrone there were 2 rehearsal studios in Philadelphia with sound cities, one of which was a b120 with a blown power transformer that i wound up changing out so the owner could sell it to recoup on some of the newer backline he provided. Oldsters called them "sound shitty" amps. Mk3 and mk4 sound cities can indeed sound shitty if you don't know the tone controls aren't passive like every other guitar amp ever created. But these damn things are everywhere. They made tons.

These amps were a ndeed built to a price point as evidenced by the switch from hiwatt style Partridge transformers to cheaper orange style Parmekos in the mk4 models which seem to blow if they're abused in any way. On the other hand the rest of the thing should be bullet proof. Built like a tank from great components, boards and wire. If you get one with new electrolytics filter caps in the PSU it should performer for 30 to 50 years without hiccup assuming you always set the voltage and impedance selectors correctly and keep it dry. I can't imagine what could fail ok n her, maybe an old carbon resistor. I wouldn't think twice about buying a 50+ in reasonable shape and I would shell out up to a G note on her given their increasing popularity and likely appreciating resale. Probably a wiser investment then gamestop stock lol. Youngsters now see sound city heads as budget hiwatts, a reputation based on the 60s L100 but pretty inaccurate by the 70s. But I would have my electric wizard jollies and when I tired of the b120 I would flip it and go out to 5 star restaurant on the profits :)

I'm pretty sure I just stuck a generic 100 watt marshall style power transformer on the one I fixed. Just something cheap and it worked instantly and nothing else was wrong but a blown fuse.

EDIT: I might try something in the helix family if I were you. Their hiwatt dr103 model sounds pretty good to me and I know hiwatts intimately. It's in the right camp. Punchy.