Great rigs – the sunn beta bass

Sunn Beta Bass 215B stack

I have owned a sunn beta bass rig for over 30 years and I can tell you from experience, it’s a great rig. The beta bass came standard with a 100W@4ohms, dual channel head that included an aux effect patch loop and footswitch for A/B or A+B configuration. This was really sweet if you wanted to set up separate bass tones and switch between then, or to loop in an effects chain (compressor/limiter, for instance).

The rig has one drawback and that’s the fact that the solid state electronics are noisy. It’s almost impossible to avoid a white-noise hiss from the head unless you employ a noise gate on it. I have come to think of it as “the sound of power”. And a powerful, punchy sound is just what you’ll get out of this rig. With the standard 2X15 cabinet, this is a rig that really rocks. It cleanly creates tones from smooth and silky to gutteral and biting.

While some claim it’s underpowered, it is more than enough to rock any club or medium sized venue without reinforcement. For some reason bass players all think they need 300-400+ watts these days. I guess when a car stereo is 1200 watts, it distorts your thinking.

I love my sunn and would highly reccomend it as one of the great rigs!