Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

How's it sound?

jps wrote: by jps on Sun Oct 11, 2009 1:40 pm
How's it sound?

Loud!!! As I said on another post, it has that dry sound you'd expect from early technology transistor amps. Clean enough at fairly loud volume. The Fuzztortion works well and gives it a sweet-sounding edge. I cleaned all of the pots and switches on it this past Summer and everything works smoothly.
I took some more pix this afternoon to share with everyone. Someone mentioned that the speaker cab was designed to help cool the head. This pic is of the bottom of the head, showing the port underneath. The extra grille cloth underneath is a nice touch.

Here is the serial number for the head. Interesting that Rickenbacker used a high-speed metal nomenclature plate on the speakers, but a chintzy little decal on the head!

Here's the speaker cabinet's plate.

fabandgear wrote:Thanks Ron! Actually, the head is marked "Transonic 220". The serial number on a little foil sticker on the bottom is 492. The cab is a 4 X 12 model 200, serial number 299. The store I bought the set from had only that one head, but several cabinets to choose from. I don't know if they were all 4 X 12's or not. As soon as I get the chance, I'll take some more detailed pix and post them, including a better shot of the nomenclature plate on the cab.

I'm sorry, the speaker cabinet's serial number is actually 399.

Where were you guys when I had 42 of these things I couldn’t give away for years!

I still have a few casters, footpedals and other parts for the Transonics. If anyone needs anything drop me a note.

Scott, as long as we are discussing things Transonic, could you enlighten us as to the difference between a Transonic 200 and the 220 model on display here? The owner provided photos (they are on the Register) and his head is clearly labeled "Transonic 220" (see below). Thanks.

libratune wrote:Scott, as long as we are discussing things Transonic, could you enlighten us as to the difference between a Transonic 200 and the 220 model on display here? The owner provided photos (they are on the Register) and his head is clearly labeled "Transonic 220" (see below). Thanks.

Trans 220 Head 4-fullsize.jpg

The 220 is the Bass head.

The 200 is the guitar head.

Thanks, Scott.

It figures -- the bass guys always get the "High Numbers"!

Ah Ha! I never knew it was a bass head! I've used this for guitar for quite a while and occasionally for bass with a non-Rickenbacker 15" cabinet. Like I'd said in my first post, I'd always wished I'd known more about Transonic cabinets and looked to see if the store had anything in a 15". This is a GREAT forum and thanks to all for the information!

fabandgear wrote:Ah Ha! I never knew it was a bass head! I've used this for guitar for quite a while and occasionally for bass with a non-Rickenbacker 15" cabinet. Like I'd said in my first post, I'd always wished I'd known more about Transonic cabinets and looked to see if the store had anything in a 15". This is a GREAT forum and thanks to all for the information!

Where did you buy the Transonic that they had more than one cabinet to choose from?

route66guitars wrote:

fabandgear wrote:Ah Ha! I never knew it was a bass head! I've used this for guitar for quite a while and occasionally for bass with a non-Rickenbacker 15" cabinet. Like I'd said in my first post, I'd always wished I'd known more about Transonic cabinets and looked to see if the store had anything in a 15". This is a GREAT forum and thanks to all for the information!

Where did you buy the Transonic that they had more than one cabinet to choose from?

Scott -- refer to Forrest's initial post in this thread: "I bought this gem brand new in August 1985 from Harry's Music in Honolulu."

It is interesting to me that Forrest's cab is stamped "200" and is matched up with a 220 bass head. Clearly the cab with the 30" speaker (referred to somewhere on this forum) was a bass cab and a cab with horns would be for guitar, but were the "regular" 200-series Transonic cabs (with 12" and/or 15" speakers) interchangeable for guitar and bass heads? Seems so.

Harry's Music in Honolulu had a bunch of stuff up in their attic store room. There were five or so Transonic speaker cabinets (complete with stands/casters) there, but just this one head (the 220). A Japanese kid who worked at Harry's turned me on to the Transonics upstairs. He was a fellow Rick fan and was buying a new, old stock 330 he'd found up there also. He told me a customer had dropped the guitar in the store and broken the neck loose back in '67. I guess it had been in storage for eighteen years until he discovered it. I remember the break looked clean and I'm sure the guitar went back together nicely. I just wish they'd had an old-stock Ric-O-Gain kit. I'd love to see what they look like.

libratune wrote:

route66guitars wrote:

fabandgear wrote:Ah Ha! I never knew it was a bass head! I've used this for guitar for quite a while and occasionally for bass with a non-Rickenbacker 15" cabinet. Like I'd said in my first post, I'd always wished I'd known more about Transonic cabinets and looked to see if the store had anything in a 15". This is a GREAT forum and thanks to all for the information!

Where did you buy the Transonic that they had more than one cabinet to choose from?

Scott -- refer to Forrest's initial post in this thread: "I bought this gem brand new in August 1985 from Harry's Music in Honolulu."

It is interesting to me that Forrest's cab is stamped "200" and is matched up with a 220 bass head. Clearly the cab with the 30" speaker (referred to somewhere on this forum) was a bass cab and a cab with horns would be for guitar, but were the "regular" 200-series Transonic cabs (with 12" and/or 15" speakers) interchangeable for guitar and bass heads? Seems so.

Thanks for the link to the thread on Harry’s. There was a shop like that in East Los Angeles that still had NOS Ricks, Voxes (including Super Beatles), and Gibsons dating back to the mid-1960s. We gladly bought everything from them in the early 1980s for 1960s retail. (That’s where the 1960s 360-12s still sealed in the shipping boxes came from!) There was a well known shop like this in Tuscon as well that Tom Petty cleaned out in the 1980s.

As was explained to me, the 4X12" were for guitar, the ones with the 15" were for bass, the 15” & horns were for keyboards.

John Paul Jones told me that he used the 30” with the keyboard rig, not for bass. They also only used the Transonic heads for show, as they felt they sounded terrible and they overheated and stopped working often. The band instead used Marshall heads sitting behind the cabinets.

I'd just been mulling over trying to find a bass cab for my 220. I might be interested in a trade on the cabs-my 4X12 Transonic guitar cab for a like-conditioned Transonic bass cab.