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Company History

Company History

The Sunn brand was born from necessity. In 1963, a band from Portland, Oregon called The Kingsmen found themselves in need of louder amps. Their single "Louie, Louie" became a monster hit and the band began playing larger and larger venues. The bassist Norm Sundholm had a brother, Conrad, who was skilled in electronics. Conrad borrowed $1,300 from the Portland Teacher’s Credit Union, bought some plywood and speakers and upgraded the bass amp to fill the bigger halls. Demand grew. Soon after they began building their own amplifiers out of the family garage, basing their designs on Dynaco amplifiers.



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The mid-50s and 60s saw the birth of rock and roll, and the demand for loud amplifiers grew. The Sundholm brothers recognized this and founded the Sunn Company officially. In an interview with Namm, Conrad said he and a couple members of the Kingsmen were batting around names for the amps, and one of them suggested "Sun." Conrad liked it but discovered an automotive electronics company with the same name, so the brothers simply added an N. They found a repurposed pool factory in Tualatin, Oregon at 19350 S.W. 89th Street and the legend began.



Sunn
Conrad
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At the height of the early Sunn years, the Tualatin factory had 106 employees and some 400 dealers around the country. Sunn worked directly with Jimi Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and even made a custom PA system for the Beach Boys. The Who used Sunn amps during their 67-68 tour, a huge advertising boost for Sunn. Unfortunately, the two brothers began to disagree about business matters and in 1969, Conrad bought his brother's portion of the company.

Sunn was sold to the Hartzell Manufacturing, a company based in Minnesota, around 1972. According to the new Sunn website's history section, Conrad Sundholm and Tom Hartzell hammered out an initial deal handwritten on a napkin. Sundholm went on to found two more companies, Biamps Electronics and Sundholm Electronics, as well as pursue a teaching career. He passed away in 2023. Hartzell was interested in expanding the brand to the music industry at large, not just guitar and bass players, and it was during this era that many of Sunn's PA systems, monitors, speakers, and stage lighting appeared. The Alpha and Beta series were products of this era. However, while Sunn grew under Hartzell's leadership, the road was filled with pot holes. Hartzell found the converted swimming pool factory too small for his aims, and moved the Sunn factory to Williamstown, Kentucky, but many Sunn employees refused to move there. The factory was bigger and better, but Hartzell was still shipping components from Oregon, which hurt their bottom line, and after a few years, production moved back to Oregon. Then on July 31st, 1977, Hartzell was killed in a plane crash in Alaska. His brother Jim took over and only owned the company another eight years.

Tim https://sunnamps.com/history/

Hartzell sold Sunn to Fender in 1985, who did little with the brand. Why would a major player like Fender buy out a competitor and kill off their products? It has been speculated that the move was simply knocking off a competitor, but others argue that a genuine attempt to manage a new branch was made, but failed, which has happened to several Fender takeovers over the years. It's said that Fender tried to make Sunn products, but cheaper, and quality suffered. Others say that Fender simply wanted a factory in the Oregon area (Fender moved the factory from Tualatin to Lake Oswego). Fender officially discontinued Sunn in 2002.

Model T remake

But that's not the end of the Sunn story. In the 90s and 2000s, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Buzz Osbourne from the Melvins, and Adam Jones of Tool all played Sunn amps. Of course, the band Sunn 0))) must be mentioned. Legends in their own right, Sunn O)))'s image and sound come directly from Sunn amplifiers. The duo play live with a massive wall of Model Ts.


1998-2001 (new line of amps? Which ones?)
KT88s made the brand famous?
Sundholm era was solid state

2023 Relaunch. "We're not Fender, we're an independent company." -James ??. The relaunch of Sunn was the product of a small team (ex Sunn employees). Fender had been waiting for someone to take the license. According to James, Fender loved the Sunn brand, despite discontinuing it, and was "protective" of it. Fender was not in the position to relaunch Sunn themselves but finally saw in James the team they wanted. Fender owns the intellectual rights, but has no other involvement in the new Sunn company.