Thursday, November 6, 2014

Rickenbacker Transonic Amps---A Throwback To Better Amps And More Creativity in The Studio And Live

By Mark Grove



Rickenbacker came out with a series of amps called The Transonic Series in the late 60's that SteppenWolf, Jeff Beck, and Zeppelin, used and endorsed. The Transonic series unfortunately failed and were taken off the market within three years.


Rock guitar in the 60's brought along with it the hankering for more power, and with that power meant a demand for more powerful amps. Bob Rissi was the head of Rickenbackers Electro String Amp Division at that time from 67' to 70'. There were two types of amps: First there was a 200 watt 100 series amp along with a 350 watt 200 series. The 100 was a one piece unit that had an open back and on board effects such as Reverb, Tremolo, and Fuzz. All these effects had separate controls for mixing these effects together.


The 200 had a closed back and a detachable head and two types of speakers; 12" and 15 " by the Lansing company.An option available was a Rick-O-Gain unit, which was a power amp and speakers which could attach to the Transonic 200, and give it 700 Watts at full power.


These amps are scarce today according to Richard R. Smith who penned the book, The complete history of Rickenbacker Guitars. So Both the Transonic 100 and 200 series amps sound like they would be a good collectors item for musicians.


Amps haven't changed that much over the years being they have the same basic effects only they are digital to some degree now, and aren't as natural for recording purposes. The early amps were harder to learn to get used to and control the distortive tones, which meant stretching your playing ability little by little. The Transonic Series amps definitely fell into this category. So if you come across one of these amps learn to play it, you won't regret it a bit.

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