70's Acoustic 470 head

[smokeshowin]

In 1978 I had an Acoustic 470 head with the 407 cab which had 2x15 speakers and a front-loaded horn. I wanted the loudest amp in the store and the owner showed me that. I tried it and holy crap! You couldn't stand in front of it on 4! It was brutal. Has anybody ever played through one of these? I was in a band at the time, and it blew away the other guitar players Marshall 50. The Marshall sounded better though, ALOT better. But for pure power, the 470 was hard to beat. It did well against the Marshall 100w too, but not by much. I think the horn helped the highs cut through for leads.

 

[FleshOnGear]

In 1978 I had an Acoustic 470 head with the 407 cab which had 2x15 speakers and a front-loaded horn. I wanted the loudest amp in the store and the owner showed me that. I tried it and holy crap! You couldn't stand in front of it on 4! It was brutal. Has anybody ever played through one of these? I was in a band at the time, and it blew away the other guitar players Marshall 50. The Marshall sounded better though, ALOT better. But for pure power, the 470 was hard to beat. It did well against the Marshall 100w too, but not by much. I think the horn helped the highs cut through for leads.

Never played one, but I bet that rig could’ve taken your head clean off! Especially with that horn. Yikes! Was that amp totally clean? Or did it have any built-in distortion?

 

[smokeshowin]

Never played one, but I bet that rig could’ve taken your head clean off! Especially with that horn. Yikes! Was that amp totally clean? Or did it have any built-in distortion?

It was super clean being solid state. The distortion was built in the amp and lost some of the thump with distortion on. At the time the only pedal I used was a wah.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

were you playing bass?

 

[StingRay85]

Right now I still have a 360 preamp, 2x 270, 1x 370, a 330, 2x 220, 301 cab, 406 cab, 402 cab, 201 cab, 105 cab, a 127 combo and 2x G100T combo.

Used to have a few more 125 combos, a 450 and 470, and even a 408 cab.

The 270 is probably the most brutal solid state guitar amp ever made

 

[Tatzmann]

Bolder Damn's LP from 1971 has been recorded with an Acoustic 270 Head and 271 Cab. Bass was an ACC too but don't know the model.

 

[FleshOnGear]

It was super clean being solid state. The distortion was built in the amp and lost some of the thump with distortion on. At the time the only pedal I used was a wah.

How was the quality of the distortion? Was it on par with the SS Kustoms like Fogerty used with CCR?

 

[StingRay85]

Bolder Damn's LP from 1971 has been recorded with an Acoustic 270 Head and 271 Cab. Bass was an ACC too but don't know the model.

That's awesome. THe 270 has a pretty cool build-in fuzz, although the 360 preamp has a bit more controls on its fuzz.

Most famous users of the 270 were Albert King and Frank Zappa.

 

[Tatzmann]

Albert always said he didn't know if all the speakers in his cab even worked. His Acoustic, along with his V's may be owned by Steven Seagal now, he's probably playing it at this moment feeling the millionaire's blues.

 

[Tatzmann]

How was the quality of the distortion? Was it on par with the SS Kustoms like Fogerty used with CCR?

The Bolder Damn record used the inbuilt fuzz of the 270 and it's reverb. Sounds good enough for raw rock, i'd say.

 

[Matthews Guitars]

For a few years (recently parted with it) I had a Fender 400PS, 435 all tube watts, the most powerful all tube guitar/bass head ever made on a production basis. Tonally it was a Twin Reverb, just absurdly loud. Given the right cabinets it'd split your head.

Turn up volume 1, hit it in the front with a tube screamer set to max clean boost, and adjust volume with the highly effective master volume control. Sounded surprisingly like a GOOD Superlead only with reverb and master volume.

It took three cabinets to get the full power rating of it. (435 watts, 145 each out of 3 separate transformer taps each with its own jack)

I have dimed it into three 4x12s. Wearing hearing protection, OF COURSE. It was pretty wild.

 

[StingRay85]

Reverb and fuzz could not be used at the same time though. I should check again how the footswitch worked. The 270 is pretty much the same as the 370 bass amp, only the EQ set points are a bit different. Unleashing its full power required a 2 ohm load. You would need 8 Marshall cabs to do that lol. The 201 cabs were 4 ohms, two Altec Lansing 8 ohm 15" speakers and a horn. I have 2 JBL E130-8 in my 201 cab, and threw out the horn.

 

[MantraSky]

.

 

[FleshOnGear]

I’m starting to think that GC (who now owns the Acoustic trademark) could make a buck reissuing the old models and pushing them to the stoner/doom crowd. Those cats love big and clean with powerful EQ for their fuzz pedals.

 

[MantraSky]

.

 

[StingRay85]

 

[smokeshowin]

How was the quality of the distortion? Was it on par with the SS Kustoms like Fogerty used with CCR?

I'm not really familiar with the SS Kustoms but the Acoustic distortion stage was pretty good.

 

[smokeshowin]

One of my earliest amps was an Acoustic 150 which I still have today. Some notable players: John Paul Jones, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Frank Marino (very clean sound)....
View attachment 150796

Wow I didn't know they all used Acoustic gear!

 

[smokeshowin]

View attachment 150816

Your Acoustic cab looks just like the one I had except the horn was white. Is that a 407 model?