Sound City pricing advice

Dave J · June 22, 2012, 01:46:33 AM

I'm thinking of buying my buddy's Sound City 120, MK IV, but want to make sure I'm paying a fair price. He cleaned it up real good and it will be going in to the tech for some work and retubing. I tried to search on eBay to find deals which had closed, but could not really find enough information.

Anyone have an idea of what these things go for? Consider it in very good condition.

Thanks in advance.

dunwichamps · June 22, 2012, 01:49:09 AM

paging Oli! but if its a nice working unit and its ur bro u should get a solid price on it. I am not sure what bro-pricing is on this amp

Mr. Foxen · June 22, 2012, 06:01:30 AM

What country? They are worth dick all over here in summer. Everyone can get out to the shed and find them and put them on ebay. But buy winter, I have 15 of them in my living room and then they are valuable. Also much rarer stateside. When you say retubing, check what is in it at current, the valves in it tend to pay for the PA ones I buy.

Iron Mtn · June 22, 2012, 10:00:46 AM

$800 to $1000 depending on the condition but $800 seems the going rate for the past few years...
Worth every penny IMO.....

Dave J · June 22, 2012, 01:09:26 PM

I'm in the good ol' US of A. It needs 6 new el34s, a few screen grid resistors, and rewiring the ohm selector (it was hard wired for 16 ohm). We are guessing between $180 to $200 to get it playing again?

He's offering it at $800 as is, I pay for fix-up, or $1,000 after it is fixed up.

I guess we are in the right ballpark.

dunwichamps · June 22, 2012, 01:17:38 PM

id go lower than that, a full retube and rebias + other stuff. $700

Iron Mtn · June 24, 2012, 01:00:06 AM

If it's a non working amp then that changes everything IMO. $400 to $600 max. There could be way more wrong with it and the more wrong the higher the repair costs. Mr. Foxen is the resident Sound City expert here and I would like to see him chime in on this....

Dave J · June 24, 2012, 03:18:50 PM

I wouldn't be considering this if it were not my friend I'm dealing with. We have bought and traded gear off each other for a while. We have talked about the issues and if it turns out that there are major problems then he's just going to fix it up himself. I think we will end up just getting it fixed and seeing what the cost ends up to be. At that point it will (hopefully) be a fully functioning, retubed sound city. It has the different colored knobs and it sounded great when we played it last year or so before it went out.

Mr. Foxen · June 24, 2012, 04:35:08 PM

When it comes to Sound Citys, I jsut brute force replace components until they stop sounding wrong. Easy because it is on turrets, electrolytics first, then any dubilier caps that are leaking DC (the mustards are usually fine). Then the resistors, one value at a time.