This legendary beast of an amp was made in St. Louis in 1995 (during the ‘Blue/Red Logo Era’). It is built like a tank and chock-full of tubes - powered by six 6550s (currently, a matched Svetlana - Russian sextet), with five 12AX7s and three 12AU7s in the preamp section (14 tubes in all). Controls include gain and master, 3-band rotary EQ with 5-way midrange frequency selector, and switchable 9-band graphic EQ with independent gain. Ultra-Hi, Ultra-Lo and Bright switches give you additional sonic options. It puts out 300W into 2 or 4 ohms; impedance is selected on the back panel. The SVT II Pro gives a warm, smooth tone from the get-go. Then, by boosting gain and/or dialing up the Drive knob, it pulls in a ton of fat, tubey distortion. The back panel features ¼” and banana plug power outputs. This amp was recently inspected and biased by The Amp Lab in Campbell, CA and sounds phenomenal. It looks spotless inside (see photo). Outside, it is in very good to excellent cosmetic condition, with fairly mild rack rash as shown in the photos. The two front handles are angled slightly upward, which is not the natural appearance. However, the right and left handles look the same and there is no evidence of trauma to suggest the amp was ever dropped. The front-view photos make them look bent side-to-side, but they are not (see top view pictures). My best guess is that a previous owner allowed to amp the lie on its handles long enough that they bent due to its weight. They are solid in their positions and I do not detect any instability when lifting the amp by them (still, it is heavy at 66 lbs. and you should always be careful). The amp comes with a printed manual. I prefer local pickup and would be willing to drive up to 2 hours to make it happen (as far north as the SF Bay Area or as far south as SLO). I will also ship at buyer’s expense; Reverb would not allow me to use its automatic calculation feature, since the box will be a bit over 70 lbs. As such, I will have to do a custom quote based on your zip code. Reassuringly, PirateShip recently quoted me only $125 to ship a package with these dimensions coast to coast to Boston via UPS. I am experienced at shipping large and heavy gear and would pack the amp very carefully, including removing and wrapping the power tubes if desired.

Historical footnote about the Ampeg SVT II/2 series: The first iteration of this amp was the SVT II (aka, the “Non-Pro version”) in 1989, produced by moving the classic SVT circuitry into a rackmount chassis and adding graphic EQ and a mid selector. The “Pro” version of the SVT II came out in 1992, adding the master volume and Drive knobs as well as 3 more channels of graphic EQ. After 1999, the Roman numerals were dropped and it was renamed ‘SVT-2 Pro’ without any significant changes in the electronics. The front panel took on a glossy appearance and the logo became all-white.