rodak Messages: 497 Registered: October 2001 Location: Georgia
Senior Member
Just wondering - are the K200-B3 models just really, really rare? I don't think I've ever seen one. Seems like the B2 or B4 models would have been way more desirable back in the day. Guessing the same would be true for the A2/A3/A4 models, yes? (the A4 is the John Fogerty "Holy Grail" model, right?
stevem Messages: 4663 Registered: June 2004 Location: NY
Senior Member
I think the reason they are rare in the A or B line amps is because back then having distortion capabilities in amp as opposed to having reverb and Tremolo was not as big a need / selling point for the average guitar player.
Even with the A series amps in 67 the holy grail was still to have the bucks for a Fender Twin rever with its 85 watts,.
If you had the money for that then why not go spend a little more and get a 100 watt Kustom with 2-15" drivers, far better reliablity and a hell of a lot more clean head room over the Twin!
What want to know is did John back then ever play thru a B series amp and find that he liked the A series better?
rodak Messages: 497 Registered: October 2001 Location: Georgia
Senior Member
Makes perfect sense. It does seem that a combo of Harmonic Clipper and Selective Boost wouldn't have been a very desirable feature. So those two plus Reverb/Trem were all available in Ch1 on the A3, but they were separated between Ch1/Ch2 on the B3, correct? I wonder why they did that.
sunnhead Messages: 221 Registered: June 2010 Location: Minnesota
Senior Member
So this is my 2 cents on the subject. John Liked the A4 due you can have all the effects on one channel. Although John Never used reverb the other 3 he did use. The reason why the B series amps were set up if two different channels is they were having issues with the A series and to smooth out the issue with production they separated the channels until they figured out the problems and thus you have the 250 series amps with all effects once again on one channel. The 250 series if they lets say make "C" 200 series would have been the shit with the new technology and plexi looks, however the peavey stuff was gaining ground with their looks and Kustom had to keep up with the times.
stevem Messages: 4663 Registered: June 2004 Location: NY
Senior Member
I do not understand what your talking about here.
On a fully loaded A series the harmonic clipper and boost are on the right hand channel and the reverb and tremolo are on the left.
To get all the effect at the same time you either have to Y your input in to both channels or use a jumper from one to the other, but doing the jumper method with the A or B series amps means that the jumped to channel is getting a different tone then what the direct in to channel is getting.
rodak Messages: 497 Registered: October 2001 Location: Georgia
Senior Member
That's been my understanding as well. Your explanation makes sense. Odd that they couldn't work out the bugs in what I assume was their most successful series (the K200B). Are there any production numbers available for each series?
If I wind up owning a B4, I'd definitely have an A/B/Y switch in front of it!