Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

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iZheil9152
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Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by iZheil9152 »

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Guitarvamp
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by Guitarvamp »

http://rockman-gearup.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=102

Not the one that had just been on there, though. Interesting.

Oh, if I only had a few thousand dollars sitting around. :mrgreen:
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iZheil9152
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by iZheil9152 »

Sorry, I didn't notice you posted in a different sub-forum. Lets change the topic then... Apparently a few hours before the item went off, he changed the title to "ROCKMAN REV 20 SUSTAINOR - 1 OF 13 KNOW TO EXIST - LAST TIME LISTING". EDIT: He relisted it again despite saying last time. He also added pictures of the interior of the module:
Image
Image
Image

This raises a few questions (for me):
1) Since most of the modifications were mostly having to do with the tone (pre-treb, boost in 11-12khz), isn't the only advantage to the unit the auto-clean?
2) Since these are just modded Sustainor 200 (x2 IC), Can't you take a stock Sustainor 200 (x2 IC) and make it look according to the pics above (if they were higher res :evil: )

Other notes:
Very rare Rockman Rev 20 Sustainor; SP 19329, May 12, 1989 -THE HOLLY GRAIL of ROCKMAN- I of 13 known to exist. Thirteen are known to exist including Tom Sholtz's and Gary Pihl's six (6) units between them .The REV 20 was a major revision to the sustainor and very complicated. There was 111 new parts added, some which were matched parts. This one is in excellent condition and works great. Stored in a smoke free environment.

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From RockmanCentral.com:
Within the Model 200 sustainor created, some non-production sustainors were built. Bob Cedro designed and developed Tom Sholtz's personal Model REV 20. Presumably this was at the request from Tom Sholtz for improvements. Just a few handful of Production Model 200 Sustainors were pulled and modified. It is assumed that Tom Sholtz and Gary Pihl hand picked a given amount of these modified units for Stage and Studio use and the remainder were sold to specific customers.

Rockman REX 20 units are most easily identified by their PRE-TREB input control instead of the stock PREAMP-GAIN input control. The REV 20 has a unique faceplate with PRE-TREB in painted font and the 1989 copyright date under the power switch. The first REV 20 unit appears on April 20, 1989 (serial 19,191). Thirteen (13) Rockman REV 20s are known to exist including Tom Sholtz's and Gary Pihl's.

There are four (4) major differences in the REV 20 units compared to the production sustainors.
1. The Auto Clean really functions as intended.
2. Pre Treb input control functions as a bass defeat tone control. Higher settings result in less bass input to the compressor. A 10 K resistor was installed to hold the PRE AMP gain constant.
3. There was a significant boost of the 11K - 12K frequencies in the Distortion and Edge modes.
4. "Lead Leveler " known internally (SR&D) as the "Tom Circuit" with the "piggy back" Double IC. Functional only to the Distortion and Edge modes (to avoid compressor breathing ), it speeds up the recovery time of the compressor within the window of high to medium compression. This is desired when playing hammer-ons. pull-offs and quick picked notes. This is accomplished by letting the compressor recover quickly from the attack of the previously played note.

Sound like Tom and Phil with their same other modules, amps and guitar with this Rockman REV 20 Sustainor! Check out http://www.Rockman.fr for some of the education you need.

NO INTERNATIONAL BIDDERS, ONLY USA MAINLAND

$90.00 shipping cost includes full insurance coverage.

Price excludes NJ 7% sales tax.

No Reserve Auction
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Guitarvamp
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by Guitarvamp »

iZheil9152 wrote: Apparently a few hours before the item went off, he changed the title to "ROCKMAN REV 20 SUSTAINOR - 1 OF 13 KNOW TO EXIST - LAST TIME LISTING". EDIT: He relisted it again despite saying last time.
Likely just a pressure game to make people bid on it. That much money for musical anything is a tough swallow. I can buy a LOT of other gear for that much (even though I think it would be worth the price).


iZheil9152 wrote:This raises a few questions (for me):
1) Since most of the modifications were mostly having to do with the tone (pre-treb, boost in 11-12khz), isn't the only advantage to the unit the auto-clean?
2) Since these are just modded Sustainor 200 (x2 IC), Can't you take a stock Sustainor 200 (x2 IC) and make it look according to the pics above (if they were higher res :evil: )
This is some of the mystique I've been chasing for a long time. :)

1. Like you I seem to think that besides some pre-EQ tweaking, the real magic is the Auto Clean. But see #2.

2.Since the Revision 20 Sustainors have serial numbers that are surprisingly average (I also think the whole double IC thing is over-hyped), I would agree with you - take a regular Sustainor and add some stuff and you have magic. BUT....

Tom hand-picked the units they were to use for these. In there are a lot of questions, I think. What was so different about those particular units? What was it they were looking for? Why couldn't they just MAKE the unit they wanted? Maybe it's just a bunch of 'Eric Johnson being able to tell the audio difference between batteries in his foot pedals' magical mojo goofiness. Or maybe it was something for real. We may never know for sure.
gigione62
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by gigione62 »

Someone kindly could send me in PM the pics of the internal rev20 Sustainor?
Ebay links are no longer available.
Thanks a lot!
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Guitarvamp
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by Guitarvamp »

gigione62 wrote:Someone kindly could send me in PM the pics of the internal rev20 Sustainor?
Ha! Good luck! :lol: You'd have better luck finding a bag of magic beans. Someone just spent thousands of dollars on an extremely rare piece, and you just want them to hand over all its secrets freely... and at no cost? And that's even skipping over the whole conversation that you seemed to miss - those 13 units were not just slapped together. There's a reason why there are only 13 of them. Very specific parts and criteria had to be met. These are exceptional units.
RockmanCentralBob
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by RockmanCentralBob »

My question would be, "Why do you want/need pictures of the inside of a Rev 20 Sustainor?"

If your answer is that you want the ability to confirm the identify of one if you find one, then I can see where there would be some value in that.
But if you think that you can somehow glean the modifications necessary from the photo's, then trust me, don't even bother because you will just mess up your Sustainor.

Even WITH schematics, it is incredibly difficult to modify one successfully due to the number of hand selected parts.
This means that parts are hand selected for their specific values based on the specific values of other parts in the circuit.
So even though the schematic might call for a 68k resistor, it could actually need to be a 66.35k resistor because the actual transistor that it's working with has a particular value.
Unless you know how to hand select the parts and know the dependencies, it simply won't work correctly.
I asked Cedro about it one time and even he didn't remember all the rules needed for hand selecting the parts.

Having worked in electronics manufacturing before, I get the feeling that they had test equipment and charts where they would test parts in batches, sort them for their specific characteristics, and then match them up during hand assembly.
I would also suppose that when all the stars aligned for a particular unit and all the values resulted in a unit with very high characteristics, they were put aside to be modified into a Rev 20.
That's just speculation though, no one has told me this is how it worked.
However, I did find a little sticker on the inside of one of my Rev 20's that said, "Rev 20 per Tom".
If I remember and I get the chance, maybe I'll ask Tom about that and see what he says....
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Guitarvamp
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by Guitarvamp »

RockmanCentralBob wrote:However, I did find a little sticker on the inside of one of my Rev 20's that said, "Rev 20 per Tom".
If I remember and I get the chance, maybe I'll ask Tom about that and see what he says....
I'd like to see a picture of that. :) ...And to hear what Tom says.

I wish Tom could gush a little for the fanboys, and just recall everything about SR&D in some big interview. What was the manufacturing process? How many employees did they have? How did they pick "special" units? Did they randomly test units? Etc, etc.
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rbc
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by rbc »

I tried to encourage Premier Guitar to do a Rig Rundown while Boston was on the road last year. The editors I exchanged emails with, felt like "The Return of Rockman" article was good enough. Maybe they'll do a Rig Rundown this year. Perhaps someone else here, has better access than I do ;)
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Guitarvamp
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Re: Rev 20 Sustainor on eBay

Post by Guitarvamp »

rbc wrote: Maybe they'll do a Rig Rundown this year.
Except for a couple issues of something from the 80s, I've never seen a guitar magazine get guitar rigs correct (setups actually used for the recordings). Usually it's about pushing whatever products the player is known for, and not necessarily what they actually used.

In most cases we'd get "Tom uses a Les Paul and Rockmans." If someone really dug and was a guitar nerd, we might get that Tom uses a Rockman Sustainor. To truly talk to The Man himself, we might get an inside scoop on the Revision 20.

Then again, it begs the question can someone endorse a dead company? :D Or at very least, would Tom want to push a name that is now owned by someone else?


What we need to do is have a list ready to ask Tom. Essentially we can do the questions, and that way we'd get the information we want. I'll start a new thread.