Ampeg SVT
bass guitar amplifier
The Ampeg SVT is a bass guitar amplifier designed by Bill Hughes and Roger Cox for Ampeg and introduced in 1969. The SVT is a stand-alone amplifier or "head" as opposed to a "combo" unit comprising amp and speaker(s) in one cabinet, and was capable of 300 watts output at a time when most amplifiers could not exceed 100 watts output, making the SVT an important amp for bands playing music festivals and other large venues.
The SVT has been through many design changes over the years but is still in production today. While the SVT could be used with any 300 watt, 2- or 4-ohm cabinet combination, Ampeg recommended that it be used with a pair of sealed 8x10" speaker enclosures because one cabinet could not handle the power of the SVT. It was not until 1980 that the speakers in the enclosures were updated to a power handling rating of 350 watts, allowing a player to use an SVT head with only one cabinet.
SVT originally stood for Super Vacuum Tube, but Ampeg has since revised the meaning of the initialism to Super Valve Technology, with the word "valve" referring to the vacuum tubes (called "valves" in Britain and some other regions) used in the amp.
History
Following Unimusic's acquisition of Ampeg in 1967, the new company management was actively pursuing the rock market, opening offices in Chicago, Nashville, and Hollywood, and developing products designed to address the needs of rock musicians. When The Rolling Stones began rehearsing for their 1969 U.S. Tour in Hollywood, a power conversion failure blew up all of their UK Fender amplifiers. Their road manager, Ian Stewart contacted Rich Mandella at the Ampeg office in Hollywood, and Rich arranged for the band to use five prototype high-output amplifier heads of a new model being developed by Bill Hughes and Roger Cox. These new amps employed a 14-tube design to generate 300 watts of power in an era when most tube amps generated less than 100. The Rolling Stones took these prototype Ampeg amps on tour along with Rich Mandella, playing all guitars and basses through them for the entire tour.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4748085. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1980 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ampeg SVT” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.