I worked in the Polytone factory in late 1984. I was the guy who tested all the products at the end of the production line. I met Phil Upchurch and Ray Brown and others who would come to visit and play at the Christmas party. The records that Tommy Gumina and Joe Pass made together were truly great. I have to say honestly and without malice - the employees were not very well respected by the staff, and I found that discouraging. Still, thank you Tommy Gumina!
This is exciting video! My Uncle Al was born in 1912, and he got one of the first Polytone Mini Brute I in 1976 when he was 60 years old, with a 12 inch driver and 100 Watts. He used it for stand up bass. he played it until 1991, age 79 when he died, but it was given to me. I was born in 1962 on Uncles Al's 50th birthday. I have been playing electric Fender bass through it since 1991, and now its 2022 ,so 46 years of service and still going strong!!!!!!!
I am a rock player and was a waiter in the 1990s. Tommy Gumina used to come into my restaurant. I ended up buying a spacesonics amp from him / his factory..he told me he was trying to produce amps for rock players too. It had 100w head, 2 powered 100 w cabinets, and built in 'features'--distortion etc. I still play it out at gigs today in 2022. He was a great guy
Hi Jamie. Thanks for a really interesting survey of the Polytone amp. Please don't laugh but I wanted to get a flavour of a valve amp on a limited budget so I thought I'd take a chance on the "Bugera T5 Infinium 5W" valve amp head, just for bedroom use. So far I really like it. Sounds great through my 12" Jensen speaker cab. Very clear warm tones which makes the guitars I have sound much better than they did through my previous Vox solid state practice amp. Not a fair comparison I suppose since the speaker was, I think, only 6" ! What i like about the new acquisition is the simplicity. Gain/Treble/Bass/Reverb & Volume. only has 2 valves but what a lovely sound. Also It can be loud; so much so that I only use it on its 0.5w output setting which, incredibly, is plenty loud enough for practice. Can't comment on its reliability or durability since I've only had it a couple of weeks but so far i think it's a great introduction to the world of the valve amp.
Don't look down on Bugera....if you want warm clean tone..sometimes you can get it from cheaper amp. If you want to follow the crowd go for Fender Marshall but you'll end up wasting money on features and sounds you don't need or hate.
Clint Strong and I were at North Texas State University at the same time, me majoring in Jazz Alto sax, we would jam bebop tunes for hours and hours!!!!!! He is a total monster on jazz guitar!
Great story Jamie, I have a 1987 Mini Brute IV and love it. These are very reasonably priced because few people know about them. Excellent research, finding information about them is tricky, but there were some great musician endorsements.
Thank you for the info! I own a Mini Brute II, a Polytone Custom Bass amp (1-15” and 2-8” speakers) and a 4 channel PA which I use as a preamp for different instruments. Can’t get enough of the Polytone sound!
Jamie,thanks very much for this posting. Polytone amps have alway been a mystery to me. I heard a Heritage H575 being played through a Polytone in Ivor Maraints some 20 years ago and remembered the classic jazz sound that this combination produce. It was being compared with an AER Compact 60 at the time and the Polytone was the clear winner for producing the classic straight ahead woody sound. The Joe Pass concert you showed a clip from is my absolute favourite and the sound and playing is his best ever. I didn’t know the amp was a Polytone. Wow what a great sound.
Jamie, I found the origin story for Polytones most interesting because the first time I actually saw one it was being used by an accordionist. Also, I once read an interview with a well known guitarist (I think it was G.E. Smith) in which he said they way to tell if an amp was really good was if it had an input for accordion.
Excellent overview. I have several different Polytone amps which I use when I play guitar. However, they are amazing amps for my live solo harmonica gigs, which makes sense since accordions and harmonicas are very similar. I even managed to acquire the Mini-Brute PA, which is awesome. Thanks!
My first amp was a 1985 Baby Brute. I bought it nearly 40 years ago as a teenager at the local music store where I took lessons. The owner talked me into it instead of a big name brand. Until a couple of years ago, I didn’t know that these amps had a cult following. I’m not much of a jazz player, but it has a great clean sound to run effects through. I imagine this is sacrilege to the Polytone purists. I also play it clean, and love the reverb. The distortion setting is not great, and it doesn’t naturally overdrive. Shockingly loud, 80 watts of clean sound plus another 80 watts driving my external cab. Very gig-able. It’s in pristine condition, never serviced and works perfectly. I sold my Line 6 and Fender amps when we downsized and this is my daily driver. I recently discovered this is a great little bass amp. Im selling off my behemoth Genz-Benz 200 watt bass amp. Thank you for your history lesson, all these years I’ve had this great little amp under my nose, and didn’t start appreciating it until recently.
I own 3 Polytone Mini Brut IIs that were a staple of my Jazz Guitar sound for years. I even own one in Black Velvet for Black Tie gigs. While I love their tone, and I keep them for sentimental reasons, they pale in comparison to my Quilter MicroPro II. Txs for doing this video.
I used to play my es 175 CC archtop thru a Polytone, both purchased about 30 years ago. The polytone eventually stopped working, so I switched to my classical guitar. I’d sure like to have another!
I am not a jazz player but for years i used a brute with a chorus and a jekle an hyde pedal i really like the "thick" jazz tone if i am playing rock by myself or just a drummer. Not so much with a 3 or 4 piece rock band.
I have the Polytone IV and it has a fantastic tone. It is very loud and, compared to many other amps, this one seems a bit heavy. It has the 15-inch speaker. Nice video, thank you.
I was at the Generations Big Band gig tonight and the guitarist had the same Polytone amp I did, but his had reverb, his was a Mini Brute II and I looked at his serial number and it was 1137 ,wow I thought it was only 4 digits!!!! I asked him when he got it, he said ,I brought it brand new in 1974. Then I looked at my serial number of my Mini Brute I (with no reverb, play stand up bass)and it was 13436, and my uncle got in around 1977. But mine was diamond tolex and his from 1974 was not diamond tolex
Yeah, I had a Mini Brute II for a while. I still tend to prefer Fenders, mostly for their versatility as I play several genres though I almost use one or two pedals to help dial in the exact jazz tones I like whereas with the Polytone, it just sort of did that tone. The other kind of bummer is I really prefer the tone of the bigger Fenders with the Deluxe Reverb being my minimum. I've had a number of Twins and currently use a Silverface Vibrosonic which is basically a 1x15" Twin. So big... so heavy... but even if you don't need that sort of volume, they just always sound better to me than the Deluxe/Princeton/Supersonic.
I'm a solid body player but I do play what I'd call rock fusion. I get by with my Marshall combo or Fenders or older Boogies. I am about to switch to using either a Headrush or some similar pedalboard system because the technology as really evolved. I went through a period in the 80s of using Marshall stacks but realized combos were better for me. While I don't use a big, clear, floating kind of tone that would work best for hollow bodies, when playing clean, I do need a good clean tone that works for the sort of funky, jazzy, Nile Rodgers and George Benson style chords that will work well with my PRS or strats. I find strat type guitars or my PRS work best for when I can split humbuckers for cleans. I knew a lot of hollow body players in the 80s who liked Session amps a lot or Rolands. They wanted a certain kind of big clear tone. Some liked Fender Twins and some hated them.
Hi Jamie, I just picked up a late 80s Polytone Mini Brute 2 (before the red knobs) and trying to dial in a nice, warm jazz tone (warm but not flat like someone is covering the speaker with a blanket). I can't find much online on how to do this and there are lots of "little settings" variations and I am driving myself a little crazy. So far, the best tone I have has the slider set to dark (3 way toggle), I have the gain toggle set to +, I have the mids pushed up to 9, treble on 3 and bass on 7. I have no idea how to use the other "distortion" knobs but don't want distortion but would like to understand how to get the volume turned up if ever needed and these additional knobs appear to impact volume too. My settings now seem to sound similar to my 65 Fender Princeton reissue but not sure I am close to a Joe Pass or Kenny Burrell jazz tone. The current setting seems like it has too much pick attack but reducing anything from here gets me to a boxy, flat tone. Any ideas for this amp? Thank you!
Hi congrats on your purchase! The version you described sounds like the one from the 90s as the 80s as it has very simple features. I turn all the distortions off on the later model and have the three way switch in the middle. Hope this helps!
@@jamieholroydguitar Thank you Jamie, 90s it must be. It looks new so that does make sense. Also, the 3 way switch is now in the middle and it does sound much better. I have the bass at 0, Treble at 3 and Mids are being pushed to 8 or so and I am getting a nice, full clean tone and no break up. The amp is brighter than what I expected but it sounds very nice. Do you normally push the mids up on these 90s amps? Thanks again for all the help.
Polytone took its name from the concepts and recording projects Tommy Gumina worked on with clarinet virtuoso Buddy DeFranko They recorded four LPs together and the fourth Pol.Y.Tones, has the name of their idea for layering harmonies - not just improvising on the same chords, but players shifting chords separately. It might have been a different direction for modern jazz, but, The Beatles So their Polytones record has been out of print since 1963, but here it is if RU-vid keeps it up: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kGeGw8qCO6s.html
Would someone explain to me why amps are always miked on these videos. Are we hearing the true tone of the amp or what it sounds like thru some other different amp?
While these amps are great, they are by no means the only amps that can get this type sound. One key is that they were made for more than just guitar. Today, a new Fender Rumble 40 or 100 bass amp will get you close. Likewise, the old Crate BX100 (or BFX100 if you need onboard reverb) will also get you that sound. Of course, the Boss Katana series also provide a great clean sound - and the 50 MkII is only 22 pounds with a 12” speaker.
Great research, mate! When it comes to Polytone amps there seems to be no middle ground in opinions, between "Holy Grail" and "obsolete solit state rubbish" ... I've been playing my MB-V 2*10 (factory JBL K110 "upgrade option") since 1982 - it's still the only combo I personally own, after forty years (many others have come and gone), and I don't see any reason to change to something "more contemporary"... It's just a great sounding, reliable, not-too-heavy combo...
@@jamieholroydguitar So do I! ... Here in Germany, in the 80s, they were referred to as "Polytox" amps due to the alarming habits of some of these amps' users ...;-)
Thanks Jamie. I agree with you that the Polytone is great for a jazz sound. I would add that they do have some problems especially with the reverb not working. I bought a Mini Brute II on Ebay for $270 in 2019 but neither the reverb nor the FX loop was working and I got my money back. I was lucky to find a Mega Brute 20 miles away from an amazing 80 year old Broadway ex-session musician (still playing on Facebook!). Fully working and great for $199. Now I see nothing under the $600-700 that you mentioned, except one for $400 local pickup in Boston MA. The nearest modern amp is the Henriksen but these start at $1000. They are great but overpriced. I recently had the chance to compare a Henriksen being played by a friend with his Polytone from the 'front of the house' and preferred the Poly.
Yes they can be quite hard to get fixed as many amp repairmen won’t touch them because of the fibreglass panel. I never really got into Henriksens either.
In America at least I guess Henriksen could be considered the "modern Polytone". Pricier than a used Mini Brute I suppose but far less likely to break down than a 45 year old amp.
PS Fibre Glass Like Material. Hi Jamie I forgot to ask, in the amp there is a pile of fibre glass like material (shown in the photos sent to me). With your knowledge on Polytones do you know if this is factory standard (or perhaps someone fitted it to try and improve the sound) - thanks regards Jack
Hello Jamie How are. I am emailing to ask if you have any advice for me on a 1978 Polytone 104 amp. I do not know really anything about these amps but I have one (as yet unpacked) which arrived this week. I am taking it to an amp doctor to have it checked out. There are some issues with crackling pots etc and I am told some "non-musical" hum which could be as simple as needing the power switch off and on again in the opposite setting (it has the original foot switch). Are these amps still good for jazz with a good tone like the smaller Polytone Amps (someone said to me that are not). But I am taking a gamble on this one so "it is what it is", Any advice you have is appreciated (if you know of any modifications which make the amp better please let me know) Also do you know where I might be able to get a copy of the "user or owners manual" thanks and regards Jack
Hi Jamie, one more question concerning my 90s Polytone amp. I think I have the EQ where I want it with the distortion turned off. With just the clean settings, how loud should this amp be? It stays super clean sounding but is not loud turned even turned up to 8 or 9. It is fine for home but not loud enough to play in a band setting. I opened up the back and it all appears to be untouched with the original speaker # 12601. The amp looks almost new. Just wondering why it is not very loud as would expect it to be very loud when turned up like this? Keep thinking I have something set wrong as it is 100 watts?. Thanks for any help you can provide - Update, I think I figured it out. You have to turn all the distortion off but there is still a second volume control (perhaps gain?). Controls seem simple but there is a lot to them. Thanks!
I've had three Polytones. A 104 like George Benson used in the 70s and a couple of MiniBrute IIs. They thought is was a good idea to put linear taper volume controls in the amps but you have to crank them most of the way up. I had some literature from them and they used the linear volume control as a selling point. I'm restoring my MiniBrute II as we speak.
