DRAGON TALES

In a Guitar Player exclusive, Jimmy Page sheds light on the amplifiers behind his Led Zeppelin tone and how they live again in his line of Sundragon signature amps.

MARGOULEFF IS, PERHAPS above all things, a dedicated believer in the idea that music and audio history must be preserved. Sundragon's mandate since its inception, then, has been to handbuild exacting replicas of Page's most storied amps. Those include the modified two-channel 1959 Supro Coronado 1690T combo that fuels the fury on Led Zeppelin's 1968 debut album, and his Number One 1969 Marshall JMP Super Bass 100, Page's principal amp for recording and live work from 1969, which he'd had heavily modified by amp tech and Unicord/ Marshall man Tony Frank in the late '60s. (Frank is often credited as being the inventor of the master volume control in the 1970s, as well.) The resulting signed, limited-edition models the Sundragon 12-inch combo and Super Dragon 100-watt head and 4x12 cabinet, respectively not only passed what Page calls his own "acid test" for authenticity but also quickly sold out despite their hefty list price of $12,500 and $22,500, respectively.

Adding to Page's current enthusiasm is the imminent release of Sundragon's brand-new Nymph, a more compact, low-wattage take on the Sundragon in a one-watt (switchable to 4-watt) single eight-inch combo with two 12AX7s, which will be widely available in 2025 [see sidebar on page 42].

The genesis of Sundragon dates back to the December 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion show at O2 Arena in London, in honor of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. Page was keen to fire up his faithful Super Bass and turned to Margouleff and Colby to give it some overdue TLC.

"Around the time of the O2 Arena shows," Page says, "Perry and Mitch put my original Super Bass on the bench in New York and opened it up to do some work that needed to be done. So they really knew what that amp was all about." By showtime at the O2, Page would opt to forego the Super Bass. Instead, he'd call on a pair of Marshall 100JH heads, a Petersburg P-100 and JP-100 head,