ACOUSTIC

Acoustic tube and solid-state amplifiers were introduced in the late 1960s. Their claim to fame was the 360 bass amp, which could efficiently relocate a small house, if needed. The 360 could power up to four speaker cabinets (the 360 is strictly a preamp, and each speaker cabinet had a 200W power amp), thus producing up to 800W of bass.
Acoustic, at its time, was a very futuristic amplifier company. They found themselves in the middle of the transistor versus tube war that was going on in the 1970s. Essentially, they were the only company that had solid-state products that could compete with the big companies (Marshall, Fender, Sunn) of the day. Acoustic established themselves as a bass amp company (even though they made several guitar amps). The bass amps were extremely clean sounding and Acoustic had several innovations including the "Variamp" control and the "Electronic Tuning Fork." There were distortion effects, which were supposed to be fuzz sounds, but became more annoying than anything.
The company folded in the mid-1980s as not many guitar players were drawn in by their products and other companies such as SWR and Hartke were coming around. Acoustic was more "old school" and offered the deep bass sound when bass players were starting to look for the more mid-range sound. With the movie Josie and the Pussycats, the Acoustic trademark was revived in 2001 by Samick with the re-introduction of the 360. The Acoustic trademark was reintroduced a third time in 2007. The Author would like to thank Mark Dupree for his contributions to this section.