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The worst amp I've ever owned

#221
The first amp I almost bought was a 1968 ampeg B-15. It was 1970. I had just started playing bass and got a brand new Norma for Christmas. Here it is.
NormaBass_zpsxcmpmsmg.jpg


Across the street from Rustburg High School was an appliance shop specializing in TV and Radio repair. I saw a used ampeg B-15 in the window for sale for $100. The owner of the amp was Mike. He had just gotten out of the U.S. Air Force and had been a radio repairman. He was working at the TV shop and was also a bass player in a local country band. He played a late 50's Fender Precision through a early 60's blonde Bassman 'piggy-back' on top of a 2x12 'tilt-back' cabinet. He had bought the ampeg used (of course) and went through it with a 'fine tooth comb'. He re-soldered faulty joints, replaced all the tubes, and re-biased the power tubes. The amp was only two years old and was in great shape. He let me take it home for the weekend to try it out and jam with friends.

Man did that little 'peg totally suck! No volume. No tone. No nothing. What a complete disappointment! I hated it and took it back on Monday. He commiserated with me and said, "Yeah man that's why I got a Fender Bassman". I learned a valuable lesson that day and have been a Fender man ever since.
 
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#222
Linnin said:
The first amp I almost bought was a 1968 ampeg B-15. It was 1970. I had just started playing bass and got a brand new Norma for Christmas. Here it is.
NormaBass_zpsxcmpmsmg.jpg


Across the street from Rustburg High School was an appliance shop specializing in TV and Radio repair. I saw a used ampeg B-15 in the window for sale for $100. The owner of the amp was Mike. He had just gotten out of the U.S. Air Force and had been a radio repairman. He was working at the TV shop and was also a bass player in a local country band. He played a late 50's Fender Precision through a early 60's blonde Bassman 'piggy-back' on top of a 2x12 'tilt-back' cabinet. He had bought the ampeg used (of course) and went through it with a 'fine tooth comb'. He re-soldered faulty joints, replaced all the tubes, and re-biased the power tubes. The amp was only two years old and was in great shape. He let me take it home for the weekend to try it out and jam with friends.

Man did that little 'peg totally suck! No volume. No tone. No nothing. What a complete disappointment! I hated it and took it back on Monday. He commiserated with me and said, "Yeah man that's why I got a Fender Bassman". I learned a valuable lesson that day and have been a Fender man ever since.
Click to expand...
Cool story, bro.:rollno:
 
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#225
I had a G-K MB112 that got stolen, and was given a Randall 150 or 200 watt SS head to use; worst piece of junk ever. Over-heated nightly, couldn't get enough solid lows out of it w/o it breaking down into some weird off-harmonic distortion. Traded it even for a Hartke 3500 that was a hundred times the amp the Randall was.

I forgot that I also had a Fender BXR-300 for a while as a practice amp- another piece o' crap, but not as bad as that Randall.
 
#229
I also had the Peavey Mark IV.
I saw it in the pawn shop that was next to the bakery one day when I went to buy doughnuts. It had a HUGE CV 18" with it.
I was never able to get a good tone, no matter what. Not terrible, just not good. Still have the speaker, and it's sweet!
 
#230
My band ran a complete backline of Gibson/Norlin SG amps in the mid 70's. I briefly had the bass version, with the 15 and two 10's. I used an ARB cabinet with four 12" EV SRO speakers for an ext cabinet. I had struggled with a 50 watt Bassman for too long (worst bass amp I ever had...and I still have it) and the SG was a huge step up.

The guitar players had the six 10" versions. The phase shifter was an Oberheim that found it's way into the excellent Maestro phase shifters...still the best.

SS preamp with baxandall tone controls, and the big frequency shift knob, which only sounded good on the fullest setting. The power amp was a tube power amp that put out 100 watts with a pair of 8417's. Gibson/Norlin miswired the ext speaker jack, so that if you plugged an ext speaker in, the ext would go to the 4 ohm tap and the internal 8 ohm load would remain hooked up to the 8 ohm tap. This was the reason for many failures. Properly wiring the et speaker jack, so when used BOTH internal and external loads would connect to the 4 ohm tap fixes it.

The distortion was awful...a fuzz like affair that ran in parallel with the clean signal.

I still have a 4X10 version, for nostalgia sake, but have rewired the normal channel to the Brilliant channel of a Super Beatle...my favorite SS preamp and wired in an Ibanez DS-7 to replace the awful Norlin distortion.

My Norlin SG bass amp got replaced with a Carvin head and huge 2X15 cabinet...a great amp, until I found an SVT head (with an 18" Cerwin Vega bottom I never used) for $300. That Carvin was the loudest, cleanest 125 watts I've ever used.
 
#232
Had to be a crate, all i remember is playing scales through it, then grabbing a knife and cutting the cord off it, i was young...anyway i was playing some lame party not long ago on this cold night and this guy was coughing,sick ect...kept trying to tell me he use to play bass..Finally later on after trying to stay away from him, he caught me alone and said" hey i have some great gear, would you like to buy my crate amp"..i said no thanks i would rather have a milk crate no offense......
 
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#235
these two jerks once asked me to come down to their studio that one of them owned to jam with them on a new project they were working on. When I got there I wanted to leave immediately due to the fact that both of them were completely delusional and full of it. Anyway, they had me playing through a peavey mk iv and some unidentifiable 810, both old as dirt. The tone was awful, and the stack was struggling to keep up with the guitarist who was using a just 212. I had the misfortune of having to use another peavey mk iv at some cheap rehearsal space in jersey city, the kind where you're allowed to smoke up in the rooms. Coincidentally, the mark iv was pairedd with yet another unidentifiable cabinet. Unsurprisingly, it sounded terrible. Perhaps the cabinet manufacturer realized how terrible the cabinets were and decided to ship them with the name omitted.
 
#236
I've blown up a couple of Mark IV's!! We used to play this gig that provided all back line for the smaller stages. 3 years in a row they had Mark IV (provided by the local music store). We were the "headlining band" each year. Blew those suckers up.. Then we started playing the main stage and I got to use my own gear. Much better. Oh, the Mark IV's were on top of a Traynor 4x10 so I feel your pain in the craptastic sound category. But it was a benefit, so I wasn't really worried about it
 
#238
I've told this story before, but there was an inaccuracy that this thread (finally) helped me clear up.

I started on bass and drums using a neighbor's gear around the same time, 1969. I begged and pleaded for a drum set as I felt that I had more natural talent on drums. Alas, my parents thought that drums were too expensive, too loud and took up too much space. They bought me a bass. Not any bass, but a Tele Star (Teisco) kid sized bass from a Murphy 5 and 10 store (I'm not kidding) for about $35 if my memory serves me correctly. Um, no amp. It being too loud was not an issue.

Ah, but I had a paper route, and I had a few dollars saved up. (Literally, a few...) Through a friend of my older brother I bought a beat up, used 1960's era solid state amplifier. (It proudly proclaimed it's solid state design on the front.) I paid $5 for this gem.

Here is where the inaccuracy came in. For some reason I thought that it was a Silvertone. It's been over forty years, so I wasn't sure. I searched through photos and could never find a picture of this beauty to share. I started searching through photos on line and finally stumbled upon a picture. It turns out that it too was a Tele Star!

Stunningly awful pretty much summed it up. But hey, it was likely worth the $5 that I paid for it.

Tele%20Star%20amplifier_zpsycbqvd9e.gif


I ended up trading the bass and the amp for an equally terrible set of drums a couple of years later.

When I returned to bass about five years ago I bought an older Peavey TNT 160. Although it was exceptionally heavy, it was infinitely superior to the old Tele Star in EVERY other measure.
 
#240
Old thread, but I've enjoyed reading some of the horror stories.

Actually I started pretty well. After playing through a "head" I hobbled together with an old Heath kit (tube) preamp and a 6v6 push-pull amp out of a Magnavox HiFi, i ended up in a used Musicman HD65 (running cabinets of oportunity). Great head, good tone, but was needing more power so I went rack-mount.

Preamp was great (Ashley SC-40, still have it) but the power amp was junk- peavey M2600 I think. My tech friend got so embarrassed that he couldn't keep it percolating that he just gave me another amp, old Audiotronix. Weighed like an anchor but tough as hell. Served me well until I stepped up to a 300watt/channel QSC and bi-amped.

That rig cooked, hard on speakers though. It ate my 2-15 cab for lunch in the middle of a rousing rendition of Big Balls.

Oh, did I mention the hearing aids?
 
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