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The worst amp I've ever owned

#241
Living in Alaska, we had both Sears and Aldens catalog mail order sales. Sears was able to send amps out. We were very poor at the time so my buddy (who's dad owned a tugboat company) bought the entire band's equipment. He got a Silvertone guitar combo. He bought me a Sears bass combo. It had 6x10's cab! whoo hooooo! That was a beast. But it sounded very anemic. And the back was made out of some very thing pressed cardboard or something. We took off the cover of the amp case and and there was barely anything in there.

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Later on, I bought my own Bassman 50 head with 2x12's in the cab. And this wasn't like a fEarful 212-- it was like Kmart 12's! I did suffer with it quite a while until I sold it for what I paid for it then bought a used Ampeg V4B and the Ampeg 215 folded horn cab. Man people hated moving the cab with me but they liked my playing enough to keep lugging it! LOL
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My last claim to shame was the Carvin PB200. It was 11 1/2" deep! I mean, really? Not only that, it was barely wider than the speaker, and a bit taller. While it looked nice (except for the pilled up rat fur) everyone hated it--especially me.
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#244
It's strange to read how many people think some of the amps I loved were crap. Evidently, there is not a lot of love for Univox amplifiers either. As far as bad amps that I have owned go, two brands stick in my mind. The first one was a Standel amp called the Super Artist XV. You could not get any tone from it. Volume was no problem, it was a two 15 combo and plenty loud, but it always sounded like a transistor radio. No fuzz box could save it. The other amplifier that was particularly frustrating was also a two 15 combo made by Teneyck called a GB2000. Mine only worked for a few days, but while it was working it sounded like nothing I had ever heard, and I mean that in a good way. If it had sounded like crap and then died, like the Standel, well that would have been alright. The fact that it sounded like the amp from another world made it's demise just that much worse. I had the presence of mind to keep it. One day I will hire some NASA space engineers to repair it, because that's just how complicated it is. I could not get anyone to work on it. They would take one look at the three page schematic diagram and tell me that it had to go back to the factory. Oh, and it has zero resale value. That is bad.
 
#245
A brand new Peavey TNT100 was my first bass amp, and while it was the least capable of everything I've owned, I couldn't fairly use the word "worst" to describe it. I used it for many years and liked it a lot except for the weight.

Everything after that was onward and upward. The Ampeg B-2 head I had later on felt a little under-powered for its rating, but with the right cab(s) in a quieter setting it still sounded okay.
 
#246
I didn't read this whole thread, but I did see someone earlier mentioned a Peavey TNT130. I had one years ago, probably purchased around 1984 and I still kick myself for buying it. I foolishly traded in my 1980 Music Man Sixty-Five head, that never gave me a hint of trouble, thinking hey, the Peavey has twice as much power! Long story short, it regularly, like every two weeks to a month, would start distorting on me, and I'd have to take it apart and clean every jack and switch to clean up the sound. Finally got fed up enough that in 1992 I traded it in on an Ampeg SVT-III and SVR-215 cabinet. The common joke back then was that the best thing about a Peavey was that it never died . . . and the worst thing about a Peavey was that it never died.

Not long after I bought the Ampeg, my band went to NYC to play at Kenny's Castaways. We were told that our drummer should bring his snare but otherwise had to use the house drums. They neglected to mention that I wasn't supposed to bring my bass amp, either. Got there and saw the house amp I was supposed to use . . . It was a Peavey TNT130! We also found out why our drummer had to use the house kit--the kick drum was literally nailed to the floor. Real class. We didn't particularly enjoy that gig and never sought a repeat show.
 
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#247
BassmanPaul said:
My worst amp without a doubt was a Blonde Fender Bassman with its twin 12 cabinet. This was around '67/'68. Had the thing for a weekend, one gig, and returned it. They had sold my trade in already but I still gave it back. Looked awesome but was a terrible bass amp.
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As an addendum to this: I was buying a bass on payments from the same store. I stopped making those payment figuring we were even.

Years and years later, after I had relocated to Toronto, my folks got a threatening letter from the store. I wrote them about what had happened and in return received a largish cheque for over a hundred quid. I bet that bill collector got crap for that. Me? I just laughed and cashed the cheque! :D
 
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#248
Tie between a Yamaha B100 Mk III and the Hartke 3500. I got the Yamaha because I played a prototype (which I thought was a production version) at a Yamaha dealer seminar. Ordered it in to the store, waited a long time, and finally got it around middle of April. Now this thing had two parametric EG sections, was rated at 100 WRMS, a crossover with "smart switching" to send the highs to the internal power amp and the lows to the dedicated output. Took it home, hooked it up like the manual said, and blew the output transistors. Called Yamaha dealer service the next morning and got connected to a tech who was very familiar with the amp. When I told him what I did his response was "I TOLD them to change that paragraph! It's backwards and if you follow those directions it will fry the output transistors." Of course, being a brand-new model there weren't any service parts available. I got it back in time to play my first gig with it on July 4th... And it wasn't anywhere near 100 W because the 100 WRMS was measured with a pretty severe low end roll off in the production models that wasn't there in the prototype. They did that to keep the price competitive with the 130 W Peavey Centurion.

I wanted to like the Hartke 3500 but it just didn't sound right. Two preamp sections (one with a 12AX7, one all SS) but both had baked in EQ that conflicted with each other. The original ads and reviews all talked about dbx compressor circuits, but the dbx logo was removed from all ads and the amps by the time they shipped them. The compressor kicked in and noticeably squashed everything at the lowest setting right after the "off" click. The bass and treble shelving controls and the graphic EQ should have been useful, but to overcome the baked in EQ of the preamp, I had to do some pretty severe EQ just to get a natural sound- so if I had a bad room it was hell trying to control it with the EQ.

Replaced the Yamaha with a Peavey Mk IV (the '80s one with the 210 @ 4 ohm/300 @ 2 ohm power amp and the two channels with "Auto-Mix", then a Peavey TB Raxx tube preamp (still have that ancient thing), another Peavey pre (Pro Bass 1000 I think) then the Hartke, then an Eden WT0400 in '97 that I still have and use as my main amp.
 
#249
I have no pics but in 1986 I sold my Acoustic 360 and double fridges to go to college. I had a 15" brand new Black widow and bought a sweet "looking" carpeted unloaded cabinet. i picked up a Dean Markley solid state bass head....cannot remember the wattage. I think 200. The rig sounded Ok for a single 15" without a tweeter for practice. For jamming it just had nothing. Sold it along with my beloved 75 Jazz when I gave everything up in 1991.
 
#250
ChefKen said:
I have no pics but in 1986 I sold my Acoustic 360 and double fridges to go to college. I had a 15" brand new Black widow and bought a sweet "looking" carpeted unloaded cabinet. i picked up a Dean Markley solid state bass head....cannot remember the wattage. I think 200. The rig sounded Ok for a single 15" without a tweeter for practice. For jamming it just had nothing. Sold it along with my beloved 75 Jazz when I gave everything up in 1991.
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That was truly a sad story to read and it didn't even seem to have a happy ending until one looks at your current gear...nice!
 
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#251
This is hysterical. Everyone is hating on Peavey TNT 130s. All you have to do is stack a couple of them and you really have a great sounding rig(bottom one has a super woofer in it)
peaveys.jpg


The other amp everyone hates is the BXR 300C. I don't know what the problem is. This thing cranks out the coolest blues sound with the perfect hint of angry growl . I'm on old fart and have no problem dragging this stuff around, maybe I'll have to try some of the new stuff. :)
pbasssunburst.jpg
 
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#252
Stewie said:
This is hysterical. Everyone is hating on Peavey TNT 130s. All you have to do is stack a couple of them and you really have a great sounding rig(bottom one has a super woofer in it)
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Your bottom amp looks just like my old TNT130 except mine had a little logo plate in the center bottom saying it was Black Widow equipped. I paid for the speaker upgrade so when the electronics got dirty again I could hear how crappy it sounded in even higher fidelity. :D Maybe I got a bad one or something, but I ended up having to clean it more often than my laundry.
 
#254
Residing here in the great white north, we were constantly bombarded by Traynor gear and not the good stuff. Solid state amps that were so sterile in sound, they even smelled of cheap transistors. The amps of the 70's and even 80's were reliable, but sterile.
Fishheadjoe
 
#256
Don't know if it was the amp or my ability but when I was in HS in the late 70's & early 80's my first bass amp was a Gibson Thor. Cant remember if it was a 2x10 or 2x12 but it weighed about 100lbs. Back then I weighted about 99lbs. It was a B$#@ to move
 
#258
My TNT130 (with Black Widow) didn't have a sweet refined tone, but it was punchy enough for the original rock my band played in the 90s. Completely reliable. I've since happily moved on, though.

I still hate my brother-in-law's Kustom 200 with 2x15 in blue, that I borrowed when starting out. I'd take the TNT over that!
 
#259
Stewie said:
The other amp everyone hates is the BXR 300C. I don't know what the problem is. This thing cranks out the coolest blues sound with the perfect hint of angry growl . I'm on old fart and have no problem dragging this stuff around, maybe I'll have to try some of the new stuff. :) View attachment 950267
Click to expand...

I agree with Thumbs on the Fender BXR300. I had picked up the guts out of a combo and made a head out of it. All my bases are passive, but any of them will push the preamp on this thing if you lay into it. Once overdriven the front end doesn't fart out, but gets a nice
tactile grunge to it. Very organic. My go-to is this on a 1-15 when I don't want to do my biamped rig, and the 300 AB1 watts move enough air for any reasonable situation I've been in. I guess if I have a carp it is that it tends to be very midrangy (on my cabs) but the mid control is like a baby parametric, so I just dial in a scoop at about 250Hz, and it's good to go.
 

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#260
I never owned one thank God but I had the misfortune of having to play through a Peavey Mark IV through a Peavey 2 x 15" cab several times. Talk about a lousy non descript tone. They seem to be common around here or were and I ran into them a lot unfortunately.
 

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