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The worst amp I've ever owned

#41
I never liked my old Carvin R600 head. It was a series 2 that had plastic input jacks that broke and I could never get a good sound out of it. It felt weak for a 600 watt amp. The Yorkville 400B I had after it put it to shame. That was a great amp!
 
#43
Oh man, I faintly remember those SG monstrosities. Looked very space-age but sounded like complete CRAP!

SG410_2.jpg


My least favorite bass amp I ever played through, a Peavey, built like a tank, loud, sounded boxy as hell though. Can't say I miss it or that I'll EVER EVER use Peavey gear ever again:

pcombo300.jpg
 
#45
I have had 2 that rank up there with the biggest pile of junk ever... SWR Workingman's 115 Combo and a Eden CXC410 combo!! Both lasted about 3 or 4 weeks until the cabinets shook apart and I blew the power sections. Simply AWFUL amps. Tone for crap too...
 
#48
b_carville said:
Might be a Gibson Atlas.Or was it a Titan. My memory fails me.
One caught fire on me during my 9th grade talent show
They made another version with a seperate head & a almost Dual Showman sized cabinet. Still only had One fifteen. If you were lucky the speakers were Altec Lansing
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A long-dormant brain cell twitched at the Atlas name. That's what it was. It didn't have an Altec speaker. I think part of the reason for the bad sound was the sealed cab that was too small for the 15" driver.

Rick B.
 
#50
JKT said:
It hit me. I'd forgotten all about this amp. I must have blocked it out as a defense mechanism. I couldn't even remember the name at first but in researching it came to me. The mfg timeline doesn't fit though so I wonder if it was a prototype I go stuck with. It turns out it was mfg in my home town. I have yet to find any images on the web. If anyone can, I'm strong enough now to confront it.

In the late 70's moog music built a line of amps called SG. I got suckered into one of the bass amps. It was the size of a small fridge and weighed as much as a big one. It had to be the worlds largest combo amp I think it had a 15 and 2 10's for speakers. It was like, two thirds the size of an Ampeg 810Black tolex covering a particle board cab. Cheesy aluminum trim and giant oven dials that didn't do much.
Terrible sounding amp. And the best part- it kept quitting on me and I would have to haul it in to the mfg to have them fix it. Anyone ever see one?

JKT
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Believe it or not, I used to own one. I had similar difficulties keeping it out of the shop. I pulled the head and gave it to a "friend of a friend" to retube it and bias it about ten years ago. After shelling out 150 bucks for tubes, I quit hearing from the guy (evidently was going through marital problems) gave up on leaving messages after about a year, and now I don't know how to find him.

I used the cabinet on gigs until one of the casters fell off. After that, the cab leaned drunkenly in my brother's basement for years. One day his cat was missing, after 3 days he was really worried. He went downstairs to do some laundry and noticed my cabinet (remember, these are heavy suckers, 210, 115) had fallen over face down. As he got closer he heard faint meowing. He picked the cabinet up, the cat shot from underneath, straight up the stairs, and wasn't seen again for another three days. The cat had evidently been curious, or just sharpening his claws on the amp when it fell over on top of him. Luckily (for the cat) the cab fell on it in the 15 inch speaker area. Suffice to say, there was nothing left of the speaker, the cat shredded it to pieces trying to get out, and managed to actually get inside the cabinet, but with the speakers and ports facing the concrete floor, the amp would have been his tomb if my brother hadn't decided to do laundry that day!

The only thing I have left of that SG combo is some good memories and stories. I still miss it though!
 
#51
I once bought a Meridian multi amp which in the shop actually sounded quite nice and I also tried it with a guitar and it sounded nice, the only problem was that it kept breaking. I had the 12" version which died with input issues, then I had the 15" version which died with gain issues (gain control randomly stopped working and made it the same volume wherever it was). After that I gave up and got my Laney RB5 which I've had no problems with.
 
#53
I don't remember the model name or number but it was Univox. Little tiny solid state head on a 1x15 cab. Terrible ! Cost way to much and no volume let alone tone. Just horrible it's a wonder I didn't quite playing.
 
#54
I had, (have) a Holms.. (dont think I spelled it right, aint going to look at it to see). Lasted about a year, transformer fried, nearly took me with it. Locked me down, hands stuck on the strings. A friend pulled the plug from the wall.
I heared, thay were a division of Peavey. And this happened a lot. I bought a transformer to fix it, never did. I still have it.. This was in 76, I was 14..
 
#55
My first bass amp was a donated Kay guitar amp. It looked like the one below and sounded awful. I tried to trade it in a few years ago for a trace elliot amp and the music shop laughed in my face! They took it anyway as a good will gesture (and presumably took it to the scrap yard).

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#58
BALDWIN BASS "EXTERMINATOR" Two twelves & Two fifteens all in one cabinet with the 100 watt solid state head attached.Cute color stops to change the tone,not that it had any.Another hernia box! I read somewhere that Neil Young uses or does something with one of these. Can't imagine what for.
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Man, I had one of these back in the early 70's (71 or 72 ??), but I seem to recall that mine was the 2x12 only version, so maybe not the "Exterminator". It was a tone-dog, and heavy for its size too. I think it had a metal case. It also had blue vinyl covering the top and those color coded tabs that supposedly represented different styles/tones. I eventually ended up stacking it on top of a Kustom 200 2x15 stack as a "distortion amp" in a dual amp set-up. Ha, had a good laugh remembering that one.

Acoustic 220 early 80's head that did not hold up the Acoustic reputation in my mind.

late 80's Fender BXR 300 (?) never could get a tone I liked from this amp.

so much gear, so little good tone ! :D
 
#59
My daughter's second amp (as described in another thread). Not a terrible sounding amp - when it worked. This is the one where the PC board was hanging from the pot wipers, the pots being mounted to the front panel. After a gig or two, enough damage was done to the board traces to cause tone controls, volume, or something to fail. I repaired it about 3 times before I advised her to pitch it and get something that wasn't a piece of $#!+ on the inside.

Oh, and it was advertised as 200 watts. Yeah, uh huh. The power supply might have drawn that much from the line if dead shorted.
 

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#60
Fender used to put a "200 Watts" sticker under the external A.C. outlet on the back of their Bassman heads.Of course us stupid teen yo-yo's thought that ment that was the head's power output.

I still believe they did that on purpose.

And who could ever forget the infamous "Peak Power"ratings of the swingin' 60's. All the manufacturers did that,but Vox was really notorious. Their Super Beatle hype was "240 Watts Peak!". A local electrician back then explained to me that peak power was a fraction of a second.
 

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