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The worst amp I've ever owned

#141
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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Oh wow. This is such proof of how subjective the idea of good tone is.

I borrowed an amp exactly like that for a couple years, and honestly, I found it to be amazing. The owners and I were friends, and they'd just had a kid and so weren't going to be using it for a while. Sadly, I eventually had give it back.

It WAS extremely heavy, though. The one I used looked like they'd used blue denim for tolex. It did have the cheesy aluminum corners running the whole length. It was really easy to overdrive and it had those enormous controls.

Gods, I loved that jankity old thing. What I'd do to find one.
 
#142
TheGrizz said:
Worst Amp? Peavey TNT-115 hands down. It was my first amp, and wasn't bad when I was playing in my bedroom. Then I started gigging...the thing was heavier than any combo I've ever come across. And the sound was awful. ......
Click to expand...

Yes .... an extremely heavy and bad sounding combo. It did not discriminate, it made every bass and every player sound bad.
Indestructable though .... 30 years old and the kid down the street still uses it as a guitar amp.
 
#143
Mine was a late 60's or early 70's Gibson Les Paul bass amp.

I bought it wholesale from the Canadian distributor as an end-of-line closeout, the summer of 1973. I believe there was also a guitar version. They can't have made many, as I've never seen one since.

It featured a truly enormous powered 2*15 cab that weighed at least 150lb (I only wish I was exaggerating), with a 200 watt solid-state power amp inside. Black tolex with plastic edging, and blue and silver tinselly grill cloth. A little preamp module sat on top. It had coloured LED's behind the control panel, that made it look like a Christmas ornament.

The amp was FREAKING loud for the times, but that's the only good thing I could say about it. Using weird levels between the preamp and the power amp was dumb. Putting a large power amp inside an already oversized and overweight cab was dumber still. But the craziest thing of all, was the preamp voicing.

Close your eyes for a moment, and remember the deep, woofy, sound of a short-scale Gibson EBO. So why in blue heaven, would anyone design an amp to go with it, that had no highs or upper mids whatsoever? That's right: Zip. Nada. Even when I plugged in a P-bass strung with fresh Thomastik roundwounds, all that came out was a wall of mud. It should have come with a little card, that said "for Reggae lovers only"...

To add insult to injury, a drunk pushed past me one night, as I was lugging it down a rickety fire escape. I injured my back trying to save the drunk and the cab, which introduced me to the world of chiropractors, pain medication, and the never-ending search for good-sounding lightweight gear. In retrospect, it might have been better for everybody if the drunk and the amp had both plunged to their doom...
 
#144
the worst amp I ever owned was a Lab Series L-4. Used it for 1 week at practice and the head burnt up.Sent it back.Came back to me 2 Months later totally redone. I used it for 2 months playing about 3 gigs per week and the head burned up on stage.Sent it back again.By the way this was a Gibson / Moog collaboration and the guitar amps were great.I loved the sound of it , when it worked. About 3 months later it came back with all new guts .It was a good thing that we , the band, had an old ampeg that I used while this thing was going back and forth to Gibson. This time it lasted about 3 months and it started smelling like it was going bad again, so I got rid of it. I traded the amp for a really good stereo system and warned them about the amp.
 
#145
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
Click to expand...

I keep trying to figure out what my worst amp was back in the early 80's and your amp almost matches what mine looked like...hmmm I always thought mine might
have been something like a Roland? I can't find a picture of it either...it was a huge combo amp with two 15" speakers, it sounded like a big fart.
 
#147
My Vox Super Beatle....It broke on-stage 3 different times in the first six weeks. Also, no lows and not very full sounding (kind of honky). The only thing I liked about it was the tilting cab frame but it sounded better without it because of the floor coupling I imagine. In the late sixties I spoke with one of the engineers who modified the Vox amps for the Beatle's U.S. tour and he told me that their amps had been highly modified and were internally different from what was sold to the public.

Giorgetto
 
#148
The worst amp I ever played was a Carvin BR615,it sounded okay when it work. I bought and month after the warranty ran out it would just quit. We had a lot of gigs back to back that summer so I couldn't afford to send it to Carvin, so I took it to in to Austin and had it work on. For some reason I guess some of the places it was solder on the board would vibrate and brake and had to be repaired. I had to do this three times It got so I couldn't trust it so I got rid of it. Ive played their Guitars and like them and their guitar amps own one for along time Belair 212 good amp. But I wouldn't give you a dime for their bass amps right now.
 
#153
Kustom KBA65 65 watt combo amp. Sounded like total junk at any semblance of loud. Decently durable and not awful heavy though. Got a GK head and peavey cab so it sat in my room for about a year. I decided to play through just to see that it was as crappy as I remembered, but it just didn't work. It crackled its last crackle and never would turn on again. I could get it fixed and sell it, but I wouldn't wish that thing on my worst enemy.
 
#154
Ampeg V4B. It was the first serious amp I owned and I could not stand the tube sound. Low frequency was just mud and the high frequency had this weird reverby twang. I couldn't get the dang midrange switches to make my bass sound like anything I liked. It was so indistinct it just sounded like I was standing in front of a truck revving its engine. Couldn't wait to get rid of it.

I know, hard to believe, Ampegs get a lot of love around here. Just goes to show you how subjective we all are. I'm just not a tube guy. I've mellowed a little since then, I do use a pretty good tube emulation pedal, but only on some of my basses, more because it's just a cool signal processor sound, not necessarily because it sounds like a tube amp.
 
#155
Worst amp I ever owned was a Peavey 300 watt Combo with a 15 BW speaker in the late 70s early 80s. Second worst was my SVT 4 Pro. Also seemed under powered and I could never get a good sound. My SVT 6 Pro is much better.
 
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#158
We ran a whole backline of SG amps, me the 15/2x10 bass amp, and the guitar players 6X10's. I still have a 4X10 SG guitar amp.

We had not one bit of problems. I used the bass amp with an ARB extension cabinet with four 12" EV SRO's. Worked fine.

The guitar amps had that wonderful Maestro/Oberheim phase shifter. The distortion was strange...not bad sounding, but ran in parallel with the clean signal. The extension speaker jacks were wired wrong, which was responsible for many of the failures.

Imagine, Gibson/Norlin not making a great bass amp. What were the odds? Seriously, I had struggled with a Bassman 50 watt "bass" amp and the SG was a big step up. It was replaced by a Road (which I didn't like), then a Carvin (great bass amp) but when I found an SVT (with Cerwin Vega 18" cabinet) for $350, all else went by the wayside in 1976.
 
#160
My church had an old keyboard/bass amp called a "Saturday Night Special." This thing was as heavy as an old washing machine but only about knee high. When I would try to play with a loud drummer and a guitar player I had to turn it up so loud that all you would hear is distorted mud. It had no clarity, no headroom, and was a beast to move it just across the room. It would've been easier to move if it had handles on the side but no, it only had a rubber handle at the top. This was some generic brand I had never heard of and it was sold out of some hillbilly music store in Logan, Ohio to my pastor who had no idea about music equipment, let alone bass equipment. I quickly had them upgrade to a pair of 8 ohm cabs and I brought my GK 700rbII rack unit in every Sunday.
 

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