My first amp was built into the case of my Sears & Roebuck Silvertone guitar. My first dedicated bass amp was a 1 X 15" Silvertone (all tube) combo bass amp. From there it has been a succession of Fender, Hartke, Ampeg and SWR amps.
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What was your first amp (old guys only)
- Thread starter TheCreature
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1959 Watkins 30 Guitar Amp .
It was Crap but it was all you could get in the UK after the war. There were no American Imports allowed into the country. Every time I hit the E string it nearly trashed the 8" speaker. Played a Framus thin Bass through it. You could only buy Framus or Hofner Guitars and as the Framus was the cheapest that's what I had.
Saved all my Pocket money for 6 months and worked chopping and selling firewood around the town to buy the set up.
With this set up I was the KING BEE in my area of Birmingham UK.
Those were the days.
It was Crap but it was all you could get in the UK after the war. There were no American Imports allowed into the country. Every time I hit the E string it nearly trashed the 8" speaker. Played a Framus thin Bass through it. You could only buy Framus or Hofner Guitars and as the Framus was the cheapest that's what I had.
Saved all my Pocket money for 6 months and worked chopping and selling firewood around the town to buy the set up.
With this set up I was the KING BEE in my area of Birmingham UK.
Those were the days.
1977 Peavey TNT. Worked great, it could keep up with the guitarist Marshal stack. I gave it to a nephew who was starting out on bass about 6 years ago.
Since I started out as a guitarist, my first was a Univox U-66G cranking out a FEARSOME 25 watts of solid state clankiness 
Link Removed
Link Removed
1965
Premier. One twelve with seperate inputs for bass viol and accordian. My second was a silver face Bassman
Andy
Premier. One twelve with seperate inputs for bass viol and accordian. My second was a silver face Bassman
Andy
First amp was my mom's old turntable box. Looked like furniture, had a 12" spkr, and flipped open on top to reveal the turntable. Also had tubes, but I couldn't tell you what type. Sounded like crap, but it was something. Oh, this was 1974ish. My first electronics project.
Mine was a Kingston. Solid-state, probably had 5 watts rms. Two 8 or 10"s with not very big magnets. It was enough to play along to a radio or phonograph. NOT gigworthy! My first 'real' amp was a black 3-15" Kustom 200.
Ken
Ken
Fender Musicmaster was #1 in 1974, then a Sunn Concert Bass 200W SS head with the 215B cabinet.
Had a Bassman 50 that ate tubes after selling a Crown DC300A/preamp set (went back to school). Finally settled on an Acoustic 220 that I played from like 80 to 86..sold it a couple years back after getting back into playing and going with smaller more portable rigs...
Still have the 215B Cabinet and the 2 JBL K-145's that replaced the stock drivers early in its life...
Cab and JBL's are for sale in the classifieds...
I used a friend's Peavey TNT 15" when starting out in the mid 80's (while he went through his 'guitar phase') until I finally bought myself a Fender BXR300C. While the cabinet disintegrated years ago from mold, I still use the head from that unit for my worship rig (mounted in a rack bag).
I aint old so sorry for intuding, but my first amp was one my dad used to mic his drums, a 65ish(i think) traynor practice amp, 15 tube watts with one 15, got 1 really awesome sound no matter how yyou tweaked the knobs,only had 3 of them, volume, bass treb...thats the sh*t right there
Univox 30 watt tube amp with one 15", similar to a B-15, sold it a few years later for a Fender Showman and have never seen one since, then bought a Marshall Major with with 2 sunn 2000S cabs, sold that bought my first SVT in 1975(?), still use them.
Before that the first amp I ever regularly played through was a Silvertone twin twelve, was the guitarists', never blew either one up either.
Actually though my first amp was an ancient RCA TV set with a 12" speaker and an RCA phono jack in the back, sounded great but was a little too heavy to bring to gigs.
The first amp I ever owned was a Vox AC50 Foundation. Fifty watts into a Tannoy 18" speaker. The cabinet had no handles whatsoever. That was the first modification I did to the thing - adding handles!
Paul
Paul
Summer of 1969 I was recruited to be the bass player in a teen band but we couldn't find a real bass guitar so we used a Harmony Meteor guitar with all the tone to bass plus a borrwed Sears amp also with no treble used.
Got me going.
We could have used a bass player tough.
Got me going.
We could have used a bass player tough.
1976. I started playing bass in a band after being a guitar player. I owned a Fender Twin Reverb so I bought a brand new Music Man 212RH cabinet. I unplugged the internal speakers in the Twin and used it to drive the MM cabinet. A few weeks aftet I got the MM cab, the local good store got a used P bass (a 1973 natural ash, maple neck CBS POS boat anchor crappy sounding clumsy feeling joke, but it was a P bass and I didn't know any better). I traded my Twin for the P bass and used black-face Bassman head. That lasted about a year until I got my Music Man HD-130.
Wish I still had the HD-130 and the 212RH. Don't miss the P bass one little bit.
jte
Wish I still had the HD-130 and the 212RH. Don't miss the P bass one little bit.
jte
Well they don't come much older than me........
WEST Grande Tube Bass Amp over a Sunn 215 cab (same set up as the bass player for Grand Funk Railroad.........I said I was old......)
Kalamazoo Bass with BIG humbucker pickup
WEST Grande Tube Bass Amp over a Sunn 215 cab (same set up as the bass player for Grand Funk Railroad.........I said I was old......)
Kalamazoo Bass with BIG humbucker pickup
First amp? My Dad's Fisher Multiplex (65 watt - all tube) through 3 way Coaxial 15s in a ported cabs... circa '62. It sounded good (I think) for bass and guitar. I eventually used the multiplex, years later, for a while to power my Gibby Jr. through a 6x10 Acoustic cab. That sounded pretty good.
First conventional amp (in '69): '64 Fender Deluxe for Guitar, same amp but through a DIY cab with a JBL 15" for Bass. A truely magical time.
First conventional amp (in '69): '64 Fender Deluxe for Guitar, same amp but through a DIY cab with a JBL 15" for Bass. A truely magical time.
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