What was your first amp (old guys only)

[sanderic]

Fender Bassman 50 head into a used Kasino 2x15 so big it looked like the box that the UN building came in. Sounded like hell, heavy as Black Sabbath covered in cement.

I had a Kasino 200, 2 x 15 combo, weighed in around 200 lbs, with alternating green and silver verticle stripes in the grill cloth. Yours looks solid black. I do remember them making solid silver cloths on some models. Was yours stock or modified?

 

[gastric]

And old 1970's Kustom black tuck-n-roll 250 head with a matching re-loaded 4x12 cabinet I bought off a local guitarist. I used that for guitar and bass for quite a while before selling it to the drummer in one of my high school bands. We all still talk about that amp to this day. In fact, a studio engineer friend of mine from my college years Facebook'ed me about it recently. In our mind's ear it was a total badass rock-n-roll God. I'm guessing it actually sounded kind of crappy, but who knows.

One endearing feature it had was that the blue power light on the front would ebb when you really pushed the amp. Hit a fat chord and the light would dim, then come back up to full brightness. Fun times!

 

[Hahaha]

My first bass amp was a Lectrolab that I bought through a mail order catalog. It had a 15" Jensen speaker with a 3" tweeter. It wasn't loud enough to use in a band.



When I bought my Kingston bass my father was sure his public address system would serve as a bass amp. He had an amp with a 1/4 mic input. The speaker was a 20" indoor/outdoor metal horn like the kind used at fairgrounds. It wasn't designed for bass guitar, so when I played through it my bass sounded like a giant bumble bee with a cold. My favorite bass line sounded like:

//:Bzzzzzzzzz, bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz/zzz, bzz bzzzzzz, bzz bzz bzz://

It didn't take long to find out that wasn't going to work and gave me a good reason to save my lunch money and buy the Lectrolab R700C, which proved to be another failure. I got off to a bad start with amps.

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

An Acoustic 136, purchased used in October 1979.

I still have it; it still works great but I am considering selling it.

 

[rexspangle]

My dad rewired his vintage RCA stereo system into an "amp", I played that daily until I blew the speakers in a few months.

 

[Gaolee]

When I first started playing, I plugged into the stereo. That was it. The first amp I ever had was a real POS Kustom Bass I combo from the late 1970s. It was something like 35 watts of not much. For some reason, I kept it for a very long time, but finally sold it a few years ago for what I paid. The guy who bought it knew exactly what it was and wanted one to play guitar through. All I could say was OK, it is all yours. If he had offered to take it away for free, I proably would have given it to him, because it had been taking up space and not doing anything useful for a few decades at that point. I don't miss it and hadn't thought about it for several years until right now. When I bought it, the guy who was selling it threw in a bass he had found in a bathtub. No extra cost, but that's another story.

 

[jastacey]

My very first bass amp was a Sears 60 BXL , then I went big-time and aquired my first amp top a Traynor YBA-1

 

[mrjim123]

Fender Bassman head into a home built 2x15 cab with EV drivers, circa 1973

 

[39-Bassist]

Fender Bassman 50 Silverface......gosh I wish I still had it!

 

[BassCliff]

Hi,

The first "real" amp that I bought myself was a Fender Bassman 100 with the 4x12 cabinet, in 1975.

I still have the amp and it sounds great. Got rid of that cabinet a long time ago. It sounded horrible.

I started with whatever my Dad bought me. At one time we all used a Bogen amp that my Dad had modified and plugged all of the mics and instruments into it. (I had a little garage band with my brothers and sister.) We used a single 4x10 speaker cabinet that my Dad had designed and built. It had a storage space on top of the speaker cabinet to store the amp, cables, mics, etc. Dad was pretty resourceful back in those days.

I seem to recall the first dedicated bass amp that Dad got me was a Vox, something like this old Vox T-25, circa 1969.

A couple of years after that I bought a used Traynor bass amp from a friend, like this one, but mine was in better shape.

Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

 

[Mvilmany]

Started as a guitard, and back in the 80's had a cheap plastic amp that went whrrrrr.

First bass amp when I switched to bass was a peavy combo 300, which was one hell of a workhorse.

 

[SunnModelT]

My first amp in '66 was a '64 Fender Bandmaster with the 2-12 cabinet. It also came with a Fender Reverb Unit. I was in 7th grade. My parents payed $275.00 for it. I played a Vox Continental though it.

 

[Ric5]

My first bass amp was a Hilgen ... just like this one here ... about 25 watts ...

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[Lowbrow]

I had a Kasino 200, 2 x 15 combo, weighed in around 200 lbs, with alternating green and silver verticle stripes in the grill cloth. Yours looks solid black. I do remember them making solid silver cloths on some models. Was yours stock or modified?

Probably modded. It had been round the block already, think there was a band stencil on it maybe something with a lightning bolt. Black grilled and a bad ass set of tilt back casters. Didn't help it up the stairs at Maxs.

 

[iridiumrocks]

Bought it in 1977 and still have it too

 

[lexington125]

old Kustom PA silver cushion head and a Voice of the Theatre clone cabinet. Wish I had a photo of that Frankenstein rig (circa '77). It honked like Felix Unger in the "Odd Couple" but there were a couple of notes with just the right frequency that turned that cabinet into a monster capable of serious volume. It was pieced together out of some leftover junk after some older guys graduated and left their unwanted gear behind. The ultimate respectable bass rig for a young punk bass player. I soon moved up to a Yamaha B100 head and a musicman 1-15 cabinet, but the Yamaha head was nowhere near as comfortable as the Kustom sofa head

 

[hsech]

I had one like this. A Sears Silvertone.

That is me on the right using it as an acoustic guitar amp a couple of years later.

 

[Lowbrow]

old Kustom PA silver cushion head and a Voice of the Theatre clone cabinet

Holy moly that sounds ... special.

I soon moved up to a Yamaha B100 head and a musicman 1-15 cabinet, but the Yamaha head was nowhere near as comfortable as the Kustom sofa head

My second rig = a Yamaha B100 with matching 2x15 and it is STILL the best-sounding rig EVER EVER - wish I still had it! Used it for a good 13 years of solid gigging. Cab design looks like it cloned a Sunn; was heavy as my 2 back surgeries can attest.

Curious: what does the cab impedance rating "Nominal, minimum 4 ohms" actually mean? Thought only amps had variable impedance performance ratings and that cabs were... just what they were?

 

[Arthur Strand]

I borrowed odd amps to start with in the mid 60s but then settled for a Selmer treble and Bass 50.
After various others I built my Tonehenge stereo bass rig in the mid 70s for the Rickenbacker Stereo. 2 x 2 x 15" self-built cabinets with Altec 421 8H Bass speakers. A graduate of Melbourne Uni. living near Oxford built the head from scratch.
See on Home page www.escutcheonmedia.com

 

[alaskaleftybass]

Aldens catalog 8" combo with i think 15 watts. Wow, that was a long time ago!!! LOL