What was your first ever bass amp?

[jamro217]

Being a natural cheapskate I opted for the easiest way out. Bought a Randall bass head and ran it into the cab of my guitar amp (a 60's Fender Showman with a 15" JBL). The cab is sealed and makes a great low power cab for bass. I think the Showman is rated at 85 watts, the Randall is solid state and I think that's 100 watts. Still have them both, but I don't use them much. The Showman is great for the Rhodes piano, and the Randall is used just to power a talk box.

 

[7dollarbologna]

1984 Fender Sidekick 30

 

[The Chuck]

Peavey TNT 130 Black Widow Equipped...bought brand new with a Peavey T-40 bass which was bigger than me! The T-40 was not my first bass incidentally.

I had the same one. It's at a friend's house now. he uses it to play a Fender Rhodes though.

 

[And I]

One of these bad boys. Trace GP7 combo. Sounded pretty good but only 150w so not enough for gigs and it had some electronics issues so sometimes would crackle and fuzz. Percussive maintenance worked for a while and then it more or less crapped out. It was great to learn / jam on.

 

[Gravedigger Dav]

Same amp. I think I had a 2x12 bottom. Mine shorted out and caught on fire.
Went to a Fender Bassman.

Yes, I think they came with a 2x12 open back. I also went to a Bassman. We doubled our power to a whopping 50 watts!
Wish I still had my bassman, but a guitar player offered me an embarrasing sum of cash for it in 1972 when I got my first Ampeg.
It was an SVT I kept for two weeks before swapping it out for a V4B. The local dealer was a personal friend and let me do that and refunded the difference. The SVT was great, but too much for the venues I was playing.

 

[marko57]

Peavey TNT 50. From there Lab Series L4, from there to Marshall 3540 400w bass stack.

 

[FatboyJ115]

Inspired by my thread .

My first "Bass Amp" was pretty bad, I mean, it wasn't a bass amp so I'm not sure if you guys will still count it. But it was a Blown out, First Act, 5W Guitar Amp. It was so terrible, and I didn't realize how bad it was till I got an actual bass amp. (Which is the amp I currently have my 15W Fender Rumble)

 

[mpdd]

peavey basic 50 112 combo

 

[socialleper]

Fender Sidekick 50. It was a great little starter amp that was heavy as hell for its size.
It blew out more than once and it sat at my folks house for years after I moved out. When they died and we emptied out the house it was one of many things that ended up in the dumpster that I regret throwing away but couldn't do anything else with at the time.

 

[Jazz Ad]

If you wanted a good bass tone with little money in EU in the early 90's, you had Torque. 100W into a 15" Celestion.

Note that for the price (3500 FF, about 530 €) you can now get an awesome 250W TC combo, not even taking decreasing value in consideration.
It's incredible how gear became cheaper.

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[smperry]

It was a Guild Thunderbass amp, like this one: Guild Thunderbass | TalkBass.com

But not quite as clean. I originally used it more for my Hammond (a chopped C3), but then it transitioned into a bass amp. It's not the first bass amp I played through (that was a friend's) but it was the first one I owned.

 

[Clap Trap]

Vermona Regent 660 back in '80

 

[Lucky D]

Mine looked just like this, with matching cab. All I could afford in '84. I rocked it with a '72 Musicmaster that was powder blue that had turned puke green. I don't miss either one.
That was my first bass amp. The first amp I owned and played bass through was an old Supro that my Dutch roommate sold to me for $15.

 

[T-MOST]

A Peavey TNT 130 with a single 15" woofer and a tweeter ( I Think). I bought it and my '82 Fender P (in '82) the same day. The TNT sounds horrible now. Dust has ruined the electonics and speaker but i still have it in my attic. The Fender P has just recently been overhauled & recommissioned!

 

[firetec05]

I re

I can't believe I found a picture of one of these on the interwebs. This was a Sears catalog special that came with my Cort Steinberger headless bass in ~1985. In looking back on it, I pulled it out a couple times on a lark and played it (at practice) with my band in college, and it had the most wonderful distortion (read, floppy speaker) when turned all the way up. The most beautiful thing about this amp was, late at night, when I'd be practicing in my bedroom, it would pick up a radio station out of Colorado (I'm in Minnesota) through the electrical plug.

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I remember hearing radio stations on amps like that too!

 

[SanDiegoHarry]

Kustom Kasino 4x10. Horrid amp; the whole 4x10 concept hadn't really been perfected back in 1976. I swore I'd never play anything but 15"s after that POS.

Then came SWR...

 

[JakeyBran]

very first was a small Crate combo. i think it was around 30 watts or so. i used it at home for practice and i borrowed an old Randall combo that had a 15 inch speaker in it for playing. my first "real" amp was a Peavey 210TX Combo that i paired with a Peavey 115 Ext Cab. i want to say i paid around $250 for the whole thing.

i now use an Ampeg SVT-3 Pro through an SVT-410 Pro. and i found an old Ampeg B-25B Cab for $120 that i plan on restoring and getting a matching B-25B head to go with.

 

[Max Blasto]

A Rosac Bassmaster. About 100w, I think, probably more like 60. I didn't know about bass amps much, I just new that walls at home vibrated when I turned it up. Of course where I grew up, the walls vibrated when the wind blew too. I had a no-name 15 in a no name cabinet to go with it.

Eventually, as I joined bands with guitarists playing marshalls it occured to me that the old Rosac just wasn't going to cut it. PLaying my ass off and the mix was like "And Justice for All..." (that album hadn't come out yet, but when it did I knew how old Jason felt).

So a friend of mine had something called a Gallien Krueger amp. No trouble hearing that guy. And it was way easier to deal with than the enormous Acoustic stacks that some of the other guys in town used. And the GK guy was selling; it seems that Ozzy Osbourne had just released his first solo album and GK guy was shooting for _that_ sound. Go figure... Anyway, I buy his GK 400b (not a typo) and all of a sudden I'm screamin four string terror much to my guitarist's consternation. So that was my first real amp.

I still have it too. It's in storage with some preamp issues. Maybe I should dust it off and giver 'er a rip.

 

[Mildew Jones]

My first amp was a Yamaha B115 (I think that was the model). 100 ss watts, a single 15 in a reflex cabinet...was pretty good until the volume went past 12:00, then got all farty, a pretty good sized rig to start out with, I must admit (thanks, Dad!). I used to park it backwards in the corner of a rehearsal room to get the biggest sound I could (someone had suggested that). I later yanked the amp out of it, used it to power my Acoustic 361 cab (the power amp had died), it served me until I got some $ together to get a decent rig in the mid 80's (G/K RB800,1x15,2x10)...found a pic online... (not mine)...

 

[Roland De Aragon]

My first amp was was SWR workingmans 15" combo. It was an awesome amp but I had to pawn it to pay my car payment=)