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Worst amp you played through

#361
John Hobson said:
Best options :

1. BEST (IMO) - Go see live shows, and buy the same gear the bassist has if you like his/her sound. If they can do it so can you.

2. NEXT BEST: Try them out for yourself (this is the golden talkbass advice), BUT in my humble opinion, amps can sound very different on a shop floor than they might sound in a full band setting.

3. NEXT NEXT BEST: Go with a trusted brand, popular model (plenty of people here love Fender, Hartke, Ampeg, GK enough that you know it can't be all that bad)

Anecdotal advice: I got the Hartke LH500 and it is a great simple amp ( i got it used for around $200). A good versatile foundation for a rig which can be customized with pedals and cabinets to your liking.
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Overall, pretty good advice but I would caution that option 1 applies only to live shows in small venues where you are actually hearing the bassists stage gear (as opposed to the P.A.). I'd also recommend chatting to the bassist between sets. Most are only too happy to chat about gear with a fellow player (I know I am) and you can learn a lot from these guys/gals.
As for worst amp.... so many to choose from.... I'll discount the ones that were clearly underpowered and say the SWR SM400. For a supposedly "pro" amp, that thing was lame.
 
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#362
MrCash said:
As the title says what is the worst amp or combo you have actually played through and why?

Worst head
I have a Ampeg b2r and I'm nominating it for the worst amp I've played through.
I do like its tone although nothing special its not bad at all, that's where the love ends.
As many members note the output is pathetic and especially if you use the pad switch even with a powerful active bass. I'm sure I've heard 25w amps that are louder and even with the pad switch out at 8ohms I'm sure it only just about equals 100w.
It has no right to be as heavy/big or as expensive as it was originally, especially as the build quality is so so too.
Not the worst amp but too me it's the worst I've played through and own.

Worst combo
Now far enough this was only a tiny practice amp but still I had the misfortune of owning a peavey micro bass the later foreign made ones and it sounded honestly like a glorified alarm clock and then it went with a fart and blew up! Which is a shame as in general I've think peavey stuff is alright.
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For me it is TNT100 but I could not blow that amp and I push it HARD.
Anyone who played one knows what it sounds like.
 
#363
This thread is entertaining.

Worst for me was my first bass amp... a mid-80's Gorilla with 12" speaker. In the early 90's, I played through a Crate B160 cube-shaped combo with 15" speaker... a definite improvement over the Gorilla, but still a fart box. After the Crate, I bought a Carvin R600 (redline series) head with 4x10 and 1x18 cabinets. The Carvin stack sounded great by itself, but it was disappointing in a live situation in a band with 2 loud guitarists. No amount of tweaking could get this rig to sound anywhere near as good as mid-grade modern amps of today like the Ampeg Portaflex or Fender Rumble.

In this day and time, we are definitely spoiled with many great options in bass amplification.
 
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#365
Roland BN60, boxy sounding as hell. ARRRRRGH!

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Played once through a Randall bass amp. Thank God I'll never repeat that experience. Same for Trace Elliot.
 
#369
It's strange to read how many people think some of the amps I loved were crap. Evidently, there is not a lot of love for Univox amplifiers either. As far as bad amps that I have owned go, two brands stick in my mind. The first one was a Standel amp called the Super Artist XV. You could not get any tone from it. Volume was no problem, it was a two 15 combo and plenty loud, but it always sounded like a transistor radio. No fuzz box could save it. The other amplifier that was particularly frustrating was also a two 15 combo made by Teneyck called a GB2000. Mine only worked for a few days, but while it was working it sounded like nothing I had ever heard, and I mean that in a good way. If it had sounded like crap and then died, like the Standel, well that would have been alright. The fact that it sounded like the amp from another world made it's demise just that much worse. I had the presence of mind to keep it. One day I will hire some NASA space engineers to repair it, because that's just how complicated it is. I could not get anyone to work on it. They would take one look at the three page schematic diagram and tell me that it had to go back to the factory. Oh, and it has zero resale value. That is bad.
 
#372
Worst amp :Fender Rumble 40w v3 combo
From new last year lasted one day before dying

Sent it back and got an Ampeg BA110 for home use

Best amp : so far Ashdown RM800 EVO II into an Ampeg PF115LF cab
Great sound
 
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#374
Old Gorilla practice amp is the worst.

Worst in a group setting, would have to be the newer Fender Rumble 12 inch combo. Underpowered, boxy-sounding, disappears if you get more than a couple feet away from it. Couple of clubs in NYC were using that as backline. Terrible. I started bringing my own gear if I knew I was going to play one of those Rumble rooms.
 
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