What was the crappiest sounding amp you've owned?

[GibsonVMan]

 

Originally Posted by codecontra

LIne 6 Spider was {censored}ing horrible and still is...

 

I can't forget this. The more you turn it up..the worse it gets.

[rushtallica]

 

Originally Posted by The Anomaly

I have you all beat. My Crate CR-110, circa 1981. It's nothing short of amazing how bad it sounds.

The sick thing is, I bought one off ebay about two years ago, on a whim, just so I could look at it in the house, once in a while.

 

Is that one of the ones that really looked like a crate? I had a really old Crate for a very short time not long after I started playing. I liked it a bit but think I ended up trading it for an '80s Fender Princeton Chorus solid state amp that I thought had better distortion.

[The Anomaly]

 

Originally Posted by Mike LX-R

 

Well, it was my first amp, sorta, so, it has some nostalgic value to me.

 

Originally Posted by mr. moon

Scamper amp; worst amp I have ever had the displeasure of owning. Must have been some kind of Bugera prototype, as the one I had literally went up in smoke, never to be heard from again.

True story.

 

I 'd

[soundgardener75]

 

Originally Posted by mr. moon

Scamper amp; worst amp I have ever had the displeasure of owning. Must have been some kind of Bugera prototype, as the one I had literally went up in smoke, never to be heard from again.

True story.

 

First thing that came to mind about that name is Shrimp Scampi. Now I'm hungry dammit.

[sir riff a lot]

Hayden HGTA40 head

[avenued]

The name Scamper Amp is drivin me nuts.It's like a town in Norway or a candy bar,something.Mine was a 9V Pignose.I played a Vintage 5 Bugera at GC and really liked it.Must of been a good guitar.

[Mesa/Kramer]

 

Originally Posted by Mr. Brady

Fender H.O.T amp with the grey carpet covering. My first amp ever and I was even disappointed with it then in all my noobness.

 

Haaa, .... I still have one of these I use to run my MP-1 into the PWR amp input for at home practice amp.

The cleans actually are decent but the Gain settings are an absolute joke.

Keep in mind that "H.O.T." stood for "High Overdrive Technology".

This thing has about 1/2 the gain of a stock JCM 800, and sounds like total ass to boot.

[Tommy Horrible]

 

Originally Posted by Mesa/Kramer

Haaa, .... I still have one of these I use to run my MP-1 into the PWR amp input for at home practice amp.

The cleans actually are decent but the Gain settings are an absolute joke.

Keep in mind that "H.O.T." stood for "High Overdrive Technology".

This thing has about 1/2 the gain of a stock JCM 800, and sounds like total ass to boot.

 

I think I owned this things big brother as a teen. This was my first amp of any kind, my dad gave it to me to piss off my mom. I remember thinking the OD was horrid, but It was 20+ years ago, so I don't really remember all to well what it really sounded like.

[phaeton]

I've had a few...

The first was a "G Blaster" portable amp, the sort you would clip on your belt and uh... serenade the masses with. I got it as a pile of parts with a guitar at the age of 14. I cobbled it together, but the 4" speaker that came with it was blown or had an internal short. So I hooked it up to a hi fi speaker my dad had, and it stick to a piece of iron in my bedroom wall, with no cabinet. The amp would overheat, after a few minutes of playing with all the settings dimed (it was the only way to hear it). I figured out which chip was getting too hot and glued a stack of coins to it as a heat sink, and it worked! This was my first amp.

Soon after, for Christmas my folks bought me a Quantum Terminator 25R. 25-watt practice amp made in China for Musician's Friend (we lived near their original Medford showroom). This must have been 1988 or 1989. It was a weird fuzzy grey color with neon green knobs, and they were all marked from 0-11. Not only did that thing smell funny, but if you cranked it up to any useable level it made this horrible crackling sound. We tried to return it but MF refused to take it back, citing "it's a cheap amp, this is to be expected". I sold it and a guitar to a friend and it blew up shortly after.

I picked up a 1976 Peavey Pacer shortly after. By itself it is a big box of dried dog{censored}, with the driest, most sterile and uninspiring "distortion" you could ever imagine, but when I dimed everything and stuck a TS-10 in front of it it was the exact tone you heard on Metallica's original un-remastered album Kill 'em All. No bass, some fizzy treble and all mids all the time. I laughed so hard when nightflameauto said "two wrongs made a right" in his amp experience, because I know that can really happen.

I have a Fender BXR somethingsomething bass amp that sounds 'ok', but it's got this annoying habit of just going full blast whenever it feels like it, so I don't play it.

The funniest thing though, is I have a Fender Frontman 15G- one of those little practice amps that comes as a package with a Squier. I'm not going to say it's amazing, but it is easily a thousand times better than any of the amps I listed above. I'm thoroughly impressed with it for what it is. Why couldn't we have stuff like this to start out with, instead of that Quantum Terminator, whose distortion sounded like a handheld mixer in a milk jug full of broken dreams and fingernail shards?

[GibsonVMan]

I almost and willingly forgot my old fender fm212. I traded it for a crate...the crate actually sounded better. That is not saying much though!

[Goop]

Peavey Windsor Stewdio.

[Bucksstudent]

I have yet to own or play an amp that I couldn't get a good sound out of.

[StevePage]

Laney VC50. Sounded like fizzy {censored} though I think that might be because it had been modified due to this weird pot on the back of the amp.

ENGL Powerball. I wouldn't say it was terrible but it just took too much effort to get it to sound good (certain valves, EQ in the FX loop etc etc).

[the_gunslinger]

A little 10 or 15 watt piece of {censored} Ram, from when I first started playing guitar. Last time I saw one of these it was in the back of somebody else's truck on the way to the dump maybe 10 years ago.

[MadKeithV]

Every single amp I've owned has had at least one usable tone for some kind of music.

The most memorable amp that I couldn't get along with at all, nor get any tones that I liked: Mesa Triaxis V1 (into Mesa 50/50). So many tones, every single one of them sounded and felt dull and uninspiring. The guy that bought it from me showed up with a baby Jem (555) and instantly sounded awesome on the same settings - proving to me once and for all that it's more important how you get along with an amp than how the amp actually sounds to get a good tone.

[detunedman]

Waller.

[8 Foot Manchild]

Line 6 Spider - I use it as an electric kazoo amp.

[tech21man]

 

Originally Posted by MadKeithV

Every single amp I've owned has had at least one usable tone for some kind of music.

The most memorable amp that I couldn't get along with at all, nor get any tones that I liked: Mesa Triaxis V1 (into Mesa 50/50). So many tones, every single one of them sounded and felt dull and uninspiring. The guy that bought it from me showed up with a baby Jem (555) and instantly sounded awesome on the same settings - proving to me once and for all that it's more important how you get along with an amp than how the amp actually sounds to get a good tone.

 

Dude it was weird but I have been there with the triaxis. In the end, lead 2 red was where I got along and with other power amps rather than mesa it sounded absolutely fantastic. But it was weird because I also had the studio preamp and it was instantly amazing vs the triaxis, it breathed better it was bigger perhaps tighter, all of those sound adjectives that just say it was better.

But yeah it might be just me getting along better with the studio, I mean it took me a long time before I got the triaxis to sound "good for its big price tag" in a sort of sense. The guy who bought had an ENGL special edition midi preamp? He is in heaven with the mesa but he plays fusion and clean/blues stuff a lot, the ENGL pretty much sucked for those.

As far as "crappiest" amp I've owned...Well even the marshall vs15r which was my first amp ever wasn't exactly crappy. The crappiest amp I've played for distortion as a product was again marshall, the AVT275. Very different than even the 20 and the 50. Didn't like it at all. Also the engl thunder 50 and laney lc50 and lc30 but mk II not mk III . They put me off tube amps for a while because they were the cheapest ones I could find at the time and didn't like them at all for heavier sounds and even crunch sounds...I still think they aren't really great amps, for the price regardless of which category they belong to.

[ermghoti II]

Dean Markley battery operated miniamp, or Gorilla. Maybe the Gorilla was worse

[jhall]

Jet City JCA2112RC Still have it but hate it. Sounds like gooey mud. Of all the ss amps I've owned this is even worse than those. Kind of makes me scared to get one of their newer 50 or 100 watt heads with the OD channel as I can never find one in a store to try and am not about to mail order one of them sight unseen.

[frankthomson]

= nails on blackboard

[peavey_impact]

 

Originally Posted by teemuk

I have the 15R version. Same but with a reverb.

...and it's not even remotedly close to worst sounding tiny SS guitar amps I've encountered. That one actually has a very good clean tone and a decent OD tone.

When you know how to dial it in properly, and when you have good chops.

I better put my "first amp syndrome" -filter on right now.

 

But the question was "what was the crappiest sounding amp you've owned?"....so that was his crappiest amp. What was yours?

 

Originally Posted by phaeton

I've had a few...

The first was a "G Blaster" portable amp, the sort you would clip on your belt and uh... serenade the masses with. I got it as a pile of parts with a guitar at the age of 14. I cobbled it together, but the 4" speaker that came with it was blown or had an internal short. So I hooked it up to a hi fi speaker my dad had, and it stick to a piece of iron in my bedroom wall, with no cabinet. The amp would overheat, after a few minutes of playing with all the settings dimed (it was the only way to hear it). I figured out which chip was getting too hot and glued a stack of coins to it as a heat sink, and it worked! This was my first amp.

 

That's hilarious

 

Originally Posted by tech21man

Also the engl thunder 50 and laney lc50 and lc30 but mk II not mk III . They put me off tube amps for a while because they were the cheapest ones I could find at the time and didn't like them at all for heavier sounds and even crunch sounds...I still think they aren't really great amps, for the price regardless of which category they belong to.

 

That's wild, I think the Thunder is a badass sounding amp. The stock tubes/bias is {censored}ty, but phrophus here on the forums has one that sounds killer.

[nightflameauto]

 

Originally Posted by phaeton

The funniest thing though, is I have a Fender Frontman 15G- one of those little practice amps that comes as a package with a Squier. I'm not going to say it's amazing, but it is easily a thousand times better than any of the amps I listed above. I'm thoroughly impressed with it for what it is. Why couldn't we have stuff like this to start out with, instead of that Quantum Terminator, whose distortion sounded like a handheld mixer in a milk jug full of broken dreams and fingernail shards?

 

I've got one of those too and don't mind it at all for quiet playing. Cranked up it thins out, but it's actually pretty decent to stick on the desk blasting in your face at lower volumes. Right now it's serving as a bass amp for a buddy of mine that sold all his gear off to fund some stuff for his kids. Seems pretty decent for that too. Hell of a lot better than the little amps I had when I was younger.

[teemuk]

 

 

 

 

 

But the question was "what was the crappiest sounding amp you've owned?"....so that was his crappiest amp. What was yours?

 

 

 

 

- One was a Hitachi-made "Princeton" amp from late 60's. Single channel that sounded as warm and harmonically rich as tapping a phonebook with a stick, tremolo that made swooshing fart noise even when it was dialled off and a pathetic reverb that added a shrill, distorted short echo. This was from a tank with similar dimensions to aforementioned Crate, which has an astoundingly great reverb tone for such a little tank. With a 2x10" cab the amp was muddied and drowned out by the said Crate combo with no sweat. Single (hi-cut -type) tone control with range from dull to duller. So much for "vintage" amps.

- Smokey through the stock speaker.

- Epiphone Valve Junior. What a POS in every aspect. Why do they even make these.

- Marshall MG15 or something. Couldn't even care. Tone wise totally lame compared to said Crate practice amp, feature wise no better, but with a Marshall price tag.

I would kinda rule out the last two because I would never part my money to buy myself such crap.

[phaeton]

 

Originally Posted by nightflameauto

I've got one of those too and don't mind it at all for quiet playing. Cranked up it thins out, but it's actually pretty decent to stick on the desk blasting in your face at lower volumes. Right now it's serving as a bass amp for a buddy of mine that sold all his gear off to fund some stuff for his kids. Seems pretty decent for that too. Hell of a lot better than the little amps I had when I was younger.

 

Exactly. It's no Fender Bassman but for low volume stuff it's not horrible. It even thumps a little when doing palm-mutey chuggin stuff. I keep thinking I should install a speaker-out jack on the back, because I'm curious what it would sound like into a real speaker and cabinet.