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Remember your first amp?


Basshole

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I remember my first amp, it was quiet the work horse. The Kustom KBA 65. Mostly used it at home and at church. I remember it being very loud, the cheap sounding effects, and 9 band eq.

 

Lugging that 45 pound thing around was a workout.

 

how about you guys?

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Summer of 1977 a friend found a speakerless amp at the dump and sold it to me for $5.00. Small, knobs on the top.... I think it may have been an Alamo. I put a Radio Shack 8" speaker in it. Sold it and my '63 Danelectro that December for $70. Didn't get another amp until 1979 when a music store was going out of business and bought a brand new Fender Champ for $90.

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1966 "Store Brand", from Terminal Music 48th st NYC, 15" 35 watt solid state amp cost about $100. Blew something in the "electrics", needed about $100 in repairs. Bought a used '65 Tremolux (2x10") 35 watts. Still have the speaker cabinet, head took a "walk" around 1973, along with a Premier 90 reverb box...

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Mine was a Peavey. I can't remember what model it was. I bought in 1984. It was really nice. I miss it.

 

I used to jam out with my friends in the basement. We sucked. I would crank my amp. I remember one day my brother--who was about two years old--was so pissed that we were playing so loud that he just stormed down into the basement and punched me in the face. I went down, but managed to save my guitar--a bright red Ibanez. I got up, laughed at him, gave him the finger, and kept playing.

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My first amp was a cheap-*** samick portable amp... it sounded like **** and ran on batteries... a couple of months after getting it I went for a 15W samick combo, which had what at the time sounded like a really nice distortion and a great reverb... then they started selling the real stuff in here and I realized that little guy was a POS on its own leage.

 

My first "real" amp was a jcm900 I didnt like much.

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My first amp was in 1975 and it was a Gibson 5 watt with tremblo as its only effect. After that I ended up getting a 15 watt "Stage"amp. I don't even think the company is around anymore, but it had a bit more balls than the little Gibson.

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My first amp was a bass amp...I was a bass player all through high school and college. Fender sidekick - they've revived the line, but mine was an old design in 1995. Great little amp, worked just as great when I sold it as when I bought it, and it ran almost flat-out on "10" for many hours.

 

My first guitar amp was a Carvin Nomad 1X12. Great vintage look, and probably a great vintage sound. But I didn't realize that the vintage overdrive wasn't at all what I wanted, and the cleans actually weren't either. Wound up having to buy an OD pedal... and eventually sold the amp anyway.

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I went for a 15W samick combo' date=' which had what at the time sounded like a really nice distortion and a great reverb... then they started selling the real stuff in here and I realized that little guy was a POS on its own leage.

.[/quote']

 

I still have my Samick combo , but it's a 25W . Back then, I also thought it was the best thing ever...

But it's a piece of crap compared to my Traynor.

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Summer of 1977 a friend found a speakerless amp at the dump and sold it to me for $5.00. Small' date=' knobs on the top.... I think it may have been an Alamo. I put a Radio Shack 8" speaker in it. Sold it and my '63 Danelectro that December for $70. Didn't get another amp until 1979 when a music store was going out of business and bought a brand new Fender Champ for $90.[/quote']

 

 

S6300292.jpg

 

Did it look sorta like this?

This is a Alamo.

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... Fender Deluxe Reverb in about '66...

 

Swapped it in the mid 70s for a big Aims version of a Twin on steroids that I still have. Bad move. The aims is a super amp, but the weight is too - so I use a much smaller one mostly.

 

In ways - and I guess this shows a lot about this gray head - that first amp still is to me about as close to "ideal" as any. It's not super loud - but plenty enough... <grin>

 

m

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First one was a cheap Kay. My first "real" amp was a 1964 Fender Vibroverb. I blew out the speaker and had to get it re-coned. Traded it when I started playing bass for a 1965 Fender Bassman, (man...how I wish I had either of them now!). I eventually added a 12" Showman bottom to the Bassman. I got a Dual Showman Reverb about 35 years ago... still have it, but it's too damn big to haul around so I have a fairly new solid state Bassman with one 15" speaker that I really like and several other amps I keep strategically placed in the house and motor home.

 

Bob

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This got me to thinking...

 

Back nearly 50 years ago the first jazz and rock aggregation I played in had two guitar players. One had a Silvertone with the little amp built into the case which surprisingly was enough for a small dance gig, and the other guy had a little old Gibson amp that looked like a suitcase of the day.

 

Funny thing about those thoughts came down to two questions.

 

1. Why didn't the practice amp in the case idea get increasingly popular, especially after the transistor and even more compact amp configurations became possible and...

 

2. Why does almost nobody talk about Gibson or Epi amps on a Gibson forum and - along the same lines - why haven't I even seen a Gibson amp in dozens of years? They can't be that bad, so what's the deal where they make something but don't even seem to try to sell the things? I could go on and on about this - I almost did - but it seems odd.

 

... by the way, the "gee it was horrid" notes here make me increasingly happy I started with that Delux Reverb.

 

m

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