Journey to the center of the mind, Edition 1: beginner guitarists and amps

[sookwinder]

2001 Xmas I had a three week holiday planned to Tahiti with my girl friend. Everything and I mean everything business class flights transfers the air conditioned huts above the transparent turquoise water, food booze tours all paid for via frequent flyer points I had accrued flying around the world with GM

Always wanted to visit Tahiti now it was happening
The day before we were to fly off to the middle of the pacific she broke up with me. Because her mother forbid her to go away with me. Mind you she was 35 years old and a specialist doctor in the cancer section of the main hospital in town

Never got to Tahiti but to blow away the blues I bought myself my first guitar at the age of 39. Up until then always and only been a keyboard player

The guitar was a 5 year old AmStd Strat from 1996 (which has been one of our go to guitars when recording - we call it the Lounge Room Strat) and I bought new a 2000 HRDlx

I had no fucking idea how loud it would be when played 10 feet away in my lounge room, but it sounded great. I must have certainly been damaging my hearing

But it took me a while to understand that sometimes maybe many times the extreme volume doesn’t get you the sound you desire it is more the topography of the amp, the speaker , the combo of input levels to output levels…. But it was that 96 Strat and the 2000 HRD that sent me down the amp designing burrow and I am grateful for that .Apart from my Roland bass cube all my amps are valve based because I understand how they work. I am happy I never started with done crappy cheap solid state amp


Oh and by the way the above story if my ill fated trip to Tahiti is what won me the 67 Texan that Reverb gave away 5 or 6 years back as a competition

[Maggieo]

My first combo was a Peavey T-60 and a Peavey Backstage 10. Not great, not terrible. 3.6 roentgens.

[Nevets]

First amp was this old Ibanez 2 watt tube amp I got with my guitar (cheap japanese teisco thing). Second was a Fender VibroChamp. Traded that for a solid state Traynor to try and keep up with a drummer. If I had to do it again, I'd spend the money on the guitar before the amp, again.

[Plumerai]

I had the JC Penney catalog Harmony set up. The guitar was a strat copy that played really well (according to experienced friends). Who knows if it actually sounded good. The amp was made out of cardboard or similar. It was really lightweight & had tremelo. I could only mimic the mellow parts of Iron Maiden songs. I didn't know about distortion pedals then.

[Larsongs]

Once upon a time along time ago……. My first Guitar was a beat up Gibson Les Paul Jr. full of scratches & dings I bought in a Pawn Shop in Wash. D.C. for $67.00… Never should’ve let it go. My first Amp was a Sears Silvertone Tube Amp that sounded great.. I lost it somewhere along the way in my travels…

[s_mcsleazy]

Once upon a time along time ago……. My first Guitar was a beat up Gibson Les Paul Jr. full of scratches & dings I bought in a Pawn Shop in Wash. D.C. for $67.00… Never should’ve let it go. My first Amp was a Sears Silvertone Tube Amp that sounded great.. I lost it somewhere along the way in my travels…

i dunno if it's just my love for dischord records but i tend to think of DC back then as a lot of gibsons.

[redchapterjubilee]

I came to guitar later (I’d already been playing drums in bands awhile) and for the most part played an unamplified electric guitar to help write songs. I eventually got a Zoom 505 pedal and could do direct for the first time and then a couple of years later I got a Pod. It wasn’t til 13 years ago when I started my first band that I needed an amp of any sort. And needed it in a danged hurry so I asked one of my former bandmates for the best amp $100 could buy. He recommended an orange face Randall combo, so I wound up with the 50w solid state 1x12 Challenger. It met my goal. Make my guitar loud? Check. Under $100? Yup. Did it sound good? With my $20 Behringer tube screamer copy (still under $100 with amp and pedal) yes, clean no.

My music friends and I have talked about this a bit, how easy it is to find something that works and is affordable now, especially if you don’t care that it was made in Asia. I’d still have trouble making $100 turn into a reliable and useful amp, but if I doubled it then I could certainly make something happen, especially if bought used.

[blacktiger]

I’ve actually tended to be the opposite. Once I discovered Jazzmasters, that was pretty much it for me (not 100% true, but I tend to be a one guitar guy, and I’ve kept coming back to the Jazzmaster for about 30 years now). Basically, once I found the the “one” guitar, I spent a lot of time searching for the “one” amp. The complete list is as follows:

The early junky ones
Gorilla bass amp (started playing bass, then quickly switched to guitar but stuck with the bass amp for a bit).
Fender Sidekick 35 Reverb

Circa 1990/1991, I discovered “vintage” because I discovered Jazzmasters. I guess MIJs did exist at that point, but you really didn’t see them anywhere, so vintage was the only option, and that sucked me into the vintage realm, leading to…

The much better amps (in order of when I had them)

Marshall JCM900 half-stack
Fender Super Reverb (mid ‘70s)
Fender Vibrolux Reverb (1966)
Fender Tremolux (1958)
Fender Super (1960/61)
Vox AC30 (‘90s Korg)
Vox AC30 (early ‘70s)
Fender Concert (1962)
Vox AC50 (1966)
Fender Deluxe (1962)
Marshall Super Lead (mid ‘70s)
Vox AC10 (1966)
Marshall Lead-Bass 20 watt head (early ‘70s)
Fender Bandmaster (1962)

Ironically, all are long gone, and I haven’t actually owned an amp in about 10 years. I am planning on changing that soon, though vintage amps are way out of my price range these days, so I’ll probably go with a used Vox AC10 reissue.

[countertext]

My first guitar and amp were a ‘62 Hagström I and a silver panel Princeton Reverb when I was 13. I got them as an xmas gift.

The red Hagström was beautiful and sounded great, but the neck was absurdly thin and narrow. My fingers were already too big when I got it. I mowed lawns and did odd jobs around town at the time, so I soon got an MIJ Tele, then traded than for an MIJ Strat, which were easier to play (I can’t believe how cheap I got those Fenders in the late ‘80s, wish I still had them).

Anyway, the Hagström didn’t get played for a few years, so I sold it on at some point, and I was later told it was the buyer’s #1 guitar, so no regrets.

I still have the PR, gets played more than any of my other amps these days.

[cestlamort]

Started off as a bass player, going from $75 Peavey T-40 (?) (with a carved skeleton smoking a cigarette, which I then covered in Winnie the Pooh wrapping paper and painted baby blue, #mid90s) to a Rickenbacker 4001. I drove up from Santa Cruz to SF with friends to go amp shopping, and picked up a Crate 115 combo at Black Market Music for probably more than new (they didn't have anything priced and apparently had a sliding scale depending on the customer, evidently I was on the $300+ end. Ouch). (Crate combo traded straight across for an Ibanez AD80 a couple years later). (Moving back to Seattle, I did one of the Drive-away car moving things, driving the 1000 miles in a some Saturn sedan (radio only) with my father's steamer trunk and bass in the back seat and the carpeted Crate bass combo in the passenger seat. Ah, youth.

1st electric guitar: Decca $40 tulip at Musicians Trading Post (Santa Cruz). Got a "real" guitar after moving back up to Seattle (using graduation present money): Guild SF III. I must have borrowed a roommates Twin Reverb (or Twin amp?) for a while, because I only got my first guitar amp a year or two later: 1965 (?) bandmaster (with 4 6L6s) and some Marshall 2x12 combo cab as a cab, which I had for the next 10 years or so. I'm not sure why I was obsessed with the ability to play loud in a band context, since I was only playing in the living room of a tiny apartment, but I felt I needed headroom.

I'd always wanted a Fender combo with reverb (Galaxie 500-influenced) and, after a dalliance with a Super 60 (which was heavy, quiet on the clean channel and sounded terrible; avoid the carpet) I got an 80s Concert (II) 4x10. (Also heavy). I sold that to fund a 1968 Super Reverb (first and last amp I bought on eBay) in 2007 or so. (Speakers all needed to be reconed). I also sold my bandmaster sometime around then as well. (I should have kept it in retrospect, especially after finding a matching bassman cab for it).

In sum: Like everyone, I prioritized LOUD over actual use. As a beginner, it probably would have made sense to use the various student amps (champs were cheap) until it was necessary to play loud, just in case ________ (insert band) suddenly needed a tall, not very good guitar player with an AD80 analog delay.

I still have the Guild and the Super Reverb. but have had too many other guitars and amps to go with them over the years.

[Jonesie]

I started out with an early 90s Kay super strat copy. It was fire engine red, hardtail, with a single humbucker. Even had a pointy headstock in matching red. The amp that came with it was a solid state Fernandes amp, 1x8 and it even had a distortion channel. It sounded, uh... horrible.

My brother ended up taking the guitar and amp from me, and then I transferred to mostly playing drums for a couple of years (I'm still a far better drummer than guitarist). My dad ended up buying me an Ibanez RX20, which was moderately better. Then for my 10th birthday I managed to save up $300 somehow and I bought a MIM Standard Tele in Midnight Blue. I can't even remember what amp I had at that point. It wasn't the Fernandes though...

My first pedal was a Boss Equalizer. No idea why. I could have bought a DOD Supra Distortion, but nope, EQ. I was a stupid, stupid child.

[luau]

I started with a Univox UC-2 and a silver face Deluxe. The Deluxe's OT went up in smoke in dramatic fashion and my grandmother gave me a new Twin Reverb II. I've still got the Twin but the Univox was returned to the store when said grandmother sold me a pretty beat 1976 LP Custom that came into her store on trade. I washed $350 dollars, which is what she had in it, worth of store windows at minimum wage, $3.35 IIRC, for the Custom and it's sitting in my lap as I type this.

[Scout]

I first had a Danelectro Convertible and small yard sale tube amp which promptly toasted . This led to a series of Danelectro amps which were cheap and sorta easy to find. I ended up with several Cadets, a ‘50’s hamper style, singles and twins all the way up to the mother of all Dans, a DM 100 with six 10’s. All traded in for vintage keys and synths except for a DM 10.
My first good guitar was a ‘60’s hummingbird that lives with my daughter. I ended up focusing more on acoustic until relatively recently and now playing electric is like learn a new instrument.

[Shadoweclipse13]

Not great, not terrible. 3.6 roentgens.

Both my first guitar and first amp were pretty bad, though I loved them both for a long time.

My first guitar was an Abilene (Samick?) Strat copy, made from thin plywood. I swapped pickups in it a lot, from a SD single coil-sized humbucker in the bridge, to a full-size SD JB in the bridge with a Gibson P-90 in the neck, to its final iteration of GFS goldfoils. I played the hell out of it for a very long time. It was covered in stickers.

My first amp was more of a generic speaker, than an actual amp. I don't remember the brand, but it was a solid-state amp from Radioshack, with maybe an 10" speaker? It only had a few knobs, one of which was a distortion that was not very subtle. I actually still have it, but I use it in the garage/shop for testing guitars after they are soldered.

I had the Strat copy for a long time, but the amp was upgraded to a Peavey Classic 50 after a couple years, so amp was definitely upgraded first.

[fuzzjunkie]

I grew up in Austin, so my pawnshop and used gear options were much higher quality than most. I picked up a used sunburst Jazzmaster in 1983 as my first electric guitar. No idea of the year, as no one cared back then, but probably a 1964. My first amp was a silverface Princeton Reverb.

After having potential band mates make fun of the JM, I decided I needed a Telecaster instead. Even then I wasn’t a fan of Strats. I found a beat up used one at a garage sale that already had a humbucker in the neck. I was planning on doing the Keef/Andy Summers mod anyway, so happily plunked down the $250 asking price. It’s a 1961 with a PAF and I still have it.

The JM and Princeton got traded for a silverface Twin, because like everyone else, I needed to be louder! I always wanted a Vox though, and there were none to be had in Texas until I found a vintage AC-30 in Dallas. It wasn’t in great shape and it cost me what I paid for it $1100, to keep it running over the 2 years I had it, so sold it and replaced it with a slightly used ‘93 Korg reissue in 1995. I now have a Vox AC-4 for home use, and still have the Korg and a ‘91 tweed Bassman as my only amps.