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

[Fiddy]

Was anyone here anything like me? Get the best guitar you can afford, while being able to afford the shittiest amp available at the guitar store?

My first multipurchase amp + guitar featured a beautiful to me, Daphne Blue Korean Squier, that was around $399 and a Peavey Rage 115? I think was the model and it was worth around a $100 bucks

This was in 1994. i had already owned a guitar before, that I no longer had, i used to play this other guitar through the input of an old stereo.

My very first tube was a Blues Jr. But it wasn't til much later. Would do the complete opposite, knowing what I know now....

Anyway, just talking shit here if anyone wants to join..

[eskmsaul]

For YEARS my only amp was a Danelectro Honeytone and it was so bad, especially when the 9V battery was running out of juice. Everything I played sounded like it was coming from a blown speaker

[andy_tchp]

I think everyone either had or used a Peavey Rage 158 at some point.

I played bass in my first 'band' but was always a frustrated guitarist.

I ended up with some horrible Strat clone that I bought from Cash Converters for cheap and painted green. Plugged that into one of the mic inputs on my old tape deck, maxed out the level then ran the headphone out from that into my big Peavey TKO 115 bass amp.

Instant 'fuzz box' with incredible sustain, and actually sounded surprisingly good through the big 1x15" bass amp!

[Flurko]

I've always loved cool guitars, and I always found amps and the differences between them utterly boring, I know I'm wrong regarding their importance the sound of the electric guitar, but I can't wrap my mind around spending so much money on heavy boxes when I could just buy another guitar instead
I bought a marshall mg30dfx in high school, it was really shitty but worked and gave me an idea of which effects I liked and which I didn't.
A few years after I graduated to a Vox AC4TV, it's not too big, sounds cool in my apartment, and is probably all the amp I will ever need at home. If I ever have to play loud I use the crappy amps in the rehearsal space, which are okay enough with pedals, and if needed I'm planning to buy something like an EHX magnum 44 and borrow a random cab, that will be loud enough for any gig I might do.

Meanwhile regarding guitars I still mainly play my Jazzmaster I bought along with the Vox in 2010, but with almost only the wood left original, even if I acquired 6 random guitars since then...

[windmill]

I agree with the OP

but I wanted those cool guitars .

If I had my time over I would buy a really good amp and then buy the guitars.

[Singlebladepickup]

I thought like this, but for even longer I thought you should get the most powerful amp you can afford and turn it down if it's too loud. I had a vibrosonic reverb that would sound beautiful keeping up with a professional band playing an outdoor festival, but moving the volume knob a hair made the difference between "I can barely hear it" and "someone is going to complain" when I was just messing around in my room. I stopped playing because it was too much of an event firing up the behemoth.

[marqueemoon]

My first rock instrument was bass, so I had a Peavey 1x12 bass combo that I used for a few years with guitar. It really wasn’t that bad, and I got to skip the phase of having an amp with shitty sounding onboard distortion.

I had a Rat and a yellow Ibanez flanger and that and a 60’s Harmony Rocket was my setup for a while.

[MayTheFuzzBeWithYou]

My first amp was a Roland Cube 30 - actually had it before my first electric guitar (because I thought an electric western would NEED an amplifier...well I was 14) - first electric guitar was an Epiphone Les Paul Classic - which I had looooong as my only electric.

The Cube 30 quite alright. Even recorded both demos of the first band with it - and even played a bunch of shows with it - until it fell off a cab and broke the input jack because the 3m cable I had was too short for the big stage and our "excessive" live performance back then.

Replaced it with the Fender Supersonic in 2008. Still my main amp today, 14 years later... so even if it wasn't my first - it basically was great amp before great guitar for me.

Danelectro Dead on 67 Baritone came in 2010, Gibson Les Paul Studio 60s Tribute in 2011 and by the end of 2014 finally my Thinline Jaguar and then came all the other offsets

[stevejamsecono]

My first setup was a Squier Standard Strat, Boss DS-1, into a mid-80s Peavey Bandit. I was honestly happy as a clam playing through that for my first six months on electric guitar. The second I got my own 'good' amp (a Line6 Spider II) and was on the gear journey, my happiness became much more fleeting and tied to equipment.

Sigh.

[s_mcsleazy]

my first amp was my cousin's old fame bass amp. it was actually ok on guitar. bit woofy but not bad. i've still got it (kinda)

my first guitar amp was a marshall mg30dfx. it wasn't a cheap amp for me at the time btw. it was £140 new, i bought it..... then it started developing this random volume fluctuation issue which made the amp unusable. it was still under warranty so i sent it away for a replacement. a few weeks later, it did the same thing. sent it away, same problem again and marshall stopped responding to me. i later found out they all had the issue where if you would use the headphone jack, it would damage the power caps. way to go marshall. but at that point, i was borrowing my friend's twin reverb anyway and bought my 72 bassman.

nowadays, when i get asked "what amp should i get my kid who's starting out" i always say the vox pathfinder. it's not cool but it does the job. i've got one next to my desk and it's pretty decent.

[øøøøøøø]

my first amp was by a company called "RMS" and I think it was called an RMS10C.

I can't find any evidence online that it ever existed. It had a distortion knob labeled "gain" and a single-knob chorus that you pulled to turn on. 10 watts, 6.5" speaker

It probably sounded horrible, but I didn't know any different. I loved the sound of that single-knob chorus and was disappointed by every chorus pedal because they never sounded that way. I'd be really curious to hear it now

[JSett]

My first was a Park 10w practice amp my dad bought me from the pawn shop, followed by a Peavey Bandit (of course). Then, for quite a while I used 'old and cheap' JCM800s then I 'upgraded' to a JCM900 (what a fool).

After that it was a procession of silverface Fenders, an AC15, then an old '74 Orange OR120 that I bought for £200 before the big Orange resurgence. That was my main amp for a long time, up until about 2 years ago. In the mean time I went through lots of extra side-amps (I have a thing for old Peavey gear to this day) and old Traynors. During the first lockdown I sold everything. There was about 12 cabs in the garage, half a dozen heads and combos and literally a pile of old speakers. All gone. I wanted a simpler life.

Now I just have my little '65 VibroChamp and a 90s Hot Rod Deluxe. Next year I have plans to pick up a Tremolux, AC30 and a nice 80s JCM800 4010 combo.

There's only a few I've sold I regret:

- Traynor TS50-B (pure unobtanium here in the UK)
- The aforementioned OR120 (too loud but I did love that thing)
- A JCM800 50w head that I bought that someone had done something to inside that made it overdrive in such a fantastic way I can't explain it. I sold it in 1999 for £180 to pay the rent.

[sal paradise]

I had a Park, too. But the 25w 1x12 with reverb. I must’ve had a crappy no-name brand 10w things to begin with, but I can’t remember it. I do remember saving up my money to buy that massive Park amp. Not long after, my friend got a Peavey 2x12 valve amp which blew all our minds.

The next amp I bought, years later, was a Laney VC 30 2x10. That was a nice amp I was too young to appreciate.

I’ve owned various other things like dual Rec & jcm2000. Enjoyed an AC15 for a while as well.

[s_mcsleazy]

- Traynor TS50-B (pure unobtanium here in the UK)

i had one for a bit. sold it to a dude who collected traynors like 10 years ago. it was good but i couldn't bond with it.

[Sauerkraut]

First amp was a Fender Frontman 15G, bought together in the early 00s with an Squier Strat Affinity series (terrible guitar, still have it, never will bond with it). My guitar teacher at the time was one of those small town characters who played bluegrass and blues and whenever he wasn’t touring he’d teach the local teenagers from his garage, which was stacked to the ceiling with gear. He was also about two metres tall, smoked like a chimney, and liked to wear cowboy hats. Anyways, he had loads of nice old gear and sometimes he’d let me borrow stuff, so I soon found out just how awful my lil Frontman was and started lusting after old tube amps. He also instilled in me an awe for blackface Fender amps.

So I saved up all my supermarket job money and scoured the internet until I found a 79 twin reverb (the 135 watt type) for €750 in the nearest big city (Rotterdam). I didn’t care about weight or size, I was 16 and i just wanted something loud. Because. Never mind that I only ever played by myself in my room in the attic.
The man selling it was a jazz guitarist who bought himself a Roland JC instead. I was so excited when I took out all that money... I’d never seen or held that much money before in my life. I terrorised the neighbourhood with that amp for the next two years, until I went to uni. It was so unbelievably loud, and heavy, and clean. The push/pull gain was hilariously awful, but easily forgotten about. It had more headroom than anyone could ever need. Lovely reverb too. Still, I sold it for what I paid for it when I saw an offer on this forum for a far more practical amp, and blackface one at that.

My final amp was the one I still have and that I’m practically married to: a 35-watt 1965 Tremolux head. It was not in the best state optically until Ohm-men retolexed it (did a great job too!). Technically, it was mostly original until I started messing with it during the pandemic. I put together a 2x12“ cab for it (Celestion Gold + G12H). I‘ll spare you my endless boasting about how amazing it sounds.

So that’s been my short amp journey: Frontman 15G - 1979 Twin Reverb - 1965 Tremolux

Well, I have three more amps, but really just for practical purposes; a heavily modded (improved) Silvertone 1481 5-watt amp for home, a Rumble 500 for bass, and a Guyatone 580 because it’s lightweight, reliable, clean, good and loud, for gigs where the Tremolux is overkill.