What was your first guitar amp?

Lister

Playing guitar badly since the 70's...
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I guess technically it was my old stereo system that I could plug into and play through. But my first real amp was an old Alamo that I paid $20 for and it nailed that CCR Midnight Special tremolo sound. It probably sounded little better than the stereo as I can't remember anything else about it besides that CCR sound, but I do remember trading it for a mic-which I still have and use!
 
Ooo, my arch nemesis. A Yamaha solid state amp from the late 70s. I tried every stomp box known to man - all 4 of them in 79 - and they still sounded like poo. Has a built-in distortion...err, hiss generator that drove me nuts since I couldn’t sound like Kansas or Led Zeppelin. That’s back in the day when NO ONE shared the secrets of amazing guitar tone, so it took me another 10 years before I started to sound pretty good.

I’ve got a pic of this somewhere...

yamaha-big.jpg
 
An ugly looking Kay amp that looked something like this...

XocTG3C.jpg


.... only more pathetic looking.

It came with a plywood SG copy.

Pe2j2Kl.jpg

(*Notice the non intonation bridge)


The action was so high on the guitar and the amp sounded like a Partridge Family Band reject, so bad I never learned more than 2-3 songs and gave it up until a decade later, when I was able to buy a real guitar & amp.
 
An ugly looking Kay amp that looked something like this...

XocTG3C.jpg


.... only more pathetic looking.

It came with a plywood SG copy.

Pe2j2Kl.jpg

(*Notice the non intonation bridge)


The action was so high on the guitar and the amp sounded like a Partridge Family Band reject, so bad I never learned more than 2-3 songs and gave it up until a decade later, when I was able to buy a real guitar & amp.

Ha! My first rig was similar.
8gOXieZ.jpg


Montgomery Wards amp, this is the closest I could come to finding a picture:


And a Silvertone Mosrite-ish copy that looked exactly like this;

U8s6H6F.jpg


State of the art in 1984.
 
Oh boy, memory lane! My first would have been in '83 and was a little 5w cheapy. Don't remember the brand. On/Off, volume and tone, on the top of the amp. A year later it was a little SS Fender, and a year after that it was a little Marshall. In '87 it was a Roland with 4 speakers. It was small, so they would have been 3" speakers, maybe?

This was my first "good" amp, bought in '88 from Modern Music, in Lisle, IL. I loved this thing. Yorkville Sound (Traynor) Rockbloc Deluxe!

nXFgcP5.jpg
 
Ha! My first rig was similar.
8gOXieZ.jpg


Montgomery Wards amp, this is the closest I could come to finding a picture:


And a Silvertone Mosrite-ish copy that looked exactly like this;

U8s6H6F.jpg


State of the art in 1984.

Even more compelling would be: *What were the first 3 riffs you learned to chug out on the thing?*

(Evil Ways, 25 or 6 to 4, Love Rollercoaster ...... ugh, showing my age:oops:)
 
Even more compelling would be: *What were the first 3 riffs you learned to chug out on the thing?*

(Evil Ways, 25 or 6 to 4, Love Rollercoaster ...... ugh, showing my age:oops:)

I went straight to writing my own originals!

The first one was titled “You’re Gonna Get Yours” and was a masterpiece in aggro adolescent revenge prose.:rolleyes:
 
1966 Ampeg Reverberocket II.

Bought new by my dad, because I was too young to buy anything more expensive than a plastic car model, and in any case, my summer jobs could never have bought me a $300 amplifier (my first summer job paid $75 for the entire summer).

Yes. I’m an antique who played in the 60s when ‘vintage’ amps were new amps. And as soon as I started making band money, I traded it in on an NOS 1967 BF Bassman head and 2x12 (in 1968), because I wanted a Fender SO BADLY and I never liked the Ampeg. It never broke up. It was always clean, even when cranked like crazy. Who knows, maybe I’d like it now?

“Geez, Les, why not just get an overdrive for it at the time?”

“Dude, they didn’t HAVE overdrives in 1966. You could get a Maestro fuzz, and I had one. You could get a Vox wah, and I had one of those, too. You could get an echoplex, and I couldn’t afford one, but I used a buddy’s. Those were it. No overdrives. They didn’t exist.”
 
I'm one of those guys.... One of those "I shoulda kept it guys". In my musical infancy, my mom, the ever religious zealot was upset that my dad was teaching me guitar. The "devils playground".. ya had to know her. Anyway, my dad relented and decided that Steel guitar was a better fit for HER, but not ME. So he bought a used Fender lap steel, and a 1954ish Tweed Champ....TWEED CHAMP. I hated steel even though I learned quite a bit, and one day she relented and he returned to teaching me guitar and decided to sell what he had bought....including the Champ.....tears are forming....;-) Hence ends the saga of my first real amp. He later bought me a Silvertone 1484 which was larger but not quite the tone machine. It too was lost to me. Texas Thunderstorm, tree limb through the garage roof...pile of pressed cardboard....
 
Peavey Classic 50W 2x12...purchased May 1975, at the former LaSalle Music Store of West Hartford, CT, $200 from college funds.

Also purchased my first electric guitar same day, a Gibson SG '61 Reissue (if they built them back then, otherwise it was the real non-reissue), small pick guard, small volute and heel, tannish/brown hardshell violin case with purple/pink interior guitar drape cloth, $400.

With tax, the total price for both was $666, which I didn't particularly think too appealing, so I added a $10 cheap leather strap that still resides in my room today as a remembrance of the old SG, sold in '80.

Kept the Peavey with only one power tube change the entire time, I think, until '95. No joke.

I don't remember how the heck I had ordered tubes back then when the internet was still in its infancy...mebbe from a local music store, mebbe not...

I'd show you a pic of me in my youthful vigor, bare-chested, barefoot, sweatpants, guitar and amp, curly cable in our old '50s wood-paneled basement, but modesty proceeds me, and you don't need to see me bare-chested, it'd be an embarrassment today...:oops: (It was summer, the basement was cool, Mom was too quick with the camera...)
 
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