First Rig Horror Stories

[JPXTom]

Well, i thought this would be fun to do.

We've all(usually) started from the low end and made our way up, and w/o our low end gear we might not have made it this far to appreciate our good stuff...So whether it was years ago, months ago, weeks, days or even u have ur first rig now, heres where i think we should all have a few laughs about stuff.

My first rig, was an old...OLD samick stat-knockoff, with rusted frets, rusted pickups and the worst action i've ever seen. Couldnt have been boughten for more than like 100 bucks..and i was playing it through a crate bass amp. I also had a yamaha(junky) acoustic guitar. Still have the yamaha but not that old sammick..yuck. Haha my first guitar amp..was...a first act wal-mart amp. Thats right, straight out of walmart baby.

So what was ur first bass/guitar rig?

 

[Tadpui]

My first rig was a Kay Les Paul knockoff plugged into the worst of all first amps:

 

[Anfontan]

Oh my God-this will most likely be the worst! First I will admit I was a dumb little kid at the time-which it obvious as the story goes on..... My first electric was a bolt-on neck Les Paul copy with high action and crappy Black Diamond strings. I had no amp--so I took an old mono record player-the type with a top that opened like a suitcase-and wired the phono cartridge wires straight to the guitar cable.

I believe this was the point also where I was banished to the basement for all of my guitar practice~~~~

 

[rayc]

Late 1974 - a cream Coronet short scale SG copy bass straight into the mic in socket of my parents new stereo & out the twin cone L speaker.
Amazingly I didn't kill it &, not doing such when my parents were home, I got away with it for about a year until I borrowed a 10w Coronet guitar amp from afriend who, incidentally, had the guitar match of my bass. We played in band together - me plugging into the PA & him his 10w amp. The bass & guitar looked good together - don't recall what the guitar sounded like but the bass was OK - I actually recorded with it in a band called The Teutonics. The bass didn't have much top end & I didn't change strings for 5 years so the tone was very mellow & round.

 

[travelin travis]

first guitar was a no name mini acoustic guitar that i bought from my cousin for $8. a friend taught me how to read tab and showed me some riffs to a few metallica songs on that guitar. a month or so after i got the thing my cousin came over and sat on it with his fat ass and killed it. it was lying on the bed and he's a huge clutz, end of story for that guitar. my first electric came shortly after which was a no name fenderish shaped guitar. something between a strat and a jaguar, sunburst, with two sort of soap bar pickups. $25 from a friend at school. my parents were piss poor so that $25 was a big deal. an even bigger deal was the $50 my dad spent on a fender bassman battery powered amp. it had distortion but wasn't loud enough for shit. some how (science class i'm sure) i got the bright idea of plugging my guitar into my sisters stereo when she wasn't home. i wired my guitar cable ($1.99 from the pawn shop ) to the wires going to the needle on her stereo's turntable and i would crank it up when she wasn't home. at the pawn shop where i found the cheap guitar cable i spotted a distortion pedal for like $15 and started saving for it. in the mean time i took the fender battery amp back and got a Muscle amp which was probably like 5-10 watts solid state. finally got my distortion pedal and jacked it into my sisters stereo. it slayed the Muscle amp and even my buddies crate 212. my sister got fed up with me sneaking into her room and finally gave me the stereo. i screwed the two speakers together and permanently wired my distortion pedal to the turntable needle wires. i played in my first garage band doing metallica and nirvana covers with the fucking thing. the freak ghetto amp met it's demise when i dropped it on a pumpkin that was sitting outside of my buddies garage after band practice one night. i was finally old enough to start working at pizza hut with my guitar playing buddy and bought what i thought was a real guitar and amp, a jb player and a crate with a celestion. i sold the Muscle and no name guitar to some kid (his first guitar). that was my first couple of years of guitar gear. how's that for ghetto?

also, i remember sending my little brother down the hill to the guitar shop with my $8 guitar to have it tuned by the owner. i was embarrassed to take it to the shop so i made him do it. i eventually went down there and asked him how to tune it and he sold me a pitch pipe. a few years later me and the guitar shop owner laughed about it.

 

[travelin travis]

Oh my God-this will most likely be the worst! First I will admit I was a dumb little kid at the time-which it obvious as the story goes on..... My first electric was a bolt-on neck Les Paul copy with high action and crappy Black Diamond strings. I had no amp--so I took an old mono record player-the type with a top that opened like a suitcase-and wired the phono cartridge wires straight to the guitar cable.

I believe this was the point also where I was banished to the basement for all of my guitar practice~~~~

Late 1974 - a cream Coronet short scale SG copy bass straight into the mic in socket of my parents new stereo & out the twin cone L speaker.
Amazingly I didn't kill it &, not doing such when my parents were home, I got away with it for about a year until I borrowed a 10w Coronet guitar amp from afriend who, incidentally, had the guitar match of my bass. We played in band together - me plugging into the PA & him his 10w amp. The bass & guitar looked good together - don't recall what the guitar sounded like but the bass was OK - I actually recorded with it in a band called The Teutonics. The bass didn't have much top end & I didn't change strings for 5 years so the tone was very mellow & round.

i just read back thru the thread. i wasn't the only one! ha!

btw jpxtom, i still have my crappy yamaha.

 

[Dani Pace]

I started on a Melody King acoustic that i recieved after an uncle passed away. He showed me the first chords I learned so I guess my aunt figured I would get some use from the guitar. My first electric was a SG style no name and a little 5 watt amp. My first real guitar was an Epiphone hollow body and a Gibson Explorer amp. Man, that was a long time and a lot of guitars and amps ago!

 

[JCH]

My first guitar was a cheap Harmony acoustic. I bought it with money I made mowing lawns. I'd sling it over my back, and ride my Stingray down to the local recreation center for the free lessons on Saturday afternoons.(11 y.o. 1969) In '71 I bought a used Silvertone solid body, and a Silvertone 1482 amp. I was loud, and proud.

 

[Greg_L]

My mom bought me a Harmony acoustic and electric from Sears back in like 1983. I had no amp so I'd plug it into their old ass 70's Hi-Fi. I couldn't play anything at all and didn't even know how to tune it. My neighbor came over and tuned the electric for me, and I immediately recorded each string onto a tape recorder so I could re-tune it if I had to. Didn't matter, because I couldn't play anything, knew no chords, and didn't even know the notes. My friend had rich parents, and they bought him some huge double-kick-20-tom Tama Eric Carr mega kit. That thing took up half his garage and he had no clue how to play drums. So, I traded a skateboard to another friend for a little Gorilla amp and we started "jamming" in his garage. There were some high-school dudes about a block away that had a real band, and we'd go over and watch them practice in their garage. They played gay crap like Duran Duran and Depeche Mode covers, but they were good and it inspired us. I still knew no chords so I used a spark plug socket over my finger and played "slide". Lol. It was more like injured-cat-squealing, but whatever. One day, we were watching the gay high-school Duran Duran band, and I paid particular attention to the guitar player. When he wasn't playing some retarded funky wacka-wacka riff, he was playing power-chords, and it sounded awesome. I was like "I need that sound". So I watched his hands and burned the power-chord image into my brain. I went home and tried and tried and couldn't get it right. I tuned and retuned and fucked around and finally I made a sound that sounded like a chord and it was big and fat. You know that scene in The Blues Brothers when Jake and Elwood are in church and that blue light shines down on Jake and he "sees the light"? That's exactly how it was for me. That one power-chord opened up everything. It was like pandoras box. In like 2 weeks I was playing Ramones and Black Flag songs and really getting into it. It was great. I still have those 2 Harmony guitars my mom bought me. I don't play them anymore, but they're still here.

 

[marshall409]

my first electric guitar was a black slammer strat knockoff plugged into a 10 watt practice amp. i then figured out a way to plug a cord into the head phone jack of that amp, and into the input of my 6 watt bass amp. this was my first full stack! i gotta say, between that and a microphone stand made out of an ironing board, we were probably the most ghetto basement band you'd ever seen.

Adam

 

[c7sus]

My first guitar was a hand-me-down Harmony with "Stella" painted on the peghead and these really awful stripes on the front that were supposed to be a rendering of flame maple. Strung with Black Diamond nylon strings. I think the action at the 12th fret was about a 1/4 of an inch.

My current Stella is an 06 CS-356 lefty with a stop tailpiece.

 

[JPXTom]

i just read back thru the thread. i wasn't the only one! ha!

btw jpxtom, i still have my crappy yamaha.

haha so do i...its my primary acoustic, cause i still dont have a good one. Haha im glad there are a lot of reponses..thought this would be a fun thread.

 

[DarkAndy]

My first guitar was a Squier Stratocaster plugged into a Peavey Rage 158. I ended up with like six or those little amps. I have no idea how but it was awesome. Unfortunately one night i left the guitar at a "friend's" house and him and his old lady pawned it on me. I just ended up giving away the amps as christmas gifts.

 

[Oancient1]

I started with a Kay Electric. Didn't have an amp, so I plugged it into a "phono" input on the back of a 50s clock radio. What a sound!

Tom

 

[Oancient1]

My first guitar was a Squier Stratocaster

As I slowly learned to play I got better equipment -- a Fender Tele, then Gibsons -- LP and SG. Worked my way up to a Fender Super Reverb amp, then a Marshall stack. Then Disco hit and I got out of the business, over the years sold almost everything before getting interested again a few years ago.

Today I play a Squier Strat and a Fender 30 solid-state 30 watter. Thank God for effects!

Tom

 

[legionserial]

started with a Squire Strat run through my hifi. I didn'y have a distortion pedal or any kind of amp, soI played everything clean, even though Iwas playing punk rock at the time. Eventually I got an amp made by an electronics company called Maplin. I used to run that direct through my hifi also with the treble turned all the way down on the hifi to get rid of the direct fuzz.. My recollection was that it sounded fucking heavy. More than likely it just sounded like shit.

 

[shockingcandy]

I was very lucky in that my dad played guitar and made sure I started off with something OK - a Yamaha RGX (can't remember the model number now). It was a bit beaten up but it played fine. It's still at my folks house and when I go there I always try and pick it up for 10 mins or so in some sort of sentimental way!

My first amp was a Park by Marshall 10 watter. I used to jam Therapy? and Nirvana riffs (badly) with in my mate, who was a drummer, in his parent's front room. We even manage to get two passing girls moshing the one time! My first "fans" lol. Nearly 15 years later I apparently need a rig that has 12 times the power (Tech 21 Trademark and Power Engine combination if your interested). So I guess that means I must have progressed?!

 

[vadoom]

I started with a yamaha psr-400. You could record only few songs and no way to back them up. The memory was feeding off a series of D cell batteries. However, the unit could be powered off the same batteries as well. If the batteries went dead, you lose your data... That happened to me many times since my brothers used it too...

 

[Slowrider]

I started with a Kay Electric. Didn't have an amp, so I plugged it into a "phono" input on the back of a 50s clock radio. What a sound!

Tom

Sounds like me, except I used a Montgomery Wards Beatle bass copy of a Hofner; $69.00 IIRC, and had the volume cranked up LOUD so I started playing Fuzz bass

 

[rayc]

Oh, my Coronet SG shortscale bass was AUS$70 on lay-by for about 4 months or so as I paid for it mainly with my lunch money of about 50c a day - I did eat alterate days to save both the money & myself.
It was borrowed by a band mate who disappeared with it.