First Rig Horror Stories

[mrface2112]

amps? who needs amps?

my first guitar was one of those black cheapies from Toys R Us that had a speaker in it that i got for christmas in 6th or 7th grade. i knew how to tune, had a couple Mel Bay books (or something) and could play little beginner riffs on it. the action was horrible, the whammy bar knocked the whole thing out of tune and i dicked with the truss rod so much that the neck ended up warped.

it took a 9V battery and after a while i figured out that when the battery started to die, it got a great distorted sound for about an hour before it finally went. it was when that battery died the first time that i discovered distortion. i soon figured out the Smoke on the Water riff and it was all down hill from there.

one day my dad caught me with a screwdriver punching holes into the speaker so i could get it distorted all the time. he brought home a cheap crate practice amp that had a distortion channel that he'd bought off the back of a truck at work. the clean and distorted channels were wired backwards.

of course, i didn't have the coordination and patience to figure out chords, so i moved to bass and played bass for a few years before i picked the guitar back up. by that point i had a job, saved all summer and bought a new 88 US Tele. i still have the crate amp, the bass and tele.


cheers,
wade

 

[e-man]

first amp & axe was a fender champ/fender mustang that i traded for a skateboard & pellet rifle in '77. the amp worked but was covered with red duct tape. the mustang was orange and beat all the heck and back, but it played o.k.. learned smoke on the water and some bachman turner overdrive on it.

later got me a kustom 200 solid state head. built me a 412 cab loaded with genuine high quality radio shack speakers. ran an mxr distortion pedal into it and it sounded like crap. bought a silvertone guitar (kind of a jaguar copy) from the local marine radio shop for $75 and set out to learn the kiss alive album.

first real axe was a '61 sg. wouldn't stay in tune for love or money.

 

[true-eurt]

My first guitar was a stick with fishing line...my first drumset, was housepaint cans, with different amounts of paint in them for different tones and wooden spoons...my first microphone was a rattail comb.













That is all the farther I've gotten in my skills too...

 

[Nicole_Rose]

my first guitar was a red no name strat copy. it was really heavy being completely made of maple. it wasn't anything special, but at least it would stay in tune

the amp i got with it was a lab series 60 watt piece of junk my parents had used on stage for my dad's acoustic guitar. there was nothing wrong with the amp, but when i discovered that some amps came with distortion i was really disappointed in the old lab series and i went out and got a distortion pedal. that's when i really started learning to play. until then i'd just been messing around.

 

[Grey Angel]

When I was 14, my older brother gave me his blue affinity telecaster

(like the stickers? )

and his 10 watt Fender frontman amp.

It wasn't a bad first rig, really...except the plastic jack cover broke and got replaced with a yogurt lid... I kid you not Er, and there was a loud buzz constantly, but it still was a pretty cool guitar for a 14 year old

 

[mshilarious]

I had a USA Fender P-Bass through a Peavey 15" TNT amp. I think the bass was $400 and the amp a little less than $300. It was a solid rig. People kept saying to me I should buy a Squier to save money in case I didn't stick with it, but I saved up instead.

If I was starting out now, I'd buy a cheap Yamaha fretless into the little Fender Bassman, although I liked the last version better than the newer ones. The new ones are too ugly

 

[mikeh]

First guitar was a no name accoustic - I had to slide a small piece of thick fabrick (thanks mom) under the bridge to raise the strings enough so the bottom frets didn't buzz.

First electric was a Teisco Del Ray - no amp so I used an old radio cabinet (one of those old 40's/50's) rounded top all wood cabinets, that had the same general shape as a juke box (thing weighed more than a Leslie - although at the time, I didn't know what a Leslie was).

 

[timthetortoise]

Started with a $50 Harmony electric and a Peavey Rage 158. After that, I moved to an Ibanez RX170 with a Crate GFX-somethingorother. Bought an RG320DX off of eBay and got a Peavey Studio 112. Saved up and bought a 2001 Gibson SG and then a Peavey XXX halfstack. Didn't know a damn thing about tube heads and ran the thing into the ground. Forgot to put it in the truck when we were loading up for a show, and the head ended up getting run over by a Ford Explorer. Went on to play the show with the head and terrible microphonic squealing. I'm surprised none of the tubes broke. After that, I bought a Line 6 Flextone II HD. That burned up about a year ago. Then I bought my Musicman HD130, a Marshall 1960A cab, and a '99 Epiphone sparkletop. Love it all to death. Also bought a Peavey Windsor and love it to death. There was more gear in between, but those were my main rigs through the years. Definitely came a long way from the Harmony/Peavey combo.

 

[Zaphod B]

The first (and only) PA system that my first band used was, I think, a Shure system. It consisted of a little power amp (all tube and probably worth a fortune to someone now), a microphone like what you see in school auditoriums (and subject to just as much horrid feedback) and a couple of speakers.

The speakers were a nightmare. They were each about five feet tall and 8" wide - they were an inline array of 6" speakers. The enclosures were slightly curved from top to bottom (so that the array was concave) to give 'em that 60's sensibility. The problem was that they had a footprint of about 12" deep by 8" wide. The damned things would fall over sideways if you looked at them funny or sneezed too hard. To their credit, they were built to take the abuse.