# terrible gear



## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

although i suspect i've probably played the worst there is, (publicly i mean) i believe that some of you may have, at one time or another, played some really crappy stuff.  anyone care to share?


for me, it was like this:

i had an ancient sun tube amp that sat on a cab with 8 8" _special design_ jensen speakers. it was my first amp. me and my buddies used to rock out at keg parties and stuff. one day the head caught fire, and some of the speakers went bad. i had bought a 20 watt s.s. practice amp to hold me over until i found something better. the bass player called me up and said "dude! i totally hooked you up!!! come see what i did with your amp! we're gonna have a kegger in the garage, come over and jam" so i show up and he had replaced the jensens with 2 12" celestions, and it was powered by.....running some wires out of the back of my 20 watt amp, into the top of an old timey floor model tv/stereo. it looked like hell, but actually sounded pretty good as long as you didn't try to play clean.


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## jimihendrix (Jun 27, 2009)

I've had brand spanking new strats that would never ever stay in tune...even after employing every trick in the book from changing strings...to tightening down every loose part including the neck bolts and trem springs...I just got the feeling that the wood was too "green" from a young immature tree...or they forgot to kiln dry the wood...

I had a new Jaguar that looked cool...but every time you strummed a little harder or bent a note...the strings would jump off the bridge...I'm too cheap and lazy to invest in changing the parts out from the stock guitar...so I ditched it...the sustain was non-existent either...

Speaking of sustain...I've had a couple of Rickenbackers...they are NOT meant for playing lead guitar...they don't like wide string bends...and as for sustain...I might as well of bought a banjo...


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## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

I had a Raven hollowbody that was pretty terrible, and a White strat that would not stay in tune no matter what I did. More recently, my Peavey Windsor studio was a disappointing piece of crap as well.


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## Scottone (Feb 10, 2006)

worse amp hands down was a 70's Solid State Traynor. My first guitar was an old Yamaki acoustic with an action that was about a 1/2 off the fretboard....was good for building up the hand strength


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## snacker (Jun 26, 2008)

i played with a guy once who had a 3 way guitar rig the size of a fridge - he used a crossover so he could overdrive just the mids - not terrible gear, just kinda weird and he got a better tone out of the blues deluxe that he moved to after the 3 way setup


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## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...i was one of those who bought into the hype when line six introduced the original flextone modeling amp.

and lived to tell the tale!


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## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

jimihendrix said:


> I've had brand spanking new strats that would never ever stay in tune...even after employing every trick in the book from changing strings...to tightening down every loose part including the neck bolts and trem springs...I just got the feeling that the wood was too "green" from a young immature tree...or they forgot to kiln dry the wood....


...in the early 70s i was endorsed by hagstrom, and given a "swede" guitar, kind of a les paul copy. not only would this guitar not stay in tune, you couldn't get it in tune. at all. by the time you finished tuning the second string, the first one had gone out, and so on. we took it to some of the top guitar techs in the country. no one could figure it out.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

david henman said:


> ...i was one of those who bought into the hype when line six introduced the original flextone modeling amp.
> 
> and lived to tell the tale!


My worst was a Line 6 Spider 210. While there were some cool sounds in it, most were junk and the best part was that when you were playing loud (or with a band), the low frequencies would move the knobs and change your settings mid-song!!!


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## Rugburn (Jan 14, 2009)

david henman said:


> ...i was one of those who bought into the hype when line six introduced the original flextone modeling amp.
> 
> and lived to tell the tale!


I briefly brought home a Peavey Vypyr. I thought it was cheap and loud enough to play with a drummer. When I got it home I couldn't get a decent sound of it. I have some nice old tube amps, but I don't like to take them out of the house much. My old 80's SS amp from Taiwan would kill the Vypyr's clean tone, if it were still around/alive.

Shawn.


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

Add me to the list of Line 6 Flextone haters. I had one for a few months (two actually, the first one died within days). It seemed like a good idea at the time but boy that thing sucked donkey bawlz.

I've had tons of guitars and amps that weren't to my liking, but nothing that was really crappy like that one.


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## gibmar (Oct 31, 2010)

Worst gear publicly....I think I have you beat!


A long time ago my band opened for Junkhouse. I "had" to use a Peavey Express 112. I hid it on stage. I had people complimenting my tone after the show....

go figure!


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

'70s era solid state Yamaha bass amps, and I had a few of them simply because they were almost disposable and dead cheap when bought used. Cheezy chic. Generally the speakers farted out within a couple of gigs but respeakered they at least kept running. For the dives I was playing at the time they were kinda weirdly appropriate...cheezy chic. 

Danelectro guitar amp about ten years ago, solid state, not sure why I had it or what I did with it, but I likely gave it away. I did look cool though. 

My first acoustic, a Suzuki student grade plywood thing with ski lift action. Not sure what happened to it, but it was crapola. Wish I had it back because my sister gave it to me and now she is gone too.

My first 2 electric guitars, a Kent with super-hyper-uber-microphonic pickups, and a Yamaha mock Les Paul. The Yamaha had a neck made from the wood of the rare twisty-bendy-springy-warpy tree, but luckily I saw Roy Buchanan and through some weird extra sensory perception (I never actually spoke with him) he instructed me to buy a Telecaster. I followed his orders.

Other junkola like a Realistic EQ which was surrealistic, various off-brand microphones including one which made strange and inexplicable meowing sounds. Don't get me started about the Behringer rack tuner which literally didn't do anything it was supposed to. 

Spend your money well and you spend it once.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Gunny (Feb 21, 2006)

I second the vote for Kent guitars. Those and the Sears Silvertones were not the greatest - but remember we get what we pay for.
Back in the 60s when we were buying those guitars, my memory of worst gear goes to those awful Black Diamond strings. They were like barbed wire.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

Gunny said:


> I second the vote for Kent guitars. Those and the Sears Silvertones were not the greatest - but remember we get what we pay for.
> Back in the 60s when we were buying those guitars, my memory of worst gear goes to those awful Black Diamond strings. They were like barbed wire.


that's too funny, because i remember those strings. back when i was a kid, there were times when you might need strings, but after about 7pm the music stores were closed. the pawn shop was open till 10, and that was the only kind they carried. i was never able to get the high E in tune without breaking it.


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

Gunny said:


> I second the vote for Kent guitars. Those and the Sears Silvertones were not the greatest - but remember we get what we pay for.
> Back in the 60s when we were buying those guitars, my memory of worst gear goes to those awful Black Diamond strings. They were like barbed wire.


I have always had decent guitar gear....it was those damn P.A's that I hated..I shudder to think about how terrible those Traynor column speakers were... 

[YOUTUBE]og7dMS-nyqA[/YOUTUBE]


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## Prosonic (Apr 28, 2009)

The only guitar I bought and then turned around and sold was a sunburst american strat. Just poorly built. 
The only amp I have ever gotten rid of was my first. A Line 6 1X12 pice of crap. I figured that all of those built in effects would give me a chance to try a bunch of stuff out for the first time. I was just learning and wanted to have some stuff to mess around with. I was use to playing my dads tweed blues deluxe and when I got the line 6 home there was just no comparison. I took it back the next day and got a hotrod deluxe.


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## dtsaudio (Apr 15, 2009)

Not necessarily bad, but a huge disappointment. A Peavey Classic 212. I could never get a nice clean tone out of it and the distortion got me using a pedal instead. Got beat when I sold it too. Nobody wanted it.

Having repaired a number of Line 6 amps for other people, I can understand all you guys and your disappointment. Biggest pieces of c--p I ever saw. Glad I didn't buy one.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

My first good amp was a 1st issue 2x12 Peavey Classic, with the tweed-tone tolex, bought from Steve's for around $300 and change in 1973 or 74. The amp itself was pretty decent, but the speakers were this multiple personality nightmare. You'd get used to the EQ settings in practice, and the second you turned the volume above 3 or 4, the tone changed completely. Highly disruptive.


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## Spellcaster (Jan 7, 2008)

When I got a small inheritance about ten years ago, I wanted another electric, preferably a Tele. Fenders were starting about 1140.00 then but within my budget I had a choice of a new black MIM Squier Tele or the store owners consigned MIJ Squier Tele, a little older, with a T.O.M. bridge transplant and humbucker mods, in the gaudiest bulldozer yellow I'd ever seen. I bought the nice new black one of course and it was truly the Hyundai Pony of Tele's...Bad enough that it's made me run at the sight of MIM Fender guitars.


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## Shark (Jun 10, 2010)

My worst guitar was an Ibanez S540. These are actually cool guitars, but mine had the worst setup imaginable. The strings were cranked a half-inch off the fretboard and the intonation was so was out you could play in a different tuning every few frets. kqoct I think the bridge might have been in the wrong place, too. It was really bad. But we fixed it up and it ended up as a really nice guitar - several hours and a couple of hundred bucks later.


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## Lemmy Hangslong (May 11, 2006)

Of all the guitars I've owned the worst of the bunch has allways been Fender USA. maybe it's just my luck


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## krelk (Nov 6, 2010)

-Mesa Boogie DC-3 (clean channel) + G&L F-100 ('80's?) = PAINFUL clean tone,...like hearing a steel snare through a 2500w PA at sound check.....(the distortion was nice,though)
-Peavey Classic 30 w/ Eric Clapton Sig Strat was really creamy and nice tube compression but the classic blew up 3 times and then I traded it for a Peavey Classic Duo Two Twelve (i think ?) and it sounded nothing like the classic 30 .......gone and forgotten!!!!
-American-built Fender Eric Clapton strat custom ordered had the high E string out of whack - ALWAYS rung dead......My first REAL guitar so I didn't know about luthiers, etc,....but all in all, pretty damn crappy for a $1700 guitar 

Terrible gear? 
finger strengtheners, "cheat" books, perfect pitch courses, ANYTHING touted as 'the best', and headset mics....just because I think they look goofykkjuw


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## Ti-Ron (Mar 21, 2007)

I had some really crapy stuff when I was a teen! My parents weren't rally happy that I turn to music. For them music was drug, self destruction and long hairs. So I had a Les Paul with a butterfly on the headstock, got it in trade for a bag of weed, was a good deal and this thing was really nice even if the nut was a LEGO!! Yes, a good old red LEGO. My first amp was a Caliphone with a big metal grill over it, that was a turn table amp...this duo with a metal zone was my grunge rig...I never tried to play clean but the thing were okay. Nightmares start when I upgraded to a Peavey Bandit 112... I don't know why but I neve be able to have a good sound out of it, even with my Jackson Performer (I was in metal back then) . 

But I learn, high output pickups and high distorted amps are not for me. I prefer low output and clean amp and I add some fx in front to have my dirt!


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