The worst sounding amp you’ve played through?

I'm counting professional level amps, so Marshall TSL60 or Carvin V3M. The JVM I tried smoked the TSL in every way possible. Also when I tried the V3M someone was playing a Marshall AVT50 right next to me, which was burying the V3M in every way possible lol

Promit said:
Lots of obvious trash tier stuff. But my guitar teacher has a Mesa Express 5:25 combo and my god it sounds terrible.
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Besides the Badlander, I can't think of any spinoff Mesas I like outside of the Mark or Rectos. Then again I never tried a Stiletto.
 
I hated the Mesa Express when it came out. Like legit visceral reaction to that amp :rofl

I got one in a trade a while back and was pleasantly surprised. I ended up also getting the 5:50 combo and head. Great amps, honestly. That said - they do not have much range. It's basically, you set the sweep to one usable location and then you can finely tweak it with the rest of the knobs. If you have that sweep knob set wrong, it's awful.
 
Antek said:
I got to mess around with a Nomad for a bit and it was seriously underwhelming. Though this was just running straight in, I didn't get to try it out with a boost pedal in front, though I don't know that this would really do much for it anyway.
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I wanted to like that amp so bad. On paper it would've been the perfect Mesa, but it sounds so dull. I don't know what they were thinking.
 
Amps have an awful lot of variables: Musical style, personal expectations, how much or how little gain is desired, what kind of speakers, are the tubes new or worn out, what room were you in, what guitar (let alone pedals), and the list could go on and on.

I've never loved Eminence speakers, for example. They're fine speakers, I'm sure; just not a good fit for me.

I can't figure out whether or not I like an amp that's playing through an Eminence speaker. Took me a while to figure out what the problem was.

A few years back I got a Mesa 2x12 loaded with Alnico Blackbirds for my Fillmore 50. It sounded fantastic through those speakers. Unfortunately, every other amp I owned sounded absolutely terrible with them.

If I'd had to judge whether I liked those amps, and all that was on hand was the Blackbird 2x12, I'd have thought the other amps were bad sounding.

I have a similar (but less serious) problem with 1x12s. I've been playing through 2x12s since the late '60s, and miss the 'swirl' of a 2x12. That can sometimes make me overlook an otherwise great amp if I first play it through, say, a combo version with a 1x12.

Our tastes also change.

My very first amp was a 1966 Ampeg Reverberocket II combo with a 1x12. My dad bought it for me new (I make no apologies for being old, I'm very good at being old, and getting better at it every year! :rofl).

I thought that Ampeg was the most boring-sounding amp I'd ever heard. All my friends played Fender or Vox in those days - this was before Marshalls were big in the US.

Those Fenders and Boxes were also on popular records. I bought a Bassman head and cab as soon as I started earning money gigging. Later in life I heard the Reverberocket II, and turns out it was a pretty cool sounding amp for various musical styles. Stayed clean at crazy volumes - which I didn't like when I had one - but that can be cool in certain circumstances.

In the late '90s I got a good deal on a new Egnater when Rocktron was making his amps. I couldn't pass it up. I also couldn't make head or tail of it, and traded it in on something for my son at GC. The guitar manager there was a friend, a really good player. He started playing through the amp and sounded...phenomenal! I mean, absolutely great. I could hardly believe it was the same amp I'd been living with.

You just never know.
 
I couldn't remember the amp that I've truly hated, but someone in SSO reminded me: the Mesa Stiletto Deuce Stage II. I don't know why anyone likes that amp. It was insanely bright to the point where I could literally find zero usable tones in it.
 
Peavey Windsor

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Summer 1973 I took my Electra LP copy with me when I stayed with my grandparents for my annual 2-3 week visit. I didn't have an amp to plug into. My grandpa bought me a used, cheap little solid state amp, brand unknown, that must have come from a department store several years previous. It had 1 knob on top, sounded like @ss, it wasn't loud, and I'd gladly pay $100 for it now if I could have it again.
 
Eldorado said:
Summer 1973 I took my Electra LP copy with me when I stayed with my grandparents for my annual 2-3 week visit. I didn't have an amp to plug into. My grandpa bought me a used, cheap little solid state amp, brand unknown, that must have come from a department store several years previous. It had 1 knob on top, sounded like @ss, it wasn't loud, and I'd gladly pay $100 for it now if I could have it again.
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Keep in mind that one of the best-kept QOTSA studio secrets are cheap old little tape reader amps. I believe Fran is the only person who did a video on these so far.
 
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