What's the amp you owned that you thought would be GREAT, but it was actually PONY?

Fuzzdog · November 2014

Line 6 Duoverb head for me. Seemed like a good idea - all the processing power of the Vetta series dedicated purely to the amp side, with no effects other than reverb. Bought the matching 'deluxe' 4x12" cab too.

Never played anything so sterile and flat sounding in my life. It did start to sound half decent when you wound it up a bit, but it was so stupidly loud that this did not even remotely begin happening until the drummer looked like he was miming.

The cab was a lovely thing though, kept that for a while.

lamf68 · November 2014

I've been through a couple of dozen amps in maybe 4 years which is a ludicrous turnaround.Of them 3 were instant cack:

1.Mesa Trem-O-Verb combo, Terrible Tremolo,Terrible fizzy gain and heavier than my house, also ugly as sin.

2.Orange Rockerverb 100 head - gain channels were crap on it, way too fizzy again sounded brittle and nasty, overpowered my other guitarist in the band but not in a way where you felt comfortable being the loudest guitar out there, made me cringe on times with the sounds this thing produced.

3.Marshall jcm900 combo - Nothing good to say about it apart from it was covered in white tolex when I bought it so it looked half tidy, sounded like shit in every position on the dials.

Fatfingers · November 2014

Orange Overdrive 120 - the original 70s version. Sounded clanky, fuzzled and dead. And produced nothing like the volume my 50 watt JCM 800 does. More suited to keyboards than guitar, as far as I could tell. I bought it because it looked ace, and can only assume that's why everyone else bought them back in the day.

Voxman · November 2014

Been a few. Our (previous) rehearsal place had Marshall JCM2000's that were absolutely fine, but one day they were replaced with Peavey Valve Kings. Now, I pride myself that I can coax a decent tone out of pretty much any amp, but boy did I struggle with that one. The gain channel was just dreadful - it would go from a mild rasp to just a thick mucky distortion that was pretty much unuseable in about a quarter turn of the gain dial, so I stuck with the clean channel and used my Guvn'r 2 for distortion. The problem with the clean is that it sounded sterile and I had to wonder whether there were any valves in the damned thing! - the clean on my solid-state Marshall Valvestate Mk1 was way warmer by comparison (and the valve is only in the gain stage!). We told the owner, and he'd had loads of other complaints too...the Marshalls were back the following week!

Another amp that seriously underwhelmed me that I mentioned in the Blackstar thread was the HT60 Soloist 1x12. It would be unfair to describe it as a 'bad' amp (or pony, for this thread! lol) but this was the first HT series I'd ever heard and played (it belonged to a guitar player friend of mine and I 'depped' to help them out at a gig and had a few prior rehearsals with them). Aside from just sounding too dark, the HT60 was just characterless with lack-lustre cleans and muddy 'meh' distortions. I mucked around with the ISF and the EQ, but for an amp that I'd heard so many good things about it just left me flat. The best way to describe it was that the amp was soul-less and there was nothing it did that you could say it did well. I think the HT60 cost him not far off £600 - it looked nice, but it was just so massively disappointing.

I took my little Laney Cub 12R to the rehearsals and from a tonal perspective it just killed it. In fact, my friend also had a Vox Valvetronix VT20+ that he took as a back-up, and compared to the HT60 it sounded great - so he used that instead. Not sure whether he kept the HT60 or got rid of it, but if it was me I'd I'd sell it on, take the hit, and buy something better.

DartmoorHedgehog · November 2014

ICBM said:
The Rocker ... does only have two sounds, clean and crunch. If you want more gain you need a pedal

Sorry to bring up an old post, but now I'm using a Rocker 30 myself that comment surprises me. Obviously one man's "crunch" is another's "high gain"

ICBM · November 2014

DartmoorHedgehog said:

ICBM said:
The Rocker ... does only have two sounds, clean and crunch. If you want more gain you need a pedal

Sorry to bring up an old post, but now I'm using a Rocker 30 myself that comment surprises me. Obviously one man's "crunch" is another's "high gain"

True

.

Reading above, it's clear that one man's "terrible fizzy gain" is another's "massive open and responsive tone of God" as well

.

(I'm not even sure a Trem-o-verb can do fizzy unless it's broken, actually... I agree with heavy, I can understand ugly and I admit the tremolo isn't the best. But fizzy?! No.)

drwiddly · November 2014

Marshall JCM900 1x12 combo. Sounded ok in the shop but cranked it was soooo trebly and harsh on the clean channel and muddy and dark on the OD. Channel.

In fairness, the OD channel could be tweaked to sound pretty good but, as the tone controls were shared, that left the clean channel like a dentists drill. I always liked Marshalls but I've not owned one since.

fretmeister · November 2014

Honourable mention to the EVH 5150iii 50W

It's a brilliant amp that is completely ponied by the mindnumblingly retarded level jump between channel 1 and 2.

If they fixed that it would be one of the finest amps in the universe and I'd buy another one.

Moe_Zambeek · November 2014

Fryette SigX. Sounds awesome, ponied due to the ridiculous un reliability of the one I owned.

VHT super 30: either too trebly or too woofy, and no happy medium to be found.

Swart AST pro. Worst amp ever. No treble at all.

Matamp King Street: stupid EQ = no treble.

Matamp GTO120: woolly and fluffy no matter what I tried, and curiously quiet too.

DrJazzTap · November 2014

Trace Elliot Speedtwin. My first proper amp was a supertramp and I wanted to be faithful to the brand and support something British. So went for a cheap speedtwin. It was heavier than a house and I couldn't coax a decent overdriven sound out of it, weird eq.
I should have bought a mesa.....no bought TSL Combo and cab. I wanted an amp that could play anything (again should have gone for a mesa). The most lifeless clean channel I'd ever played through and just not that well built.

I should go for a fender princeton really

Cacofonix · November 2014

Marshall JMP Superlead 100.

Too woolly at one end, too icepicky at the other, and unless it was on full, mind numbingly bland. I tried it on full, with a 20ft guitar lead and two closed doors between us, and I thought I might have heard a decent sound, but.... nah.

All other amps except practice amps, I've either discarded or kept. My only SS amp is for sale, but only because I've got too many. It came to an exchange of my Stiletto twice now, but I backed out both times. As to the Nomad 45, it's the perfect amp, if it was a 1x12.

John_A · November 2014

There's a lot of amps on here that I love, just goes to show we're all different, which is just as well or there wouldn't be all the second hand bargains about

.

DrBob · November 2014

I do wonder if everyone that currently has an amp up for sale in the classifieds section is trawling this thread in fear ! ;-)

57Deluxe · November 2014

59 Bassman LTD... It looked lovely, smelled lovely and was quite nice dialled low and clean, but was awful when pushed or turned up. It then developed a fault and got shunted off to Fender via the online dealer for 5 months(!) before they sent my paypal back and said Fender can't fix this economically and ordered a refund issue!

Also the silk screening on the control panel failed and they said that that wasn't covered by warranty anyway... I only had it a month!

http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee301/snotmale/Things that make you go Ding/decal_fail_zps63d586e2.jpg

HAL9000 · November 2014

Fuzzdog;414885" said:
It did start to sound half decent when you wound it up a bit, but it was so stupidly loud that this did not even remotely begin happening until the drummer looked like he was miming.

Thanks - now trying to get coffee off my screen and keyboard.

Jalapeno · November 2014

Richardj said:

Mesa Nomad 45. I naively thought that just because it was a Mesa it would be great. I traded my Fender Blues Deluxe for it and regretted it after about three days. Too noisy, too complicated to easily get great tone out of and wasn't even put together very well.

I found the root cause of that - the connections of the switches to the channels are unshielded. Factory fit valves are low power so not really a problem - later in life when you fit a set of JJ pre-amp valves and the Nomad all of a sudden sounds awful. Sheild the connectors and goodness is restored. I liked my Nomad - I never understood it though - always needed a copy of the manual to dial up the 3 channel tones I wanted.

I loved mine, and for a decade was very reliable. I still have it, but it needs yet another visit to the mender as I think I've now blown the FX loop.

Mini Rectifier is a lot simpler, and sounds great.

Jalapeno · November 2014

My Pony was a Blackstar HT-5 combo - people rave over them, but I found it very boxy, and lacking in dynamics - in and out in a couple of weeks.

HAL9000 · November 2014

Had a go with an HT-5 earlier today. Horrible.

Cacofonix · November 2014

Dumble Overdrive special. Just awful in every way.

Impossible to work on due to all this goop that was inside it, and that 'future retro' lettering - ugh!

I swapped it for a line 6 Spider. Best deal I ever made.

ToneControl · November 2014

DSL100, first pricey pro amp I bought new. Did not like it
Mesa Studio 22
Marshall Class 5 (rattling issues)
Cornell 18/20 - just OK, whereas the hype says it's amazing
Blackstar HT5 - sounds too much like a pedal

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What's the amp you owned that you thought would be GREAT, but it was actually PONY?

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