First amps?

[KNNZ]

Roland something, 4 x 8", forgot what model it was

was it this with the fx? A mate had one,i was so jelly....

YES!! haha that's exactly the one!!

[kdawg2a]

I borrowed various weird, solid state Jansens at the start.
First amp I bought was a silver face Fender Twin Reverb in 1993.
It was the heaviest thing on earth.

[goldtop0]

A Jansen 6 Forty combo as I recall, 7027A tubes,clean and loud as all heck. The tubes would glow purple/blue when I played a power chord at high volume so a buddy of mine said.

[Zaulkin]

I had one of those tiny amps from an SX guitar package. I remember pressing the overdrive button and thinking "why would anyone want that?"

[chur]

Hondo strat into a Yamaha Budokan, later with added Ibanez Metal Charger. Too long ago, but I imagine it sounded horrendous..

[murky]

Park G10 -> 40w Marshall Valvestate -> Marshall 2555SL Slash Head

Still have all three of them. I keep the Park and Valvestate to remind myself how sketchy the good old days were.

That said, both amps actually sound pretty good when plugged into decent speakers/cabinets. Makes you wonder how many decent amp designs got short changed with shitty speaker choices….

[olegmcnoleg]

Vox Escort I think, then a Carlsboro tube amp of some kind, then a Roland Bolt 30, them a Marshall 100w JMP. Got there eventually

[sty]

When I very very first started as a teenager I tried some Phillips lab amp we acquired from somewhere into a car stereo speaker, it was shit because it wasn’t right for pickups. Then I somehow got a plastic practice amp (this was possibly 1980) it was crap, maybe 2W but crap, that and the shit catalog plywood guitar is why I gave up.

In the 90s I tried again and bought a Pacifica 112 and this Charvel practice amp from a Denmark St guitar shop and away I went. I even got some guitar lessons from the guitarist of punk band Vice Squad (anybody remember Becky Bondage the singer?)

IMG_7239.jpeg (181.8 KiB) Viewed 873 times

I tried to leave it in the uk when I moved to NZ but it followed me. Eventually I bought a Marshall TSL601 for my 40th, for some reason I’ve still got the Charvel even though I sold the Pacifica

[vintage52]

He was born in ‘77, I was born in ‘73

Appreciate the compliment!!

Wow!!

Old guy!!

Mine was also a Rage.

Then went Marshall Valvestate 40 > Peavey Classic 50 2x12.

That Peavey was fecking awesome looking back now.

[The Scarecrow]

Fender Princeton Chorus, around '94 or so. Rented it for a year at $20 a term, meaning I could take it home, but it was a bit cumbersome to lug on the bus so it stayed in one of the smaller music rooms at college which was basically a jam-room that myself and about five other students used, something of a precursor to a modern practice room. It was all about clean tones and sounded terrible on the gain channel, so a DS1 over the clean channel was the way to go for back then.

[moliere]

Another Peavey Rage 158 here. And an Ibanez Soundtank Super Chorus CS5.

[Candeevr4]

Went from a Peavey Rage 158 to a power amp with a 1x12 orange speaker. Then replaced the power amp with a Katana Mk1, which got replaced by an Orange Rocker Terror 15. That's now into a Beeg built 2x12 with V30 and G12h30.

[Aquila Rossa]

Jansen Little Brute. 1986. Solid state and not very loud. It was one of the things I got for trading in the first guitar I bought with my own money (a 1955 Gibson Southern Jumbo acoustic I bought from Zettwitz on Ponsonby Rd.).

Next up was a Jansen combo amp with reverb. I can not remember the model. It sounded quite good until it didn't.

Then it was a Holden head. KT88s. It had reverb, so I do not think it was a Wasp.

My first three amps were NZ made. NZ had high import tariffs until the mid 1980s, so lots of stuff used to be Kiwi made, e.g., cars, fridges, TVs, washing machines, and guitar amps, etc. It was relatively expensive and a limited range of stuff though. We also only had three types of cheese at the supermarket for the most part (colby, mild and tasty). Lots of people worked in factories back then. When free trade arrived the bulk of them lost their jobs over the next several years.

It was well into the 1990s before I got my first Marshall, because the early 1990s had me distracted (engaged at 21 and then married in '94).

First Marshall was a JTM30 combo. I did not like it and traded it for a JMP-1 preamp and matching 200 watt dual monoblock poweramp.

[robthemac]

Jansen Little Brute. 1986. Solid state and not very loud. It was one of the things I got for trading in the first guitar I bought with my own money (a 1955 Gibson Southern Jumbo acoustic I bought from Zettwitz on Ponsonby Rd.).

[Miza]

Also the mic input on my dad's old Yamaha stereo (there's a theme here!)

But first amp was a solid state Samick combo, with carpeted exterior and plastic corners! Beautiful.