Most Dissappointing Piece of Gear You've Ever Bought?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ThePizzaGuy
  • Start date Start date
A Gibson LP Custom Shop with a Maple top. POS that thing was. Not that I dislike LPs, I've currently got a killer 2000 Classic.
 
steve_k":17zhz6gc said:
Diezel Hagen.
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Wow didn't expect that, mines fantastic, one the best pieces of gear I've bought.

Worst was one of the first JVM's, gated to death but still noisy as a pig.
 
koury73":t44c67tx said:
1. H&K Switchblade-just complete crap for the price, no better than a line 6
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Have you been tone-deaf your WHOLE life or was it something that happened gradually? :lol: :LOL:

I love hearing people who are "challenged" with dialing in gear bashing on stuff. :doh:
 
Though not costly, definitely the worst piece of gear I owned was the EH Hum Debugger. While it does reduce the hum of single coil PUPs it comes at the cost of the awesome response and feel you use them for in the first place. Also as an added bonus there is an annoying resonance just audible enough to drive you nuts.
 
Heritage Softail":1yzc2a0j said:
Ex wife.

The bottom end was loose. The top end had a constant screech. Took a huge loss getting rid of it...
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THIS!!!! Also, a cheesy, horrible Randall Titan. It was a long time ago, it didn't last very long and for the life of me, I still don't know why I bought that piece of crap.
 
Pod HD500. Couldn't dial out the turd sound. Selling that was the only time I've been ecstatic about ditching a piece of gear
 
PRS CE22. Even though I absolutely loved the CU24's I've had, once I had the CE22 I hated it so much I didn't even play it and traded it ASAP.
 
The first overdrive pedal I ever bought. It was called a RetroFX Retrodrive. It wasn't so much an overdrive as it was a crappy low gain fuzz pedal, sapped all the hi end from the sound too, just awful.
 
Mesa Stiletto Ace combo has to be right at or near the top for letting me down. Sounded ok in the store but when I got it to the jam room and turned it up I couldn't dial in a good sound. I spent time on it too. Luckily I sold it to some dude who seemed to like it and didn't take a loss.
 
fender malmsteen strat.......well really it was the HS3 pick ups I couldn't get along with, although I have found it really hard to get the action low (I suppose thats why yng uses light strings and has the action high)....now I have swapped out the pick ups, got the action to an ok height, stripped all the paint of and stained it orange....now I frikken love it...

but yeah stock it was poo :lol: :LOL:
 
Diezel Hagen... seriously posted it for sale the day I got it in... you can say I didn't give it enough time or whatever, but I've never owned a piece of gear I couldn't immediately get a tone out of it I liked... at the risk of sounding too harsh I don't even think it deserves the Diezel badge...

...and both sets of BKP pickups I've tried so far... do NOT understand the hype at all... love my Duncans/ Dimarzios, and the Dragon II's in my PRS...
 
Mizati20":u2o5n4mp said:
Diezel Hagen... seriously posted it for sale the day I got it in... you can say I didn't give it enough time or whatever, but I've never owned a piece of gear I couldn't immediately get a tone out of it I liked... at the risk of sounding too harsh I don't even think it deserves the Diezel badge...

...and both sets of BKP pickups I've tried so far... do NOT understand the hype at all... love my Duncans/ Dimarzios, and the Dragon II's in my PRS...
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What don't you like about BKP? They're very sensitive to pickup height - are you sure you set them properly? I only ask because you say you didn't get on with BKP but praise the Dragon II...curious!

-C
 
Mizati20":16xmp8n9 said:
you can say I didn't give it enough time or whatever
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Yup, sounds massive with my BK nailbomb loaded custom 22, different ears I guess
 
Robotechnology":zfbi2lys said:
Never got a direct sound out of a POD XT Live that I liked... so you can put that one on the list. I liked it for effects but, ABSOLUTELY NOT for the amp models.
Boss HM-2, don't even know why I ever bought that pedal. The original can of bees buzzing sound.
Peavey CSR-2. Bought it because it would sustain notes longer suposedly. All it did was add noise. So I guess it sustains noise.
Rocktron XDC. Yuck.
I also had a Mesa Tremoverb 2X12 combo that did NOTHING for me. While I'm on Mesa, a Mesa Stiletto Trident that I tried to like but, didn't do anything for me either.
The worst cab in the world was the matching cab to Fender Roc-Pro, the GE412. Like swimming in the waters of the Loch Ness. Honorable mention for another cab(s) that I've owned before that was less than desirable were my Carvin V212 (vertical 2X12's loaded with Carvin BR12's). The cabs were light and well built but, man so far inferior in tone to the other cabs I had around at the time (except for the Fender GE412 of course, the Carvin cabs SPANKED the Fender cab).
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:D
 
I bought an Egnater Rebel 20. I needed a low powered versatile tube amp to play at home. I couldn't get a decent sound out of it. I tried new tubes, different cabs, nothing worked. Considering the huge hype these had and respectable forum folks recommending it, I thought it would be perfect for me. Wrong. What a POS. It seemed to be made well but that's all I can say that's good about it. I traded it to a guy on CL for an Ibanez AR-300. Best trade I've ever made. It's not an expensive guitar and I don't play it much, but it's way more useful than that damn Egnater Rebel 20.
 
ThePizzaGuy":219im2uu said:
Have you ever had your heart set on a piece of gear? Be it an amp, a pedal. or a guitar; we've all bought something we'd been drooling over only to find out it just wasn't what you expected. Maybe it sound awful, didn't fit your style, or didn't do something you needed. Share your peice of gear and why you ended up not liking it.

I would have to say that the Boss Mt-2 I bought a few years ago was my biggest disappointment. Granted it's not a big purchase but I really don't buy much gear. It just sounded to thin and not pushy enough. Well a few months ago I got the itch for an Egnater Renegade. I went to Guitar Center unaware that they were having a gear trade up sale that weekend. That day I had just happend to have brought along my Mt-2. That $89 pedal ended up saving me about $200. Now that' what I call trading up!
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Glad to hear the MT-2 ended up being a help at least in trading up!

Some memorable disappointments for me:
1) I'll go with the MT-2 for one, as well. I tried one long ago and thought it sounded like nasally plasticy ass. Someone posted clips of an MT-2 boosting a Recto on HC, and it sounded great IMO. I ended up buying another one just to try as a boost and found there was no way to dial out that same horrid nasally shit tone regardless of which amps I tried it with or how long I spent. It made me wonder if the clip of the boosted Recto was really using an MT-2 or if it was just a troll. :D

2) I love Carvin X100B amps when boosted with a TS and previously used some 6L6 versions for about 15 years with no complaints. BUT I finally found an el34 version for sale on HC and thought that it had to be better since it was supposed to have more gain and be more Marshall-like. I don't know if that amp was just broken in some way or if they're just bad, but that thing was a complete POS compared to any of the other X100 amps I had. I was glad the day I unloaded it at a pawn for $100.

3) I love older Marshalls, but in the early '90s before I knew much about amps I bought a used JCM800 and thought it sounded like tinny ass and ended up trading it to another pawn for an Acoustic brand amp that sounded better to me at the time. The Marshall could've just needed a tube swap or even just cranked but also could've been a dud.

4) Line 6 X3 Live. Many players can get some really good to even great recorded tones from the gear, but I sadly admit I don't have Ola's capability and couldn't get it to sound like anything other than different shades of mud. :D It seemed I tried every way to increase treble/presence and other eq without it getting too harsh. I have better luck with free sims and impulses.

5) Tech 21 Sansamp PSA-1. It had a lot of potential, but when cranked up -- either through a tube amp or through a very clean setup with full range speakers -- it became more obvious that something was missing from the tone/ from the mids. It sounded great in some ways but also sounded distant in a way compared to the volume behind it. I'd hoped that Tech 21 would've been able to improve on the older unit by now, maybe adding a true mids control. I tried an eq pedal with it, but it just seemed impossible to add something to it that wasn't already there. If they ever got the mids down better on it, IMO the unit would rival most modeling gear.

6) I've also had some disappointments with a few guitars, but I've occasionally found that guitars not doing anything but sitting sometimes end up becoming better for something else like downtuned metal with thicker strings. I admit most of the guitars I've had are in the $100-$300 or $400 category (minus adding new pickups/modding), so they're not nearly as disappointing as they could be and sometimes turn out to be great with some changes.
 
TC G System.

If it wasn't so damn heavy I would have thrown it against he wall :lol: :LOL:
 
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