What are the WORST hyped pieces of gear you've owned..

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rstites said:
The Tone Zone is a really niche pickup with about one good use case. Everywhere else it's just sludge. There are other pickups I've had like that...and some work great in that one guitar, but sound like ass everywhere else.
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Me as well.

Every Charvel USA SoCal that had one, immediately came out. The one that actually sounded good, I knew that guitar was a great one. lol
 
For me, the worst amp I bought based on Hype was a Randall Diavlo 100w. That was a POS. The 45w was a much better sounding amp.

The Mesa Mark III is another that you can have. I bought 2, a Purple and Red when they were cheap. 6-700 bucks each. Couldn't return them fast enough. The 2C/C+, I couldn't believe they were even related to the Mk III.
 
fusedbrain said:
98% of the gear hype im subjected to comes from logging into this forum, so keep that in mind:
SLO100- don't get me wrong, this is a good amp, but I just don't get the hype on these. Someone described it as pedestrian, and I would agree. It just didn't bring anything to the table to compell me to plug into it, vs the majority of other amps I owned at the same time.
I will say that all you bastards were right about Wizard amps. The first time I plugged into my MCIi, it was a holy shit moment, and that has continued for going on 10 years now.

Dimarzio pickups. There are a couple special use cases, and form factors, not available elsewhere, but for straight up humbucker and single coils, there's nothing in their lineup that beats the offerings from the other usual suspects.

Alnico creambacks- spent a small fortune on a quad to put in a 4x12 when they first came out. Man, what a waste of money that was. Yuck!
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SLO’s suffered the same fate as OG block letter 5150’s: OEM power tube change.

When Peavey ran out of the $100k+ in Sylvanias, cheaper tubes were substituted and tone suffered.

When Mike was building SLO’s, Mike Matthews was still rebranding real Russian military 6P3S-E’s. After those were spent, they made new ones that sound different and are cheaper too.

Kind of like non-Mesa V30’s.

I bet if most folks that had bad experiences with SLOs got to play one with the real tubes they would have a similar experience to V30 haters playing their first Mesa cab.
 
For the life of me, I’ve never understood why a man would build a $5k amp with NASA spec tolerances to ensure consistency and thus value, but put the cheapest, shittiest sounding glass on Earth in it.

It’s like buying a supercar and putting 87 octane in it from a gas station in the ghetto with Walmart tires and no name oil from the convenience store.

A friend of mine is close to Mike and was the biggest Soldano dealer in the Southwest for years and even he didn’t know the difference between the different runs. I found that as astonishing as the video where Mike told the story of trying the variac on Ed’s amp for the first time. It’s like, how can it be that it took you that long to try it out when Ed literally played your amps? 🤦🏻‍♂️
 
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VonBonfire said:
The drip edge bassmans are one of the best vintage amp deals on the market. Killer tone! Kinda glad not that many guys are hip to late 60's Fender amps, keeps the prices down. It's awesome to be able to afford a handwired classic amp being a poor guy like me!
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this one is a blackface, probably very close to the end of blackface production.

I want a Pro or a real mid-60's Deluxe in ways I can't describe without getting banned.
 
ewill52 said:
this one is a blackface, probably very close to the end of blackface production.

I want a Pro or a real mid-60's Deluxe in ways I can't describe without getting banned.
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One of the guys that runs the wednesday night jam has a killer drip edge deluxe. I'm guessing he blackfaced it as he's an amp guy but everyone always jockeys for that amp cause it's like a scaled down version of a cranked Twin. Clear, smooth, and punchy.

TBH I have tried the pro and have heard them described as Twin like but I didn't like it as much as a good Super Reverb. It definitely wasn't very Twin like to me on account of the tube rectifier but I guess I qualify as a Twin snob now since I have a couple. A super or bassman would be my preference for a second Fender but in that instance I'd probably be my usual stupid self and buy another Twin, lol. If @Floyd Eye would just send me his brownface deluxe I'd be pretty happy too. :LOL:
 
There was a minty brownface deluxe with the matching reverb unit that came up near here recently. I sort of kick myself for not grabbing it, but the pair was not cheap to say the least.
 
Rackman said:
There was a minty brownface deluxe with the matching reverb unit that came up near here recently. I sort of kick myself for not grabbing it, but the pair was not cheap to say the least.
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There is a guy in Houston named Brad McCool who builds brownface deluxe clones that are a great sounding amp. He's a killer blues player himself, one of those understated swinging Jimmie Vaughan type players, but his amps are out of my price range, I wanna say around $2200 bucks.
 
DanTravis62 said:
HONK HONK HONK HONK
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Screenshot_20260520_155958_Chrome.jpg

Loud and clear!
 
VonBonfire said:
There is a guy in Houston named Brad McCool who builds brownface deluxe clones that are a great sounding amp. He's a killer blues player himself, one of those understated swinging Jimmie Vaughan type players, but his amps are out of my price range, I wanna say around $2200 bucks.
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While I'm somewhat reluctant to suggest an amp with a name like " Hot Fudge with Nuts", Allen Amplification amps are supposedly some of the best brownface clones around.
I think they sell for way less than $2k.
 
VonBonfire said:
Yeah but did you try it with humbuggies? :LOL:
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Yes. I had a coily cable too.
The clean sounded really nice but it had zero gain. I sent it to Dr. Z to see what was up and they charged me 400 bucks and basically did nothing. I think they changed an input jack and a little clamp thing that goes onto the tubes for one socket.
 
Laputan Machine said:
Yes. I had a coily cable too.
The clean sounded really nice but it had zero gain. I sent it to Dr. Z to see what was up and they charged me 400 bucks and basically did nothing. I think they changed an input jack and a little clamp thing that goes onto the tubes for one socket.
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Member Smash loves his. I've never tried one.
 
blackmachine and mayones. both were dull and lifeless sounding. couldn't flip them fast enough.
 
glpg80 said:
Dude when I plugged into one for the first time I’ll never forget thinking damn this plays and sounds just like my 5150 😂

Biggest boner killing moment of my life.
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Add another one here.

I won't say something dumb like "it sounded like shit", that's not true at all. But for the hype, the SLO I had sounded very ordinary. Pre-BAD. I would be cool plaing one again, but I have zero desire to ever own one again. I sold the SLO and went to a Hughes & Kettner Switchblade for awhile, and wasn't like "oh fuck! What have I done?!" I saved a shitload of money, and still had a great sound. I don't own that thing anymore, but owned it for along time along side a lot of more in-vogue amps, and it survived many a purge. I think it was actually the longest duration of any amp I've owned, and something like 15 years later I still have and gig the cab, always receiving compliments.
 
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