Worst amp you have ever played

Marshall g30r, which was my 1st amp. My dad bought it as a birthday gift in 2000 if I'm not mistaken. At that time I had no knowledge of what a good amp is supposed to sound like but that damn amp is definitely thw worst sounding amp ever! Also, I didn't like the blackstar ht metal that a buddy of mine had.
 
Marshall g30r, which was my 1st amp. My dad bought it as a birthday gift in 2000 if I'm not mistaken. At that time I had no knowledge of what a good amp is supposed to sound like but that damn amp is definitely thw worst sounding amp ever! Also, I didn't like the blackstar ht metal that a buddy of mine had.
Hate to harp on the LIne 6 spider, but it was like a 40 watt combo. and maybe they sound good usually, and this one was broken. But it was my dad's amp, so he would tell me how good it sounded, how it had natural distortion. I was pretty new to distortion at the time, but I just felt I couldn't get a good sound out of it. He always like that insane button. Shit, no matter what gain button i pushed, or how i twisted the knobs, it was garbage. But it is like you say. You don't know what a good amp is supposed to sound like, aside from what you hear on the radio.
 
Peavey Backstage Plus. My first amp. There was no possibly way to dial out the 'MUD' on this amp, even with the bass knob at 0! And the distortion just embarrassing. This amp nearly caused me to give up on guitar completely at the very beginning. Luckily, a friend at work talked me in to driving up to ACE Music in Miami and buying the new rack amp that Mesa Boogie had just released, the Studio Preamp with a 295 simulclass power amp. Had to mow lawns in South Florida for 6 months to pay off the credit card but what an upgrade!!!! Still have the rig too. My first Real amp!
 
Im really apprehensive about saying this, but my ‘worst’ was a Bray 4550 Deluxe. Fizzy gain, loose, mushy lows, cardboard box mids - no matter how much I tried every combination of settings, push/pull pots, cabs and guitars. It was on the auction block in 48 hrs. So strange, because I cannot think of a single Bray clip online that doesn’t sound very good to extremely good.
 
Gen Benz ElDiablo.

Horrible.

However, I'd like to give it another try. I think even bad amps can have decent tones in them. You just have to try to find them.

I had the same opinion of the Krank Revolution, and then I bought one really cheap. Once you figure it out, there's some great tones in there.
 
Create Blue Voodoo
Agreed.

When I was new to guitar and looking for my first half stack, our bass player and other guitarist were trying to talk me into buying a cheap Blue Doodoo rig that was for sale locally. I was blown away by how bad that Crate sounded. It’s been almost 25 years, and I can still remember how bad that thing was.

A couple other worth mentioning... My uncle gave me his old Fender Super 60 combo around that same time. The cleans were decent, but the drive channel was thin as hell. It sounded like it had a permanent high pass filter set at 1kHz.

I had an Ampeg ReverbRocket head for about 6 months. It had a wonderful clean channel, but the lead channel was awful. It was so muffled, it sound like my 4x12 was still in the shipping box.
 
My Peavey Backstage was pretty bad but it was my first amp so I loved it. I had a Fender M80 head that was a mistake, but I cut some decent tracks with it back in the day.
 
If you are looking for that Bogner midrange chewy grind it's not in the Telos.
I ended up with the Atma which delivers that classic Bogner tone.
I had the ATMA - quality kit for sure. I’m an Ecstasy guy - had 6 of them and currently the 20th XTCb. Regarding the Telos, I thought it may capture a bit more user friendly JTM45 thing.
 
Worst one I owned was definitely the Dean Markley micro-stack. A one x 12 combo on top of another 1x12. The clean was passable, but the dirt was the most disgustingly terrible sound you've ever imagined times infinity. Absolutely useless shit. So I used one of those old pink thrashmaster pedlulz into it. As shit as that pedal was in nearly every situation, it turned that Dean Markley into a fire breathing animal. As I've said many times in the past, this is literally the only case in my life where two wrongs made a right. I still have friends asking me why I ever offed that amp and pedal combo it sounded so good together.

Believe it or not, running my OD-2r into my boombox before I had an amp sounded better. And that was fuck awful.
 
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