1970s Teen Gear

57Deluxe

Amp options in the early 70s for a teen were, well, crap if you were lucky but mostly non existent. There was no chance in hell of owning any top branded valve stuff - Selmer, Wem, HiWatt, Marshall, Fender, Vox. In fact even the branded trannie stuff of the day was pretty shit and rare. You expected to hear hum, hiss and wasp-in-a-can Zizzzz and even if was loud, it was nasty loud.

Mostly gear got handed around 'on a borrow', exchanged hands endlessly (as guys couldn't pay the HP, or needed a car or HAD to get married!)  and consequently became battered, mistreated and never serviced - was nowhere to go to anyway so if needed a repair we would all have a bash!.

Still we all tried to sound like the greats with our Kimbaras, Avons, Shaftesburys and Zizzzzer-hum amps (often made worse by the ultra treble shrill pedals of the day).

In fairness, my Audition amp from Woolies has stood the test of time but only mainly cos it has just done that - stood.

There was an occasion I nearly, very nearly bought a Marshall - around 1975  - was a 5212 Master Lead Combo 50w twin on castors. Was on sale in ABC Music in Addlestone for £99. Was the first ever in the flesh Marshall I had seen in a shop. I used to go and crouch down and stroke it, daydreaming at how super-God-like I would sound through this instead of the Woolies amp... and how the girls would swoon cos had Marshall emblazoned. Sadly my Mother was horrified at the prospect of such a big loud amp coming into the home and refused to let me buy it.

Just as well probably cos was bound to have been a right old pile of crap...

randella

I increasingly think the same - the beginner gear wasn't great in the 80' and into the 90's come to that.

I thought my Crate was the bees knees, but in reality it was horrible and would be roundly kicked into touch by a £100 modelling amp.

What was the tipping point do we think?  The original POD?

ESBlonde

Remember it well (mid 70s for me). Fender Junior, Champ and Princeton were known as 'student' amps but even they were prohibitively expensive and just not sexy next to all the 100w 4x12 stacks everyone seemed to have even if you could find one.

I remember names like FAL and Sound City, Davoli, Simms Watts, WEM.

But lots of converted valve radiograms were in use as guitar amps too.

Just like today people were then quick to jump on the next latest thing so used gear eventually became affordable.

ICBM

57Deluxe said:

There was an occasion I nearly, very nearly bought a Marshall - around 1975  - was a 5212 Master Lead Combo 50w twin on castors. Was on sale in ABC Music in Addlestone for £99. Was the first ever in the flesh Marshall I had seen in a shop. I used to go and crouch down and stroke it, daydreaming at how super-God-like I would sound through this instead of the Woolies amp... and how the girls would swoon cos had Marshall emblazoned. Sadly my Mother was horrified at the prospect of such a big loud amp coming into the home and refused to let me buy it.

Just as well probably cos was bound to have been a right old pile of crap...

They're actually 30W, and not particularly loud for that power - partly because of the super-budget Celestion speakers, which are the 1970s equivalents of the Rocket 50. Pile of old crap is close... they have a certain charm - basically a fuzzy, glam-rock to early-punk tone - but they aren't exactly one of Marshall's lost vintage gems, they typically sell for about £150-£200 in full working order nowadays.

The first proper Marshall I saw anyone I knew using was the much-underrated Club & Country combo - which was a tasteful shade of shit brown, but actually sounded very good.

Koa

I can recall my 70’s Arbiter combo going in for repair, the Reverb never worked and borrowing an HH combo which seemed amazing at the time, no knowledge whatsoever of valves or valve amps in my teens in the 70s.....and of course only one guitar a CSL Les Paul copy

randella

I stared out using a Coomber cassette player/PA thing borrowed from school, with a Roktek distortion.  Hurts my ears just to think about it.

The first Marshall I got to play was the one my dad bought - and still has.  A 'Lead 30' 1x12".

Having used it for probably 25 years, I replaced the speaker with a better Celestion and had an epiphany at just how badly hobbled by the standard-fit cheapo Celestions they were.  It's not a bad amp, I think ICBM and I have talked about this before.

I still remember not long after my dad had bought the Marshall in my teens - I went to a rehearsal room that had a tired old 50W JCM800 and a 4x12 and that was that

randella

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JezWynd

I had one of these back in the 70's. It spent more time in the repair shop than my front room.

deano

My first guitar - which I still have - was actually my brothers Christmas present in 1978. It was a Rose Morris acoustic. He didn't take to it, I did.

My first electric was in 1982 (after saving up pocket money and earnings from Saturday jobs) was a Hondo Les Paul with some no-name amp with a 6" speaker. Another year and another round of saving bought me a Fender Sidekick 15w tranny amp. I don't have the Les Paul, that got traded for my G&L SC3 in around 1987/88, but I do have the Sidekick. It's in my garage and does sterling work when I am fettling guitars and need to hear them.

People either forget (or never knew about) the dire quality of 1970's and 80's "name" gear. That's why the asian guitars took off, and why G&L were able to get a start.

ICBM

JezWynd said:

I had one of these back in the 70's. It spent more time in the repair shop than my front room.

[Marshall Mercury]

Now those *are* complete crap! I think they take the biscuit for the worst Marshall amp ever made.

They're a really poor hybrid design with a crude transistor preamp and a single EL84 mounted directly on (and under) the PCB and with no ventilation at all, so they cook the board and eventually burn right through it. And even when they're working they sound shit - the transformers are the wrong spec, left-overs from a different design, and the rectifier is a crude single diode so they hum badly. They were apparently intended for the mail-order catalogue market - presumably so no-one could try one in a shop before NOT buying it . Not much in the way of Distance Selling Regulations in those days.

I had one which I paid £25 for in the early 90s, not working - thinking it was something rare and worth fixing - but the PCB was so badly fried that I just gutted it and built a simple valve amp circuit into it instead.

You still see optimists trying to sell them for as much as £250, but they're really almost worthless unless completely rebuilt.

Mark1960

There used to be a guitar shop in my home town of Leicester called Humbucker in the 70's, and they did new and second hand kit. I bought my first new electric guitar from there a Gibson copy of a 635 made by Columbus, which I played through a (new) Peavey Studio Pro, both were affordable although I remember the amp seemed quite expensive at the time. I also bought a second hand P.A - H/H 100 watt amp and Carlsboro Speakers - boy was that amp loud! I still have the Peavey which I have lent to a lad I am helping to learn, and the H/H I sold to a guy at work, and that is also going strong, so not all kit in the 70's was junk. (The Columbus guitar was probably not the best though).

p90fool

I was very lucky I guess, I had a terrible FAL practice amp at home, but when I was 16 I was asked to join a band where everyone else was in their early 30s, so I just used borrowed Marshall Superlead stacks, which I paid off from gigging. 

We were getting £50 each every night in a three-piece and I never paid more than £120 for a head, so the bassist and I had a couple of half stacks each. 

sweepy

I remember my first amp being a Vox battery powered little thing, swiftly followed my. Custom Sound Trucker 45, Peavey Classic 50 with inbuilt Phaser, Laney Klipp, Marshall Plexi £100 back then!, been downhill ever since

Fez

My first amp was a WEM 10watt combo I bought with money saved from my paper round along with a no name Les Paul copy. I guess this would have been 1973/4 I traded it for a Marshall transister Head (can't remember the model). Then I had an Intermusic 50 watt combo which was crap but it had a pretty decent speaker in it so it stayed a while and was used as an extension cab. Early 80's I bought a Fender champ2 which I still have.

Phil_aka_Pip

I had one of those Master Lead Combos. Definitely 30W and not that loud. Not sure what happened to it, I think I sold it to a guitar-playing chap I used to work with. Can picture him, but can't remember his name.

pintspiller

My first electric was a Kay LP copy that I wired into the wiring for the stylus of our old ITT record player. I moved onto the Aux In of a ghetto-blaster, which meant I used a Jack adapter instead of botching the record player.

thermionic

My first amp was my parents’ radiogram. It had a 5-pin DIN socket marked “Tape” and somehow I worked out it was two channels L/R each for in/play and out/record and a common ground. How I managed this as a 14-year old in pre-internet 1982 and with no manual I cannot recall. I bought a 5-pin DIN lead from the local radio shop and chopped one end off. I didn’t have a soldering iron then either, so all connections were made with bare wires and sellotape.

Creme_Brulee

Ahhh the joys of trying to wire up a Dansette record player. Pulling the wires off of the stylus arm, unscrewing the jack on a curly lead and connecting them together. Very buzzy and probably not safe.  

Thank goodness, in 1972, my paper Round money help me upgrade to a, Freemans catalogue, 'Leo' 5w combo... with tremolo. That 8" egg shaped speaker was my passport to sonic heaven. Laid flat on the floor over a feather pillow gave me instant 'T-Rex Get it on' tone. Until my Dad came in complaining "Barney Kessel don't make a row like that!"

prowla

My first bass setup was a Columbus Jazz into a Carlsbro Stingray and a WEM 2x15 cab.

The Columbus went when I got a Rickenbacker and my amp was changed to a Maine and then I got a Burman head into two Marshall 4x12s.

The Burman & Marshalls went when I settled into family life, but I've still got the Ric.

For some reason, from that time, I still have a Shaftesbury wah-wah pedal which also had a squall sound and a siren button (which I used to use when we played Jailbreak!); I've seen them going for silly money on ebay.

I also had a WEM Copycat at some point, but I don't recall what happened to that.

martinw

I had a Jedson plywood "Tele" with just a neck pickup, a Woolworths amp and a no-name wedge shaped fuzzbox. Got the lot for 10 or 15 quid from one of the many local second-hand shops.

I also remember a set of instructional cassettes - was it Fastfingers? Anybody remember those? 

I traded the Jedson for a Harmony Les Paul shaped thing which was still crap, but at least playable.

Musicwolf

1977.  I’d started with guitar Christmas 76 but then took up bass after about three months in order to get into a band.  I bought a Vox semi-solid bass (new old stock) for £25 then a neighbour’s son, who was a drummer, knew someone who had an old amp and cab in the garage.  My first rig was a Vox AC30 super twin head (I think that I’ve got the model right) and a T60 cab (1x12” + 1x15”).  Probably dating from around 1964.  Total cost - £5.  I later sold that and bought a Selmer Zodiac Twin 50.