1970s Teen Gear

PhilKing

I started with a Vox Clubman into my old record player.  It had a coax socket on it and wasn't actually a bad guitar (in spite of the flat fingerboard).  I upgraded to a Rosetti Airstream with a Fenton Weil 5w amp.  From that I went to a Columbus LP copy and a Selmer Truvoice amp.  Next was a Linear 50 with a home made 1x15 cab.  I went to tour in Germany with that rig.  After that I manged to get a Fender and Vox AC30 and started a life of changes and upgrades.

57Deluxe

/\ strange that we think of the Lunchbox amp head as a modern incarnation when it isn't!

Henrytwang

I was quite lucky I guess. Hiwatt were having a bit of a cash flow problem and I bought a brand new 50 watt head for a merely £50 from the old Top Gear shop in Denmark St. I remember carting it back to Guildford on the train, it was really heavy. It was a incredibly well made amp with amazingly neat tag board construction, solid steel chassis, Mullard valves and huge Partridge transformers. I still regret parting with it in order to buy a Vox. That Hiwatt was the best amp I’ve ever owned.

Neil

I started out on a Fal practise amp but then graduated to the very same model being discussed here, a Marshall 2 x 12 30w master lead combo, thought I was the bee's knees. 

I guess the master volume was the attraction and I thought it sounded pretty good at the time, anything would after that Fal, although I did sometimes pick up mini cab radio announcements on it!

Cost me £105 from a shop in West London, can't remember where exactly.

That pic was like a trip down memory lane. 

 

drwiddly

It was May 1971 and I'd been trying to learn on an old acoustic with cheese grater action. My Dad agreed to act as guarantor on an HP deal with Bells so I set off across London and came back with a Vox LP copy (black, gold hardware, bolt on neck, single coils pretending to be humbuckers, you know the drill!) and one of these:
https://backalleymusic.co.uk/contents/en-uk/p7925_COM_WEM_Clubman_Solid_State.html

olafgarten

I missed the 70s by almost 20 years but my first amp was still a WEM combo I got from Freecycle. I used it for about 3 weeks before it broke, and it wasn't good enough to fix. 

ICBM

olafgarten said:

I missed the 70s by almost 20 years but my first amp was still a WEM combo I got from Freecycle. I used it for about 3 weeks before it broke, and it wasn't good enough to fix. 

A valve one? Probably worth a small fortune now... you couldn’t give them away in the 90s, but they’re retro cool now. Some of them are actually quite good.

HAL9000

When I saw the title, '1970s Teen Gear', I was expecting a thread about platform shoes and flares...

Went through a number of no-name combos before ending up with a 50W Marshall combo which in my head was pretty good but was probably crap. Wasn't cheap either as I recall.

Also managed with one, yes just the one, guitar despite the occasional gig. A CSL Les Paul copy followed by a Shergold Masquerader. (I think that, despite not gigging, I currently own five or six guitars!)

Oh, and of course the obligatory ColorSound Fuzz and Wah pedals (connected by a ten-foot cable - I don't remember patch leads being available).

borntohang

The cheap gear revolution has definitely only come on over the last ten years I so. When I started I was using a crappy little Gorilla 8 inch combo that was more like a fuzzbox with a speaker than a bass amp, and when I graduated up to a gigging amp there was a battered old Carlsboro Stingray head that made the rounds of our social circle a good few times along with those awful Marshall MGs.

I actually got given one of those Stingrays as backline at a show over summer and was amazed at how bad it was; the first time I've been incapable of getting a passable sound out of a bass amp in years! Had all these awful push buttons that each made a uniquely horrific sound, so I just pushed them all in at once and pretended I was Lemmy.

ICBM

borntohang said:

I actually got given one of those Stingrays as backline at a show over summer and was amazed at how bad it was; the first time I've been incapable of getting a passable sound out of a bass amp in years! Had all these awful push buttons that each made a uniquely horrific sound, so I just pushed them all in at once and pretended I was Lemmy.

A few years ago I went to a gig with provided backline, and found that the house amp was the 60W combo version of that, with a 12" speaker. I was seriously worried I would destroy it with my bass fuzz, but luckily with a couple of phone calls I managed to borrow a 200W Trace Elliot 4x10" from a couple of streets away...

olafgarten

ICBM said:

olafgarten said:

I missed the 70s by almost 20 years but my first amp was still a WEM combo I got from Freecycle. I used it for about 3 weeks before it broke, and it wasn't good enough to fix. 

A valve one? Probably worth a small fortune now... you couldn’t give them away in the 90s, but they’re retro cool now. Some of them are actually quite good.

No it was SS, I can't remember what model it was now but at the time I checked on Ebay and they were selling for around £20 each. I put it back on Freecycle and someone took it and I assume fixed it. 

Neckwringer

Started off with a WEM Dominator and after a few years I splashed out and bought a Pearl Twin reverb copy from 
A1 in M/cr,it had casters and needed them too...….

dogload

Back in the mists of Xmas 1979 I received my first amp. A JHS 15 watter, the size of a small fridge and about as acoustically pleasing. No master volume, no reverb, just a tremolo circuit which as a wannabe rock god, I had absolutely no need for.


On the plus-side, having no fancy built-in effects made me explore how to expand my sonic palette via pedals and a rather lovely old WEM Copicat.
Also because it sounded so shit, I soon began to explore other amplification options
I have, I must say, absolutely no nostalgia for this lump of chipboard shite. Boxy, boomy, large and ugly, although I suspect there might have been a decent speaker in there.