Amps that were such a letdown after you played through one ?

Voxman

jaysmith said:

Line 6 Flextone head ..... completely got lost in the mix of a full band, soon got rid of that one !

I know exactly what you mean- I had a Flextone 2 Plus with extn cab that boosted the 60w output to 100w. The secret was to put an EQ pedal in the FX loop in order to raise the mids whilst keeping a good balance of bottom and top end. 

Cabicular

Jimbro66 said:

Cabicular said:

Jimbro66 said:

DulcetJones said:

Lab Series, in the early 80's I had an L7, 100W 4x10 combo.  Couldn't make it sound good with any guitar(or player).

I had a Lab L9 and it was one of the nicest sounding amps I've ever owned  -  but only when used clean, which is really what it was designed for

My biggest disappointment was a Fender 65 Twin Reverb Reissue. Not that it was a bad amp but it was Hi-Fi clean up to ridiculous volume levels

Was that not its job though?
I used one when I was doing the Chilis Band and the headroom was amazing

Selective editing

Just to be clear about which bit I was replying to

Majorscale

Blackstar HT5 (seems a lot of us here were hyped)

Suhr Corso (beautiful to look at, awful to listen to)

koneguitarist

Soldano, Mk4 Boogie, Fargen, and any Blackstar HT bloody awful hyped to hell and sound like a badly designed SS amp. 

Teyeplayer

Fender Hot Rod Deville, fine until you got half way throuh the gig and suddenly...no guitar sound. Pissed off you take it to the tech and the things working fine! Got it home after an 80quid bill, not working, back to the tech, working fine. Had to go.

Winny_Pooh

Certain 5watt amps. 
Having read good things on forums I tried the epiphone junior & fender champion 600... both really crap. (I later obtained a Silverface champ with heavy mag Weber speaker. Not as portable but sounds good.)

Also tried the ZT lunchbox, impressive for its size and very portable but not a nice sound. I'd prefer a Roland cube for much less money.

DanR

polotska said:

Mesa Recto-verb 25. Struggled to get a sound I liked out of any of the four modes.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been surprising that it’s a pale imitation of the big Rectifiers—given the low power, lack of a valve rectifier, etc., though I suspect the preamp was revoiced as well.

The reverb was very good, though!

I had one of them, tried for a year to get along with it but I had to accept in the end I thought it sounded shit.

Telejester

DanR said:

polotska said:

Mesa Recto-verb 25. Struggled to get a sound I liked out of any of the four modes.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been surprising that it’s a pale imitation of the big Rectifiers—given the low power, lack of a valve rectifier, etc., though I suspect the preamp was revoiced as well.

The reverb was very good, though!

I had one of them, tried for a year to get along with it but I had to accept in the end I thought it sounded shit.

 Took you a year !!

I knew my Peavey classic 30 was a smouldering turd in about 3 mins.

Dopesick

All the Krank amps were hyped to fuck back in the mid 2000s. Tried one in Machinehead (think it was the Krankenstein) and it was a bit of a mess. Thin sounding high gain distortion.

As for amps I've owned - I'll go for Orange Dual Dark 50. Not a terrible amp at all but it's just all top end fizz without much girth. I know Orange's are renowned for having the bright sound but at least their other amps like the Thunderverb, Rockerverb or OR series have some proper rumbling low end in them.

gubble

Marshall SL5.

After all the hype, the excitement it turned out the amp sounded no way near as good as I expected. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a bad amp it just didn't sound the way I thought it would in my head.

To be honest it reminded me a lot of a Marshall VS65/VS100 - that's not a bad thing they're great amps but I just expected more.

MattBanshee

Randall RH50 combo. I think the valves were just there for show; for an amp with a full valve preamp and poweramp, it sounded remarkably like a cheap distortion pedal plugged straight into a PA.

I also tried an Ashdown (pre-Hayden) Fallen Angel head. Having heard a friend's absolutely gorgeous original Peacemaker, I was expecting it to sound quite nice. Not only did it sound utterly pathetic for both clean and distorted tones, but it was about half the volume of the Peavey Classic 30 I tried it against, despite being at least double (possibly quadruple) the output power.