What's the worst tube amp you've ever heard?

[mykey]

From what I can tell, many people love Mesa Boogies because they have what they want, which may be tone, high gain, versatility, or the EQ.

Most of the posts against them are because they are very difficult to repair.

One elegant solution would be to rebuild the amp with an eyelet or turret board, which is fairly common with reissue or new Fenders that break. The only issues I can foresee is whether the board would fit in the chassis, if you can reuse expensive parts (relays, etc), and if anyone has a circuit board designed for this.

You are right, its the circuit board problem. but most techs don't know how to repair them because they have never seen those types of failures in ANY amplifier. what other amp forms invisible carbon tracks between the circuit traces? what other amp has arcing between the board and the circuit components?
most techs blame the problems on "bad solder connections" of course re soldering will not fix it.
If people who bought these things knew what goes wrong with them, they would not buy them at all. If people knew that these amps rarely last more than five years, they would not buy them in the first place.
If that's what they want, let them buy it. But there is rarely a person who owns one who would buy a second one, after the first goes up in smoke.
welcome to the arc of technology.

[Arthur Dent]

put it on e bay and list it under: "vintage tube amps"
you will get $500 no problem.

aren't you the main character in "the hitch hiker's guide to the universe"?
i thought the name sounded familiar

I've done far to much to it by now to sell it as vintage. The only things that are actually old are the tubes, some resistors, and the OT.

I actually got the thing sounding really good, except that it's noisy. I removed everything that was involved with the tremolo and disconnected what must have been the scratchiest pots I've ever seen, and it now sounds great. Still noisy though. needs new tubes.

[mykey]

I've done far to much to it by now to sell it as vintage. The only things that are actually old are the tubes, some resistors, and the OT.

I actually got the thing sounding really good, except that it's noisy. I removed everything that was involved with the tremolo and disconnected what must have been the scratchiest pots I've ever seen, and it now sounds great. Still noisy though. needs new tubes.

yes, the tubes or the plate resistors making the noise.
I still think your that guy from the Hitchhikers guide.
I swear that name sounds familiar.

[Loogie]

AA5

Worst tube amp I've ever heard? Kent Trem-Tone. 12au6 in the preamp, 12av6 in the trem circuit, 50C5 power tube

That's an All American Five derivative. They're just glorified radios. I think they're a blast. I have a couple of them. Ya, you'll see people on Ebay shell out two or three bills for a Harmony 303a. I don't think they can be faulted. They see "Harmony", "single-ended", "vintage" and they go for it. Maybe that's why the same AA5 amps keep showing up...

I can crank my Alamo Capri with its dark, well, Alamo-like distortion and still hear the guy next door turning the pages of his newspaper.

[lowbrow]

I can crank my Alamo Capri with its dark, well, Alamo-like distortion and still hear the guy next door turning the pages of his newspaper.

That sounds nice, actually...I gotta investigate this....

[ajisjesus]

id have to say.... mesa nomad 45.... its an ok amp but a pita to fix

aren't you the main character in "the hitch hiker's guide to the universe"?
i thought the name sounded familiar

yes that he is

[DCinDC]

NOT a one trick pony:

[Rick Erickson]

My candidate for one of the worst sounding production all-tube amps would be the original version of the Marshall 50W Master Volume amp. The one with the 330K plate resistor on the 2nd stage, (The one on the tube socket) and the preamp channels running in parallel. These amps should have never left the factory sounding like they did. No gain, very compressed, just awful sounding. They shipped the 100W with the series preamp version that is found in the JCM800's. I don't know what they were thinking with the 50W. I've heard and fixed a lot of bad amp mods over the years. The comment I usually hear is, "Wow - I wish I would have come to you first." My candidate for one of the worst built amps would probably be a boutique amp that was brought to me by a semi-famous young blues guitarist. He was opening in Seattle for BB King and called me because one of his amps was down. This thing looked beautiful on the outside, but inside all the turret connections were made with Galvanized garden wire - probably from Wal-Mart. Just try to get solder to stick to that! I replaced the worst offenders, mainly in the power supply and suggested he take it back to the builder as soon as possible and ask him to build it correctly. This is an amp that sells for over $4000.00 just for the head and they use his name to suck in other players to buy their product. His reply was - "Well, it was GIVEN to me, and I hide it behind my Marshall's. He only uses it for his clean tone, not for the fancy channel switching/blending that is supposed to make this amp unique and special. Three months later I saw this musician playing at a club in Seattle. He told me "The amp has never lasted this long without blowing up." Three months! A Four Thousand dollar head! I don't care how good it looks or sounds - if it doesn't hold up, it ain't worth a @#$!.
End of rant

RE

[BackwardsBoB]

That's not an argument! That's a series of contradictions!

I bought a Peavey Windsor combo. Dreadful. Sent it back. Intolerable hum and noise. Sure, it would benefit from some tweaks, but my Uncle once told me that you can't polish a turd.

Class A, cathode bias, dual channel, octal socket, built in attenuator and reverb. Could have been nice.

It wasn't just cheese. It was government cheese. The white stuff.

[Steve Conner]

NOT a one trick pony:

Are you submitting this as a candidate for the worst tube amp ever?

[stavo]

I thought, just to be fair, that it might be fun to have a list of the worst tube amps, especially since the general concensus is that they are great.

Thats easy, orange tiny terror ie, cheap plastic valve seats and crappy built pc board etc, looks and weighs like it would last but it just dont! simple as that, expensive korean crap imo.
forgot to say they have the cheek to put a union jack print on the circuit board lol made in britain? now that realy is bloody insulting.

[cminor9]

What's wrong with the Hot Rod DeVille?

Why have I seen the hot rod amps listed here? I have a DeVille 4x10 and it's a fabulous amp. No, it's not a blackface super. But it's nice.

I don't use the OD channels, because they don't sound so good for a lot of applications. I think the OD channels are why it gets a bad rap. Honestly, who buys a Fender for the OD channels? The way to get OD out of a Fender is to crank it. Everyone knows that. Right? If you want a multi-channel amp, get your head checked then go get a Mesa or something equally horrid.

It has lush reverb and a wonderful clean channel. It's loud as hell which means that you get all the headroom you want. Although, if you ever get the opportunity to play one at a larger event, you get to crank it and that's where the fun begins. At about 5 or 6, it sounds really nice and edgy yet dynamic.

I watched George Benson play live, and much to my surprise, he uses one along with some kind of Polytone. He runs them together and I have to say they complement one another. The HRD has a nice response and attack, and the polytone has a nice round tone.

[David Schwab]

Another amp for the hall of shame, the Ampeg SVT for the same reasons as the plexi ;-) plus its extreme size and weight

Yes! Steve, I knew there was a reason I like you!

I hate Ampeg bass amps. Disgusting tone stack, and generally awful preamp.

It's funny how people keep picking up old Ampeg guitar amps, because no one liked them back in the 70's! Too clean sounding. Everett Hull hated loud rock music.

I did like my Ampeg B-15N, but that was a one trick pony, and it never had a very good low end or top end. But it was pleasant sounding, and did a decent job reproducing what ever you plugged into it. Can't say that about the SVT.

My Mesa Boogie 400+ bass amp mops the floors with any all tube Ampeg, both in wattage and versatility.... but it's also way too heavy. So I usually use my solid state Trace Elliott combo.

[David Schwab]

I can crank my Alamo Capri with its dark, well, Alamo-like distortion and still hear the guy next door turning the pages of his newspaper.

My first bass amp was some little Alamo.. I think it had a 6" speaker! Volume and tone. Wasn't really a bass amp.

[Steve Conner]

They certainly have a lot of character. The most unkind thing I ever heard a SVT called was "Giant hamster fart".

What is it that you don't like about them? I guess you're the kind of guy who has a good bass and likes to hear the tone of your instrument? If you crank a SVT it mushes it all into a big thundering roar.

I'm just wondering, because I got some big transformers from a Fender 300PS and I'm trying to design a bass amp of my own, and I have no idea how to make the preamp. I'm not sure whether to go for the simplest possible thing, like what's in the Bassman or the Alembic F2b, or to try something more fancy with a midrange control like the SVT's.

The last bass tone I heard that I really liked was a Warwick bass going through some kind of Fishman preamp box, into a Polytone Mini-Brute. It didn't have huge bottom end, but everything else was awesome. Maybe I should sell my Peavey and get a Warwick.