Many years ago we were asked to participate in a multi band festival at the last minute, pay was little to nothing but the selling point was all we had to bring was guitars and drums, all amps and mics were being provided by a local music store.

Got there in time to watch the band before us play, they had some Fender and Marshall amps and looked like it would be kinda cool. Well, they get done playing and all the guitar and bass amps that we'd seen were gone. Turns out they'd brought their own and the guy from the music store brought out the stuff they were providing, yikes. The guitarists had some little practice amps that were mic'd and for the bass there was a small 15 watt practice amp, no line out just mic'd.

We soldiered through but the sound was pretty lousy, couldn't hear anything, we learned a valuable lesson that day, come over prepared to every gig!

A marshall MG50 that is really old and dodgy, where the sound man has to hold the lead in the socket for it to work. And we were told "no time for sound checks"-had no idea what volume I was at compared to the other guitarist, until I started!

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"reach for the sky and aim for the moon, for if you miss you will end up among the stars"

Zoom MS50G
72 tele dlx RI
2011 standard strat
Blackstar HT-5R
Taylor Big Baby

http://www.youtube.com/user/Almungo/videos?flow=grid&view=0

My first amp was a total embarrassment. It was a tiny Kay tube amp with a 6in. Spkr. The humming sound was louder than the volume. I showed up with it at a gig one night, and the other guys wouldn't let me plug it in. Oh well I was only 15 at the time.
----Danny,

Samick metal guitar of some sort replete with sharp pointy corners and a small S/S amp of unkown name with a 6" speaker and about 5 watts. Some guy I was visiting, his 12 year old wanted me to play his guitar. I lied and said "Oooh, nice guitar," but it was total 5h!te.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

My own "worst" rig wasn't that bad--a solid state Gibson G-20 amp with a great guitar (a G&L F100)...although the amp's reverb didn't work right and the foot switch was missing, so to turn on/off the Vibrato, I had to turn up or down the knobs real quickly.

I went to a party one time that became an impromptu jam session; since I had not brought any of my own instruments, I ended up borrowing some guy's goofy heavy metal seven-string through a horrible little heavy metal practice amp (it had two tones--"Buzz" and "Hum"). I ended up tuning the 7-string to open G (not an easy task with a broken Floyd Rose knockoff vibrato) and played slide all night long with a cruddy cable that intermittently cut out.

Oh well, the more they drank, the better I sounded.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

First when I started gigging my pawltry rig consisted of a MIJ Dover which was a smaller Jag-Jazzmaster copy and a 5W Pine electronics Paul amp.Gradually we built up to daisy-chaining a few 5W amps together-at least we thought that it looked cool with our 14 year old eyes.

BTW I still have that guitar and amp with not a blemish anywhere on the guitar and finally after years of carrying around my little amp,the handle packed it in,other than that it's in near mint condition too.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

When I first started gigging it was in my church's band. When we played out I played through my bassman 100 head and two 4x10. But when we played the gigs in our own church, I had to play though the house PA system. I was able to talk them into letting me run an EQ pedal and a volume pedal.

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Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.-Khalil Gibran

I sat in with my uncles band once back in the mid 70's and not sure if they were just screwing with me or what, but my uncle hands me this SG Shaped "Kalamazoo" guitar with a sorta fender headstock with two covered single coils. (it was one of Gibsons Down Level Brands) It was SO out of tune, so I tune it up and the strings were way above the frets! He told me after two songs it was the guitar he used for SLIDE (What a noob I was then)...it was a real thin sounding POS. Now the amp wasn't too bad it was a Magnatone with a single 12 and it was tube and sounded decent, but so hard to tell with that crappy guitar. I couldn't play but four songs, my fingers were killing me! Anyway he ended up giving me the amp later and it was a pretty good amp, especially when you cranked it up. Glad he never gave me the guitar though!

T2

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What time is it? It's Fender Time.

My friend's epiphone bass through my other friend's PA system. The Epiphone was in horrid shape, the fingerboard was separating from the neck near the nut and the bridge looked like an earthquake had taken place, add to the fact that a PA system has no tone controls and you have one bad rig.

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I traded my car in for a microphone.

I remember the first time I played out was at a local fundraiser talent show back in the early 1980's in Pennsylvania. I used a friend's Gibson Les Paul - Gold top, if I remember correctly. That was not a problem of course, as I had one of the best made guitars on earth to use.

The problem was, that I had it plugged into a boom box because I was a 13 year old and had no amp. Rediculous.

I started to play, another friend, who was supposed to sing, forgot the words and just stood there. So I started singing. It was a fiasco to say the least.

Actually, it didn't sound too bad (considering the ridiculously distorted pickups)...I tuned it (low-to-high) GDGDGBD...that extra low G was kinda cool, in an over-the-top Spinal Tap-like way. It sounded really cool when I played the little octave riffs that are possible with open tunings.
The guy was probably horribly confused later when he tried to play the guitar with "Standard" chord fingering...he had never even heard of open tuning previously.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

Even though we played through these crappy little amps, we played well and the sound man from the music store must have done wonders because people liked us. We didn't back out because we had committed to play, yeah for free, but we said we would and it was for a good cause so we saved more face by soldiering through then had we left.