Worst piece of gear you ever owned?

Epiphone Viola Bass

 

Mine was a Futurama strat like guitar that while strumming I would very often hit the rocker switches and change the tones. It really was a load of c##p but it was cheaper than the Fender Strat I would've loved.. S

 

Peavey Vegas amp. Sterile

 

What was I thinking?

 

I'd have say it was an MIJ Epiphone acoustic (circa 1972) that had that particular bolt-on neck, four crews into what
appeared to be a large neck block. Over time, the block would loosen from the top. It was just a poor design.

A friend of mine figured out a way to fix this, but why go through a lot of bother for a below-average guitar?

 

Worst piece of junk gear ever was the cheapo cable I got with my first electric and amp. Hard plastic straight plug at one end with no relief, screwed-on angle plug at the other end. I promptly broke it when I accidentally walked away with the cord wrapped around my leg. Vowed to never again buy a cheap guitar cable.

 

An old Ibanez acoustic. It wasn't terrible, but compared to what I've got now....

 

1968 Gibson SG Standard

 

Stagg's Ovation copy I once owned. Sounded just plain awful, and there was absolutely no way to tune it properly. Once I got it to a tuning where I could play in one position, it didn't stay for more than a minute.

 

Vox Pathfinder 15R. I bought it based on the rave reviews I read in the forums. It was disappointing.....Nasty sounding, with reverb that needed to be adjusted every time I touched the volume control. Nothing like the Vox VR30 amp I'd owned previously. The nicest thing I can say about it is that I managed to get my money back when I sold it.

 

I bought a blues junior for 100 bucks at a tag sale. I thought I could fix it up by doing some bill m mods by myself. Still couldn't stand it so I made a little profit on it. I also had a vox ac30 that was barely holding together. I really ran it hard but it still didn't seem well built.

 

I got a Peavey Vypyr 75 as part of a trade a few years back. The cabinet is made out of some sort of glorified cardboard, the user interface is tedious at best and I've never been able to wrangle any sort of useable tone out of it. I've literally given it away twice and it's come back both times within a couple of days. It may just go to the shooting range with me next time. It should at least explode well.

 

Squire min guitar and a Floyd Rose.

 

I traded a guy some kind of pedal for a blonde archtop f-hole acoustic one time, prettiest guitar you ever saw. I thought so, anyway, and it sounded good--for the twenty or thirty minutes it would stay in tune. I tried different tuners, had a tech look at the neck and bridge, there was no visible structural issue. I finally reached the conclusion that the neck must have been made of something really soft, and I gave the guitar to a neighbor kid.

Honorable mention goes to an Audio Technica wireless lapel mic rig, that was donated to the church where I ran sound. The brand might be fine overall, but this one gave me nothing but trouble.

 

when I knew next to nothing, I had a hondo strat copy (1978). because it looked (something) like a Stratocaster, I thought it was cool. but it was an utter Turd. if you could get it in tune, the plywood would shift around and it would go out in about a minute.

 

I would say it's a toss-up between a Fender Red Knob Twin and a Peavey Special 112 solid state amp. I have been lucky and owned some good gear over the years, so these two weren't exactly dogs, just not what I was hearing in my head.

The Red Knob Twin sounded great clean, of course. The drive channel, well, that's another story. It also just had too many of those freakin' red knobs! Too many bells and whistles, etc. made it hard to dial in a good rock sound. I did find it sounded better after getting it serviced. A bit of trivia: The amp was purportedly rented and played at a gig by George Benson before being sold at a music store in Nashville where the guy I bought it from acquired it. I bet George probably made it sound better than I did, just a wild guess.

The Special 112 was a nice solid state amp, I think I should have just started out with a good tube amp since it was a wee bit sterile sounding. I sold it to a kid who was starting out on guitar. A good solid rig for a young person to start out on, for sure.

 

I bought a used Agile AL-2000 that was very difficult to play. At the time I did not know how to setup a guitar though, so I don’t know if it was the guitar or me.
I know I couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.
In the early nineties I had a Dean Markley amp that started smoking and had to be returned.

 

The Squire min was a free gift. Never tuned it up because it would never tune up. So I leave it alone.

 

In the late 80’s I had an ART SGE Mach II multi-effects rack unit. Besides sounding like crap, it was unreliable as hell. It would lock up at random times without warning.

I sent it back to the factory to be repaired. After a few weeks at the factory it came back with the same problem it had before. ART was useless.

 

A late 70's Fender Super Twin. That was truly an awful sounding amp for guitar. It was even worse than the red knob "The Twin" which is pretty awful sounding as well. The similar era Fender 400 PS which was made to compete against the Ampeg SVT, is absolutely wicked sounding for bass.