What was the gear that you thought was poo, at the time...

[Born 2B Mild]

It might prove to be another interesting thread to reverse the point ..."What gear did you buy for a packet that you then came to realise was poo"!

Anyway, back to the OP ...I volunteer [b]Hayman[/b], [b]Shergold [/b]and [b]Gibson Rippers[/b] & [b]Grabbers [/b]as living up to the thread's title.

[Spike Vincent]

Shergolds sell for a packet?

[MoonBassAlpha]

Old Hofner jazz-a-like my mate had (185?). Always sounded so dull and planky. He got it off a mate for about £20.
These go for a few hundred now, but I can't imagine that particular one sounding very good even through a decent amp.
He got a defretted Verithin after that, which isn't bad at all, feeds back like b@ggery though.

[E sharp]

Around about '83 when I was 14/15 , getting into music , and I used to have an old Vox Phantom kicking around .
It had all switches and buttons on it - tremelo , organ type sounds - sky high action - the string tension of a girder .
A piece of crap then , and a piece of crap probably now . Sold it for a ton . Dread to think what those idiots in Denmark St would put it up for now .

Also had at the same time a little valve amp called a Futurama - another piece of crap - ditto the above .
And a Vox Continental Organ kicking around , with sort of draw bar things on - this actually was rather good , but big .

Went onto Bass aged 15 , and played through a mighty H/H Bass baby combo - 12" speaker combo that was massive and weighed more , looking back , than a non neo 4x10 .

All these old pieces , your Voxes , Selmers , Watkins etc , used to just be lying around everywhere when the cheap good guitars came in around the early to mid 80's . Cast aside as the rubbish that they were .

How they've become collectable is beyond me . I mean they look lovely in a quirky type way , and are good to hang up or to look at , but they're hardly viable working gigging tools , the guitars or the amps .

Rant over

[umph]

[quote name='E sharp' post='1042887' date='Nov 30 2010, 08:23 PM']Around about '83 when I was 14/15 , getting into music , and I used to have an old Vox Phantom kicking around .
It had all switches and buttons on it - tremelo , organ type sounds - sky high action - the string tension of a girder .
A piece of crap then , and a piece of crap probably now . Sold it for a ton . Dread to think what those idiots in Denmark St would put it up for now .

Also had at the same time a little valve amp called a Futurama - another piece of crap - ditto the above .
And a Vox Continental Organ kicking around , with sort of draw bar things on - this actually was rather good , but big .

Went onto Bass aged 15 , and played through a mighty H/H Bass baby combo - 12" speaker combo that was massive and weighed more , looking back , than a non neo 4x10 .

All these old pieces , your Voxes , Selmers , Watkins etc , used to just be lying around everywhere when the cheap good guitars came in around the early to mid 80's . Cast aside as the rubbish that they were .

How they've become collectable is beyond me . I mean they look lovely in a quirky type way , and are good to hang up or to look at , but they're hardly viable working gigging tools , the guitars or the amps .

Rant over [/quote]

These old valve amps + modern speakers are pretty good, the reliability of watkins and voxes are pretty questionable though

[hetzer]

One of my biggest regrets......
In 1963, I ordered a Burns Sonic Bass Leftie in Black direct from Jim Burns in Romford.
Probably because it was a special colour I waited months and months for it.
Eventually it arrived, cost me 45 guineas, a month's wages then!
Sold it a few years later in London for the same money.
If only I had it now.........
Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

[ThomBassmonkey]

[quote name='umph' post='1043126' date='Dec 1 2010, 12:12 AM']These old valve amps + modern speakers are pretty good, the reliability of watkins and voxes are pretty questionable though[/quote]

I was thinking the first half of that.

I sold a (Watkins) WEM Dominator MkIII last year, brilliant sounding amp. Still had the original valves (it'd been stuck under a table at a shop with some people that didn't know what it was for years) and worked fine. I loved that amp, if I played blues or similar it would've been great, a single channel amp was and is no use to me though.

[Monckyman]

Had a Davoli mixer with a built in tape echo, you said "One" into your (realistic) mic and it went "wub wub wub wub"
Also had a Vox continental, no idea where that eventually went, just sort of dissapeared.
Swapped a Sequential ciruits Pro one, a Roland SH101 and a Roland MC202 for a half decent stereo....Just before Vince Clark made them all collectable.. bastard.

[paul_5]

i was once given a pair of vintage celestion g12 greenback speakers that i absolutely destroyed. Should have looked after then a bit more...

[EssentialTension]

In the late 1970s I had a 1950s tan Fender Bassman 4x10 combo for which I paid (IIRC) £80 - a week's wages. Sold it quite quickly for about the same £.

The one in the pic below is going for $11,000:

[JTUK]

I have a Selmer in the garage waiting to be done up... maybe I'll e-bay it. It is too much of a restore and even an amp tech I know, doesn't really want it.
Also, a 75 Jazz was absolute rubbish. It was rubbish then and it will be rubbish today for around £1450..!!

I can also recall a few Sound City's 120 passing through and they were rubbish as well, ditto a Super lead Marshall.
All 70's vintage

Edited April 14, 2011 by JTUK

[Roland Rock]

I picked up a Sound City 50 Plus and a massive HH 4x12 Cab for £120. When I moved house, I didn't have room for it, so donated it to the music department in a school in Nottingham. It's still there as far as I know.

[hillbilly deluxe]

Gibson Grabber,Rick 400?,complete and utter ca*k.HH VS combo,worse than that.
I LOVE SELMER AMPS,had loads,and sound City 120's too.

Oh and an Ibanez Musician,numb sounding boat anchor,land fill P.O.S fretless.

Edited April 15, 2011 by hillbilly deluxe

[EBS_freak]

An original Tubescreamer. It was a budget pedal back then... just moved it on.

[Spike Vincent]

[quote name='hetzer' post='1200025' date='Apr 14 2011, 10:12 PM']One of my biggest regrets......
In 1963, I ordered a Burns Sonic Bass Leftie in Black direct from Jim Burns in Romford.
Probably because it was a special colour I waited months and months for it.
Eventually it arrived, cost me 45 guineas, a month's wages then!
Sold it a few years later in London for the same money.
If only I had it now.........
Hindsight is a wonderful thing![/quote]


[attachment=77594:burns_004.jpg]



Left handed Sonics aren't exactly common.

[merello]

1970s Fender P-bass in Walnut I had in the 80s - RW neck! Sold it in 1987 to buy a Steinberger.........copy!

[Grassie]

I was given the chance to buy a (I think) a 75 P-bass back in 96. I had just bought a MIA Deluxe Jazz 5 'er, and didn't like the way P's sounded at the time - it seemed that a lot of the Britpop bands were keen on winding the treble up full whack, taking as much bottom end out as possible and playing with a pick, to give their basses a horrible, plastic-y type of sound. I thought all precisions sounded like that so I steered clear. The guy selling it wanted £400. I would now give my right testicle to own such a bass. Isn't hindsight always 20-20?

[Muzz]

[quote name='RhysP' post='1040024' date='Nov 28 2010, 04:47 PM']Both my Rickenbacker 4001's - if I'd known how much people would pay for these terrible planks in years to come.....[/quote]

Yeah, this, and then some. I had a 1980 Jetglo - bought it cos it looked like Geddy Lee's, and by the time I played a few other basses, I realised I didn't like it at all. I think I got £200 for it. Also a 76 or 77 P-Bass, again sold for £150-200 because it was 'boring'. I bought an Aria ZZB Deluxe with the 'profits', which shows you where my head was at at the time. If I was Marty McFly, I'd go back just to give myself a slap, and the hell with the consequences...

[Rich]

Way, way back before they became so absurdly popular, I saw a pre-EB Ray advertised for £250. It took a while to sell too. And I didn't buy it. Twit.

[Rich]

And me

[TheRev]

Back in '98 when I was looking for my first fretless, I found an Aria SB800 in a local second hand shop for £180. I passed on that and bought a new Yammy RBX250 for £250 cos Arias were all naff and 80s.

Numpty

[deepbass5]

Sound city amps, always thought they looked very Woolworths.

But what do I know I traded my 77 Olypic white fender P bass for £325 15 years ago.

[Conan]

First bass I ever bought was a Fender Musicmaster. It was horrible and I hated it, Awful neck-dive, nondescript tone, short scale.... but I bought it second hand in about 1982 for £70. I can still remember the lad's name. He was called Eric Faulder and lived in one of the tower blocks in Longbenton...

Now they seem to go for several hundred pounds because they bear the magical name on the headstock.

Oh well.

[3below]

The luck / stupidity of being older - gear from 1974 or thereabouts age 14 onwards

Vox AC50 - £30 - unreliable at the time
1958 Gibson EB2 - £80 - muddy but well made, would probably be nice with modern amp / cab - the frets were very soft and wore rapidly
Marshall 100W supalead - £can't remember I was at school at the time - the old one with bulgin plug, eyelet board
Hiwatt DR103 1977 ish £swapped for the Marshall - good with bass, though the Hiwatt 200 was just too tempting
Hiwatt 200 £swapped for the DR103 - orange tolex - yuck, loud, very heavy, moved on for a Peavey the era when valve amps were bread & butter & cheap.

77 Fender Precision - bought new, written off in moving house - don't ask
John Birch EB3 type bass - £can't remember
78/79 Rickenbacker - traded JB + some cash

leading to current stable - 85 G&L SB1 which I have had since 1991/2 ish and I really rate it, however recently my late 70s wish has come true - Kramer DMZ4001.



Still it was fun at the time,

[BigRedX]

[quote name='ShergoldSnickers' post='1040788' date='Nov 29 2010, 10:08 AM']Now if only I still had that Octave Cat synth....[/quote]
... it would be broken and not fixable. Unfortunately every single one of these synths that I came across in the early 80s had a very limited life. They were essentially the sound generating circuitry of ARPs made with inferior components and then mated with some weird digital electronics for the keyboard scanning that was even more unreliable.

During the 80s, I went through a whole host of what are now very desirable synths including a Roland SH09, SH101, MC202, TR808, Jupiter 6, Korg MS20, MS50, VC10, EDP Wasp. However There's little there that can't be replicated by my Nord Rack in a far more reliable manner.