Your first guitar rig.

[SkyMonkey]

In the early 90's I'd been through a few electric guitars before I could afford an amplifier (Tokai Bass, Westone Thunder, Squier Strat).
After I settled on a 2nd hand Charvel Model 4, I came into some cash and had a wild uneducated stab at getting an amp.
What I ended up buying was a 2nd hand Marshall 2203 with a 1922 cab!
Totally ridiculous for my level of talent and put out nothing like the Metallica/Slayer tones I was after.
A DOD Thrash Master didn't fix it.
Neither did a Marshall 9004 preamp or a 1960A cab.

I eventually sold the lot and got a Valvestate 8080 and was finally happy (for a while anyway ).

What I would give to have the 2203/1960A back, but at the time I just didn't know what I had!

 

[Wezie Guitar lover]

OK here is my first really proper amplifier. Expensive new. I got it used. My guitar was in 1982. And I had a electric and a few acoustics in the house. The amplifier is a Johnson JT-50 Mirage. Scott Grove also uses the brand.

Johnson Mirage JT50 (list $649.95), a 50-watt modeling guitar amp combo with a custom 12-inch Johnson Premium loudspeaker. The Johnson Mirage JT50 is extremely versatile, easy to use, and delivers several of the most sought-after amp tones in the world with twelve different high-quality amp models, a host of various modulation and pitch shifting effects, delay, reverb, and an easy-to-use interface at your command. The JT50's digital V-Tube technology modeling sets a new standard for what a modeling amp should be.

The Mirage comes with 21 pre-programmed User Presets. These Presets were designed to provide a wide array of sounds perfect for a variety of musical applications. The straightforward controls makes Preset selection and fine tuning the effects a breeze. Programming menus have been replaced with clearly labeled knobs (hooray!) making Preset creation easy.

Each of the 24-bit digital effects have specific knobs, which are used to vary the values of their associated parameters. The amp section has a Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, and Preset Level knob, as well as a 12-position knob to select your Amp Type. And the EQ controls on the Mirage amplifier uses the same authentic EQ points as the famous amps that are being emulated. For example, if you choose the "Black Face" as your Amp Model, the tone controls on the Mirage will respond exactly as if you were using a real vintage Fender Black Face amplifier, circa 1964.

The Mod / Pitch Effects section has a Speed / Level and Depth / Gate knob along with a 7-position knob to choose from the 6 types of Effects or Effects bypass. The Speed / Level knob adjusts the rate that your selected Modulation effect sweeps back and forth. When the Pitch Shift effect is selected, this knob will adjust the interval of the shifted pitch. This knob also functions as a Level control for the Modulation Effects when used in conjunction with the Tap-It / Shift button. The Depth / Gate knob adjusts the depth or intensity of the modulation effect. When the Pitch Shift effect is selected, the Depth knob will adjust the amount of detune added to the shifted pitch. This knob also functions as a Gate Threshold control when used in conjunction with the Tap-It / Shift button.

The Delay section has a Level / Time, and Feedback knob and includes a Tap-It / Shift button to synchronize the delay time with the tempo of the music. This knob adjusts the volume of the Delay effect. This knob also adjusts the Delay time when used in conjunction with the Tap-It / Shift button. The Feedback knob adjusts the number of Delay repeats.

The Reverb section has a Level / Type knob which varies the Level of reverb in your mix. This knob is also used to select Reverb Types when used in conjunction with the Shift key. You can adjust any of these parameters to your liking, and your creations can be stored to any of the 21 User Preset Locations.

By adding the optional J3 Footswitch, you can select Presets 1-3 for each of the seven Banks. The more powerful J8 Foot controller, in addition to providing extensive control of the JT50, also adds a Guitar Tuner, a Wah-Wah effect, and a Volume pedal to the functionality of your JT50. The J8 features 8 switches, an LED display, and an Expression Pedal. The switches will turn Effects on and off within a program, select Presets 1, 2, or 3, and change Banks.

But all of this technical information is pointless if the amp doesn't sound great. So how does it sound? Well it sounds, uhh...Great! Its 50 watts of power through a single 12-inch premium loudspeaker makes it a perfect amp for rehearsals and smaller clubs, and I have to say that it is a very cool looking amp. From the front you only see the vintage-looking grille cloth with the elegant gold trim and the Johnson logo; no flashing LEDs, calculator digits, or wiring diagrams that take away from the classic good looks.

Amp models include: Johnson Clean, Johnson Dirty, Johnson Gain, Rectified, Brit Modern, Brit Master, Brit Class A, Blues Combo, Black Face, Tweed, Boutique and Hot Rod Combo. Ask me which are my favorites and I’d be hard pressed to choose any over the others. Each one has something special going for it and they all sound quite different (you won’t be switching back and forth saying’ “What the heck’s different about this sound?”). In a live situation, you might end up using most or all of them.

But the real magic of the Johnson JT50 amp occurs when you plug in headphones. Now your burning guitar sound takes on a full-field stereo image that sounds like it’s coming off a professionally-produced CD. And that’s the whole point. If you use the speaker-compensated Direct Stereo Output to feed your studio’s recording console or the house PA system you’ll get the huge guitar sound you’ve always dreamed about, without having to carry and set up racks of effects and agonize over placing microphones.

But if you are one of those hyper-tweaky guitarists that already owns one or more pieces of stereo rack processors, you’ll be thrilled to know that this little amp has built-in true stereo (!) effects Send and Return jacks. This Effects Loop is placed just after the smoking’ Johnson Modeling Preamp, so your digital effects will stay perfectly clean no matter how hard you drive the preamp.

And the best part is that you can choose whether the internal speaker is On or Off, so you can listen to yourself from your amp and still feed the house PA for an arena-sized performance that will blow the crowd away. Then, at the end of the night, you can pick your JT50 up with one hand, grab your guitar with your other hand and leave the stadium.

What a great era to be a guitarist. My amps before that one was decent. And I still own it. Example pictures. Heavy. Feels like 70 pounds? I cannot hardly lift it. First modeling amp way before Line 6. I talked to the creator of the amplifier.

 

[Slick George]

Ibanez LP Custom w. bolt-on neck into my radio/cassette player in 1978. Very soon after that I bought a used Echolette Showstar and a TS 808. The Amp was great but to get the best out of it, you had to crank it up. Neighbours complained about the "noise" from 300 yards away...

 

[Greg70]

Around 1983 my two older brothers responded to a newspaper ad for someone selling an electric guitar and amplifier. It was for either $50 or $100, I can't remember if it cost them 50 bucks a piece or 50 total. They came home with a Global guitar and a Peavey Backstage 30 combo amp. The Global was a blonde body with 2 fat single coil pickups and tremolo just like the original post. The neck had a Strat copy headstock, 19 frets, and a zero fret. It actually didn't play too bad. The biggest problem was that the bridge didn't retain the strings very well and they would slide around on top of it.

The Backstage 30 had a preamp level, 3 stage tone stack, and a master volume, but no reverb. It was a few years before I realized that I could crank the preamp and throttle the master to get some overdrive out of it. My first pedal was a DOD American Metal which sounded decent for the time and my budget. I also cannabalized an 8 track player by soldering an input jack to the tape leads and letting my guitar overdrive the tape player's preamp. I then fed the headphone jack output from the 8 track to my home stereo system.

The Backstage 30 was the first amp that I repaired as a teenager. My brother had been using just the preamp on it for the something and had unplugged the speaker wires to silence the speaker. The loose wires touched and shorted out. I unsoldered each transistor from the board and tested them with my meter. All four power transistors were good but I found a bad driver transistor. I purchased a replacement at the local Radio Shack for 86 cents and it worked!

 

[donwagar]

I started way back in '64, on a cheap little (I think it was a 3/4 size) Supro. In '65 I got a used Harmony Meteor, I think it was about $50.

I didn't need an amp, my older brother had a Bandmaster so I used it. And the only pedal we owned back then was a Gibson Maestro Fuzz.

I have that Bandmaster today, and somewhere in a box I have that old Fuzz.

 

[cstevens00]

Harmony Flying V from 1982 Sears or JC Penney catalog for Christmas

My amp? Took a boom box, wired a 1/4 inch jack to the play head and plugged in, had to push "play" on the cassette for it to work.

 

[Mrmadd]

No photos to show, but my first guitar was from Philco Radio Corp. A cheap Japan strat rip off, given away if you bought one of
their 1960s stereo consoles. My older brother was hanging with some band mates in highschool and one of them ripped off the
school EV tube PA amplifier and hot wired it to accept a guitar plug. That dirty old thing had its own great distortion sound when
cranked into a home made cab with a Philco 6x9 speaker my godfather brought home from the bench guys at Philco where he worked.
He also was the one who brought home the guitar from the bench guys.
The guitar was a typ. sunburst color and had a neck like a giant redwood tree. So hard to play with poor action, I took a file to the neck and
filed it down to emulate a sleek strat neck, although at one point filed it so much that I exposed the truss rod cavity on part of the neck.
Sounded great!
I recovered at long last after that by purchsing a neighbors beautiful Gibson SG for $200 in 1970.
That guitar and the amp sounded unbelievable, no pedals needed.

 

[Old Punker]

Gibson Les Paul Custom with a Silverface Fender Twin Reverb . For pedals i had a Big Muff , a Phase 90 ,that school bus yellow MXR Chorus , EHX Memory Man .

Wow! With a starter rig like that, I bet your dad drove a Porsche.

 

[Old Punker]

I didn't play when I was young because my authoritarian folks banned RnR and guitars in their house (shitty childhood). They gave me a choice between either accordion or lap steel lessons - I picked the steel guitar because it at least had strings and I didn't want to end up being forced to play their crappy polka music while they got drunk with their friends. I didn't play it for long since I really didn't take to country (no offence) or Hawaiian music. Later in life I finally came to the realization that, holy shit! I can go out and buy a real electric guitar and amp if I want. So I started out with a white Eastwood Hi-Flyer (a Mosrite copy) with two P90 style single coil pickups and a Marshall MG250DFX solid state amp. The effects were really handy since I had no pedals. Started out learning Ramones, Dead Kennedys, and Sex Pistols tunes. I still have the guitar but sold the MG and bought a Mesa Express 5:50 head and cab.
I also wanted a Marshall tube head (JCM 800) but 100W was too much, so I waited a long time and when I saw the SC20H I decided to pull the trigger on that one...really glad I did.

 

[AlvisX]

In 1977-78 I had managed to become the proud owner of a Sunn Concert Lead with a 6-10 cab, and a Hondo ll LP copy.
Man I was on top of the world.
Till , late 78 and heard a Marshall 3 houses down from where we were jamming at.
Never been the same since !!
Cheers

I remember some guy playin in the neighborhood really loud .Never did know who it was though . There was a dude in the Mobile Home park used to be pretty good ,but I dont think it was comin from over there . I thought it was comin from down below Villacorta

 

[Mitchell Pearrow]

I remember some guy playin in the neighborhood really loud .Never did know who it was though . There was a dude in the Mobile Home park used to be pretty good ,but I dont think it was comin from over there . I thought it was comin from down below Villacorta

You remember the creek that ran on the north side of Nogales, just past the agriculture class area, West most baseball field ?? if you walked down west in the back side of the ditch , I lived about 7 houses west, and if and when I set it up in the back yard , the sound would carry for a mile or two no problem.
So if you where in that vicinity then it could have been me, but you said what you heard was pretty good, then that could not be me , as I sucked.
Cheers
Brother

 

[Rick in HB]

A Yamaha Strat knock-off and some long gone cheap-ass tiny amp. They came as a package from Costco or one of those big box stores for $200. This was too many decades ago to remember exactly when. Still have the guitar. I steer my grandchildren to it so they leave all my other ones alone (if I'm watching).

 

[giam23]

Borrowed a cheap nylon string from a mate for the first year then got:

Epiphone Les Paul Custom alpine white

Fender FM65r

 

[Wildeman]

Beautiful!

Mine was originally a tobacco sunburst finish but my a-hole dad painted it silver metallic. I wish I had throw-away cash. I would send it to Stew-Mac for a full restoration

They have a stock one at a local shop, it ain't cheap but i want it!
I might swap a couple lesser/newer things in.

 

[Barry A]

Mosrite bluesbender inherited from father, a Randall rg50 combo that I saved up all summer to buy in 1994 with a Boss sd1. That amp screamed, I remember band mates in college were impressed that I had to turn it down because we couldn’t hear the drummer. Wish I still had that amp, but I still play on the Mosrite regularly.
What’s crazy is I bought that amp for $200 new back then, and I see them used for $200-300 now.

 

[AlvisX]

You remember the creek that ran on the north side of Nogales, just past the agriculture class area, West most baseball field ?? if you walked down west in the back side of the ditch , I lived about 7 houses west, and if and when I set it up in the back yard , the sound would carry for a mile or two no problem.
So if you where in that vicinity then it could have been me, but you said what you heard was pretty good, then that could not be me , as I sucked.
Cheers
Brother

Hahahah , agriculture class , all the stoners had ag class and ceramics . The ceramics teacher when I was there made the students call him , Mike......
I remember the ditch . I used to go that way to DITCH school . Well the guy I remember hearing ,played Cat Scratch Fever and the breakdown solo from Detroit Rock City . I remember you saying you weren't a KISS guy .

 

[Mitchell Pearrow]

Yea I never really learned any Kiss tunes , but I have been known to butcher
Cat Scratch Fever ha ha
I used to butcher Bastille Day in my backyard, because the natural reverb from the ditch was so damn huge.
Cheers

 

[mickeydg5]

First guitar rig was Ibanez Pro 540R, Marshall 2558, Rocktron Compressor and Rocktron Exciter/imager.
Then I added a Boss Pro SE70 Super Effects Processor and Pro GE21 Graphic Equalizer.

After figuring out what a stereo unit like the SE70 could do I got a Marshall EL34-50/50 and two Marshall 1922 cabinets followed by some TSLC212 cabinets at a later date.

Most awesome experiences.

 

[scraven]

67 Hagstrum III
Supro Thunderbolt
Still have the guitar

 

[El Gringo]

Wow! With a starter rig like that, I bet your dad drove a Porsche.

Nope , no such luck at all because I would have destroyed it as I did to his beautiful Sky Blue Chevy Impala ,not once but twice . I had to work part time at the local grocery store in high school and save up to buy my gear . It was well worth it as I still have all of that gear today . Also to further add that in the 70's the choices were much slimmer than today and us kids in my neck of the woods either played Fenders or Gibson's , as far as the Twin Reverb's i think it had to do with the public school system that we attended and that was the amps in school and we all wanted to be like Jimi wanging away on the Stratocasters with the Big Muff .I have told this story before of having my Les Paul Custom and a classmate having a poopie mocha brown maple neck Strat and this kid and i were always trading our guitars to each other until his mom and dad a few days later would come retrieve there kids Strat and return my Les Paul Custom and i think back on it and laugh my arse off only due to the Blue book value of a Gibson Les Paul versus a Stratocaster . The epilogue to this story is that in the early 80's the kid with the Strat traded it for a BC Rich guitar that was absolute junk .