Re: WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST AMP?
A kid at school told me I needed a serious amp when I moved on from learning on an acoustic to getting an electric guitar and amp. I totally wanted to be a career guitarist back then, freshman year of high school. And I was convinced I had a shot.
So I saved up all my money from a summer job between freshman and sophomore year, and got one of these, with the accompanying huge ported 4-12 speaker cab.
I thought having two channels with separate EQ, a switchable graphic EQ, a built in phaser, an effects loop, etc etc would mean I'd have all the tonal options I'd need to dial in great rock guitar tones. Was I ever wrong. The only feature the amp didn't have was good tone.
I sold it, and last time I saw it, it was at another kid's house and he had one of those cool 80's Roland guitar synths and had that plugged into it.
For me, this was the first in a series of mediocre, budget amps, including tube amps from Roland and Dean Markley, that I owned as a young and poor guy just starting out in life in the 1980's.
I've got better amps today, but I must confess I still can't bring myself to drop over $2000 on a high end amp. I've come close. I really wanted to get a PRS amp when GC put them on clearance in early 2014, but they were gone by the time I went back. So I dropped $2000 on PRS guitars instead.
My first guitar rig was my 1979 Fender Strat (still have that) into a Ross distortion (stolen by some kid at my high school) into this Peavey amp. Later came a Systech flanger (sold) and a MuTron wah/volume (still have).