Worst guitar amps/Amp Stories

I did a search for worst gear threads and saw a few, but I didn't see any specifically on guitar amps. Reading many reviews of amps on Harmony Central got me to wondering what are the worst amps ever made. So I wanted to ask everyone here what's the worst amp you've ever heard or played? Keep in mind the reason for the amp being bad could be anything from over hype advertising, horrible reliability, horrible sound, awful look or anything else. I'd love to hear any funny or entertaining stories anyone has as well.

We all know a lot of Crate amps get bad reviews, but after checking out the cheap prices of Marshall JCM900's on Ebay, I was curious. I found some bad reviews on Harmony Central. It's surpising to see a Marshall amp not have good reviews. Anyone own one of these? I haven't really heard too many bad amps, but I have to tell the story of how my ex-bandmate and I turned a SS into a real "sceamer" My sister got a guitar amp when she started playing guitar. It was brand new, a real cheapo thing made in Taiwan probably. It wasn't more than 15 watts and the speaker is about 6 1/2". It was the only thing I really had at the time so the guitarist was playing through it and we had everything turned all the way up. It wasn't really distorted. It was more like a really loud crappy SS clean sound. Well the third day we were playing through it, it suddenly started off with this high pitched shrill scream almost like a pick drag. I thought he was just sliding his pick down a string or something but it kept going and he stopped playing. He kind of hit the amp lightly and it stopped. So we kept playing and it happened off and on for a couple of days. The one day it kept going forever and we kept hitting it. Suddenly there was no sound at all. So we stopped and I felt really bad about ruining my sisters amp. The next day he came back over. We were sitting there turning the knobs up and down trying to get sound out of it. We turned it off and then back on. The sound came back on suddenly. When it came back on, there was no clean sound anymore. It was complete crunch. It only gets louder and softer now. It was funny if you were there hearing this thing scream. I've never heard anything like it. So anyone else have any stories to tell about crappy amps or just amps in general?

NOBODY CAN TOP THIS ONE!!!!!! My friend has a 10w ibanez tone blaster! they should rename it the sh$t Blaster!!! It's almost as if some purposely sat around in the factory saying, "how can we possibly make a product devoid of all tonal qualities...hmmm." The amps "distortion" sounds literally like the mating call of a yak! the clean sound is much like the trickling of a sewer, Muddy, and unclear. but it still flows. So it's a tad better than the distortion, but still sucks badly. Flat out, the amp just sucks! On a scale of 1-10 i'd rate this amp a -20!!!

yes I hate this amp!!!

I've got a JCM 900 that is actually for sale right now. It was the first Marshall Half Stack I bought (back around '94), and I was young and didn't really know what sound I wanted. The 900 is not a horrible amp, but it's not close to being Marshall's best. I still like the 900 better than the JCM 2000's, but nothing compares to a JCM 800.

The 900's are very muddy sounding, the low's are "flabby", and contrary to the sticker on the front that say's "High Gain", it is not a high gain amp. The clean channel is very thin sounding also...

i used to have a s**ty 10w johnson amp, the equalizer did pretty much nothing on it, the clean sound was horrible and flat no tone at all, the distortion channel couldnt mannage distortion and just gave a horridle mush of weak overdrive, overall a horrible amp 1 plus it did go very loud for 10 watts, it was louder than a friend of mines 15w fender amp

johnson amp? I had a johnson reptone 15 (or something like that). I sold it last summer, but it was a terrible amp.. the guy that bought it wanted it for some project he was doing or something.. so he probably didn't even intend to play it. I'm sure it's serving a better purpose now.. probably in pieces in a dumpster somewhere..

My first amp a Fender frontman 15w actually caught fire when unbeknownst to me somebody spilled something on it and didn't clean it up right. I flicked the switch there was a pop, and bright flash, and smoke, and then a small flame. It's resting in the town dump now.

My very first electric rig was an old 60's Silvertone el cheapo and some Peavey amp with an 8" speaker. It sounded gawd awefull, but mainly because I didn't know how to play anything. I sold the amp, but kept the guitar since my grandad gave it to my dad and his brother (which they never learned to play) and then gave it to me. Then I started playing an old acoustic that used to be my mothers. The bridge was bowed up, and the neck was coming apart from the body. So, let's just say that it didn't have very low action. It was so hard to play that it almost made me give up. Thankfully my mother wouldn't let me.

Other than that, my worste gear experience was with a Peavey Classic 50/50 power amp I bought off of ebay. Fist, it took forever to get the darn thing, then, after I did get it, it only worked for about 2 hours before it died. Never could get it fixed, so I ended up selling it.

Bout 12 months ago i bought my first guitar, a stagg s300 which came with a stagg 10w 2 channel amp for the bargain price of £99 (now before y'all p**s ya selves with laughter i gotta say i knew nothin bout guitars or amps at the time, just wanted somethin cheap incase i couldn't learn to play it) well the amp is complete ****e!!! no tone at all on the clean channel and the tone control makes no difference, the distorted channel requires nothin short of full volume to get any semblence of tone out of it (which results in upset neighbours) bought overdrive n distortion pedals which helped alot but can't wait for the day when i can afford a decent amp! (and guitar)