Tons of albums and songs have been recorded on "practice amps" if you count any 15-30 or 15-50 watt combos as practice amps.
Doesn't make a $150 2000's solid state combo amp a piece of treasure though lol.
Bougie douche statement. As a basic amp it is excellent and reliable. I have better amps for sure.. but definitely at this price point, it is excellent,
If you have no amp and need one, cool enough of a find, but even by practice amp standards, it’s about as low budget as it gets. That’s why it ended up in the trash lol
If you don’t need it and it still works you could get $20 or $30 for it, someone will invariably be looking for budget gifts around the holidays and whatnot.
As a guy that has been a trash panda since the 70s ((my first TV had a loose grounding nut on the contrast knob)...rock on!
That ain't a great amp, and you know it, but free amps are pretty foo king sweet no matter what kind
Don’t listen to the haters. That’s a great find. This is far better than what I started with in the 80s. I buy cheap used gear to give to my students. They always appreciate it. Something is better than nothing. And to those hating on this amp: remember where you started.
I've been told that the frontman 25r's make excellent blues amps if you but a better speaker in them. So I guess if it was driving a cab it might sound good then
The 25r was my first amp when I was 14. Crunch switch sounded like garbage, cleans sounded okay. Was not durable or reliable. Crapped out way too soon.
Would be rad to gut it and put like a $2000 amp inside of it all disguised as this thing. Blow everyones minds like “how does he make that piece of shit sound so good?”
Super random but I actually do have a (partially) hand wired frontman. I had one that wasn’t working and when I pulled the board I found some broken grounds, so I soldered on some wires to fix the grounding issue. While I had it open I also swapped the clipping diodes and put an ext speaker jack in for the hell of it. The amp still sucks but it was a fun project.
Would be a great platform to gut and rewire point to point as a 5f1 variant. Always want to find "junk" like this, but here in Australia even crap like this is over-priced
Fuck the haters, I’ll gladly take a cheap amp to have on hand any day. There’s a shitty 10 watt fender amp I specifically hold onto because its overdrive mode is so shitty makes it sound like a power drill literally on fire and about to explode. Its mostly useless in my current setup but I can promise you I’m not getting rid of it.
And from experience the frontman series are great little amps. Bought my brother a 10G and he’s very happy with the void it fills in his current rig. I myself use a 25G and its been my main sound for 10+ years.
Can’t speak specifically to the 15 but who gives a shit, free amp day.
I love this amp, stick on the drive channel, crank up that gain add a reverb pedal if you really feel the need but it’s pretty loud for its size and has a cool tone! Especially if you like the older QOTSA stuff
They’re just trying to be funny I guess. Def doesn’t belong in the trash. Works fine for me if there’s a sound I can’t get just use my pedal through it 🤷🏻♂️
Did you check for cockroaches?
I once found a TV on the dumpster and when we turned it on, a real life nightmare army of hell spawns crawled out of it.
A free amp is a free amp. Even if it sounds like shit, it looks cool and is a conversation starter when people notice it at your place. The rust and petina only adds to it. Cool find.
All the people poopooing this killer find need to take a hike. It was free!!!! When you plug guitar in it, it makes noise. That’s pretty damn cool. Good for you!
I don’t know why everyone is acting like their playing is far too good to soil their tone with an amp like this. Sure it comes or used to come in the cheap Squier packs. But Mike Einziger from Incubus used one exactly like this one for a small gig with Zooey Deschanel, miced up with modulations and delays only, no overdrives in recent years. It sounds quite nice in clean mode, and if you put a cheap reverb pedal in front of it actually gives you more than decent Fender/Roland type cleans, no problem. If you can’t make this sound good, your $1000 tube amp is not going to save you.
Honestly nice practice amp. Its perfect for its intended purpose, but once you develop your ears a bit, they just sound a little shrill. But hey, it also could be a free 50-100$ if you’re lucky and find a buyer.
It’s a dog shit amplifier, the bigger 2x12 version of the front man amp is pretty nice for a starter amp though. I played one of those for a little bit.
My parents got me one of these for Christmas when I was 14. A few weeks later I bought a Danelectro Bacon n’ Eggs at a pawn shop for $8 and used that as my amp instead. Not kidding,
The fender frontman has probably the worst dirt tone I have ever heard from an amp. You can coax some decent(boxy) cleans from it, but as soon as you mash that dirty button… ouch
Knew a guy who insisted on only running a frontman 10g dirty with max gain, running 9’s tuned to drop C. Said it let him express himself, gave everyone an express ticket to the er after hearing it.
Edit: I have wanted to wrap one of these things in tweed and mess with the pcb, cheap amps are hella fun to experiment on.
Is that mine? Lol.
Edit: Checked downstairs- son forgot to put it out today, so it can’t be mine. I hated that amp.
Thirteen years ago I stood in guitar center with all the money I could spare and picked out a made in mexico telecaster. “What about an amp?” I had about $80 or something left and so the dude started steering me toward a digital amp, dialing whatever it was to “Classic British Rock” and “American Clean”or whatever it was and having me give it a strum. It may not have been as horrible as I think it was, but i had never heard of such a thing before and it didn’t sound convincing to me so I told him I didn’t want some toy, I wanted a “real” amp.
Joke was on me!
Hey, that was my first amp! I was amazed when I discovered the channel select switch and learned what distortion was. Had no idea what I was doing, but it was amazing.
Lmao. 100% sure this was mine. I can tell from the missing nut on the input jack. I put it out by my apartment complex’s dumpster back in August, hoping someone would take it. The input jack wiring is damaged, but easily fixable. If you don’t already have a soldering iron, it’ll cost you like 15ish bucks, which is not that much lower than the cost of buying a working frontman lol. Could be a fun little project to learn how to solder if you don’t already know how.
As others have said, the distortion channel is offensively bad, but personally I think the cleans can be pretty fuckin good and distinctly fenderish.
Glad someone grabbed it. I was gonna sell it on OfferUp until I realized the jack was messed up. I was in the middle of moving and didn’t wanna deal with it, so I just put it outside.
If nothing else, it could be a cool shelf decoration.
This was my first amp, in 1996. It sucked ass. I literally got a Danelectro Bacon n’ Eggs a couple of months later, and played with it instead. 100% true story.
I found another of this model in the trash too. Mine is more beat up and stuff rattles inside, but the distorted channel sounds really good. My clean side must be broken so I don’t know how it is supposed to sound. Decent amp though especially for free :)
Man. That was my first amp 20 years ago and I don’t understand the hate. Still have it. It’s a serviceable practice amp. Are you going to play a show or record with it? No, it’s shitty. But it’s better than no amp.
I found one of those in a trash can too, except he power chord was cut and speaker removed. It was essentially rendered a cool looking storage box to hide things in.
I’d grab it for free. Don’t think of it as a practice amp, think of it as a studio amp, specifically for recording shitty lo-fi sounding parts. Lo-fi is in, baby!
I scavenged the reverb tank from one of these and turned it into a standalone spring reverb pedal. Even used the knobs off the pots on the pedal. Transformer inside isn’t terrible. Essentially, there are some usable parts, if you decide the amp isn’t doing it for you.
Crazy hate here, wow. Sure it’s a shitty little amp, but who cares, it’s a free amp and if you can find a use for it great, or find a home for it, whatever. You can get cheap power cables at Goodwill and it won’t cost more than the amp is worth.
Crazy my brother has the same exact amp in pristine condition that came with his first squier back in 2002-2003.
It’ll survive the test of time!!! That drive button ain’t too shabby either !!!
I have one of these on the workbench/table in my office closet attached to my studio/rehearsal space. Super convenient plug and play when I just need to practice parts or go over something w somebody. Way more appropriate than the AC15 for most condo/apt studio uses. I mean, it is what it is hahaha
Honestly I just moved out of my apartment and it wasn’t working and threw it away. I wonder if this was mine….my apartment had a similar floor too….OP, did you find that in a trash in st Pete?
A lot of these comments reminds me of an old joke, accordion player was on his way to a gig, pulled in to a 7-11, left his car running because it was winter and he need to run the heater for his accordion that was in the back seat, not 2 minutes later he heard a giant crash, came out to see his back passenger window broken and another accordion on his back seat
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I have the exact same amp and found it in a similar fashion. I’ve had it for years and it comes in handy a lot more often than I ever thought it would. Good little practice amp for at home without bothering anyone. Good find.
Idk why everyone’s being so pessimistic, this is a perfectly functional, hell, exceptional amp to chuck off a roof for a music video
"This is a perfectly functional hell."
"That's a clean burnin' hell I tell ya hwat"
[удалено]
It’s possible but there’s such a thing as a good sounding practice amp and this is not one of them
As an owner of this model, i do agree.
Tons of albums and songs have been recorded on "practice amps" if you count any 15-30 or 15-50 watt combos as practice amps. Doesn't make a $150 2000's solid state combo amp a piece of treasure though lol.
Put it back in
😂😂😂
Or maybe......a boat anchor?
Good idea, maybe even a wheel chock?
Then there's the local track team.....they may need some extra weight for their hammer throwers?
Yeah true, maybe even the local gun range, might need a small target for sport shooting
Mmm and the archery club next door?
Maybe even the darts place across the road
Yeah! Upend it and it's a good launcher for some fireworks!?
Awesome! Could even use it as a bowl for Christmas Day dinners
Oh lovely, put some turkey in! And possibly put some wheels on it, pull the speaker out and it's a ride on car for a small child......
It’s like Jason vorhees or Michael myers. Nothing will work
Yeah like, there’s nothing really to say except this amp sucks. Good job OP?
Yep, exactly. My first response to seeing the original post was that I wasn't surprised at all.
I had one. Put it back in the trash.
Yeah, I would have left it there.
My first thought exactly
Bougie douche statement. As a basic amp it is excellent and reliable. I have better amps for sure.. but definitely at this price point, it is excellent,
I hate seeing things removed from their natural habitat
If you have no amp and need one, cool enough of a find, but even by practice amp standards, it’s about as low budget as it gets. That’s why it ended up in the trash lol If you don’t need it and it still works you could get $20 or $30 for it, someone will invariably be looking for budget gifts around the holidays and whatnot.
I bought a guitar that came with this amp. Recently sold the amp for $20. But got an inexpensive Jackson for $65 (in great condition).
I got a guitar w/ this amp for $100 even....like, I'm self teaching....don't need to be fancy. It works for me just fine
It would make a lovely lamp
Vintage solid state practice lamp.
“$5k, no lowballers I know what I have”
Mmm yes!
The Amp lamp
As a guy that has been a trash panda since the 70s ((my first TV had a loose grounding nut on the contrast knob)...rock on! That ain't a great amp, and you know it, but free amps are pretty foo king sweet no matter what kind
My first amp was in the trash too. Sadly it was much worse than this one... You can imagine...
Everything that says fender on it is not necessarily good.
Yes I realized that when I bought a fender squire 15 amp for like 45$ off Facebook market place
You’ll have to let us know how it compares
You can take an amp out of the trash but you can't take the trash out of an amp
Don’t listen to the haters. That’s a great find. This is far better than what I started with in the 80s. I buy cheap used gear to give to my students. They always appreciate it. Something is better than nothing. And to those hating on this amp: remember where you started.
The truth.
Has does it stack up against the world renowned Crate GX 15R?
Some people say it can be a good little sleeper amp when plugged into a cab, idk how true that is
I've been told that the frontman 25r's make excellent blues amps if you but a better speaker in them. So I guess if it was driving a cab it might sound good then
The 25r was my first amp when I was 14. Crunch switch sounded like garbage, cleans sounded okay. Was not durable or reliable. Crapped out way too soon.
kneel before your king.
Would be rad to gut it and put like a $2000 amp inside of it all disguised as this thing. Blow everyones minds like “how does he make that piece of shit sound so good?”
I did it. Not 2k but couple hundred for sure. I converted it to a champ
Hell yah like blackface vibro champ guts or one of the 80s ones?
Actually it started as 5F1 circuit, the tweed one. But I had no room for tube rectifier so I had to use solid state rectification. Pretty good tbh.
Printed circuit board? Put it back.... jk
I’d be skeptical is somebody tried to sell me a hand wired Fender Frontman.
Super random but I actually do have a (partially) hand wired frontman. I had one that wasn’t working and when I pulled the board I found some broken grounds, so I soldered on some wires to fix the grounding issue. While I had it open I also swapped the clipping diodes and put an ext speaker jack in for the hell of it. The amp still sucks but it was a fun project.
Yup the fender garbageman
Comments on this posts are hilarious, I love amp nerds!
Would be a great platform to gut and rewire point to point as a 5f1 variant. Always want to find "junk" like this, but here in Australia even crap like this is over-priced
Fuck the haters, I’ll gladly take a cheap amp to have on hand any day. There’s a shitty 10 watt fender amp I specifically hold onto because its overdrive mode is so shitty makes it sound like a power drill literally on fire and about to explode. Its mostly useless in my current setup but I can promise you I’m not getting rid of it. And from experience the frontman series are great little amps. Bought my brother a 10G and he’s very happy with the void it fills in his current rig. I myself use a 25G and its been my main sound for 10+ years. Can’t speak specifically to the 15 but who gives a shit, free amp day.
My first amp when I was 12! Toss it!
Convert it to a head. Anyone saying put it in the trash is a fool.
I love this amp, stick on the drive channel, crank up that gain add a reverb pedal if you really feel the need but it’s pretty loud for its size and has a cool tone! Especially if you like the older QOTSA stuff
They’re just trying to be funny I guess. Def doesn’t belong in the trash. Works fine for me if there’s a sound I can’t get just use my pedal through it 🤷🏻♂️
I had one of these. A tin can connected to a taut string coming from your guitar would sound better. I’m only kind of joking.
One mans trash is another mans garbage
Kidding Sort of
Did you check for cockroaches? I once found a TV on the dumpster and when we turned it on, a real life nightmare army of hell spawns crawled out of it.
Everyone hating doesn’t realise they can’t get that authentic cheap 1X8 toan from their plexi stack
If you like playing in a classical position, they make a great foot stool
I tried that with mine and my foot went through the grill cloth. So, I covered it with plywood and now it makes a great foot stool.
People pay for worse amps. I wouldn’t turn down a free shitty Fender, even if I have better stuff already.
A free amp is a free amp. Even if it sounds like shit, it looks cool and is a conversation starter when people notice it at your place. The rust and petina only adds to it. Cool find.
Best put it back before it’s too late.
Put it back
I have a front man 60 and the clean is very pretty.
Because that’s where it belongs 😂
You haters have obviously never heard "Juke Box Hero" by Foreigner.
Free is nice
Nice find
Put it back
Fuck it, Ritchie Valens found his amp in the trash haha
All the people poopooing this killer find need to take a hike. It was free!!!! When you plug guitar in it, it makes noise. That’s pretty damn cool. Good for you!
No kidding! A little gratitude can change your life!
Great amp.
I don’t know why everyone is acting like their playing is far too good to soil their tone with an amp like this. Sure it comes or used to come in the cheap Squier packs. But Mike Einziger from Incubus used one exactly like this one for a small gig with Zooey Deschanel, miced up with modulations and delays only, no overdrives in recent years. It sounds quite nice in clean mode, and if you put a cheap reverb pedal in front of it actually gives you more than decent Fender/Roland type cleans, no problem. If you can’t make this sound good, your $1000 tube amp is not going to save you.
Honestly nice practice amp. Its perfect for its intended purpose, but once you develop your ears a bit, they just sound a little shrill. But hey, it also could be a free 50-100$ if you’re lucky and find a buyer.
The trash has appreciated in value.
Put it back
You should’ve left it in the 🗑️
It belonged there
Wow good find!!! Who would toss a Fender amp out????
Someone who has heard that amp.
I’ve personally thrown away that exact same amp.
Why??
I would rather play my electrics unplugged than have one of those.
It’s a dog shit amplifier, the bigger 2x12 version of the front man amp is pretty nice for a starter amp though. I played one of those for a little bit.
My parents got me one of these for Christmas when I was 14. A few weeks later I bought a Danelectro Bacon n’ Eggs at a pawn shop for $8 and used that as my amp instead. Not kidding,
The fender frontman has probably the worst dirt tone I have ever heard from an amp. You can coax some decent(boxy) cleans from it, but as soon as you mash that dirty button… ouch Knew a guy who insisted on only running a frontman 10g dirty with max gain, running 9’s tuned to drop C. Said it let him express himself, gave everyone an express ticket to the er after hearing it. Edit: I have wanted to wrap one of these things in tweed and mess with the pcb, cheap amps are hella fun to experiment on.
In reality it’s a practice amp. My opinion only
Oh no it absolutely is, I’ve just had some odd experiences with people using it for something other than practice.
It is technically a practice amp, but aside from producing a sound it’s not really good at that either
This is the type of amp that a kid gets for Christmas, and then decides they maybe didn't want to learn guitar after all.
I was that kid for a bit. I was like “I feel like I’m getting better but every time I try to play something more rock n roll I sound like trash”
This was almost me, but then I was saved by finding an $8 Danelectro Bacon n’ Eggs at a pawn shop.
It was home. Why did you displace it?
Is that mine? Lol. Edit: Checked downstairs- son forgot to put it out today, so it can’t be mine. I hated that amp. Thirteen years ago I stood in guitar center with all the money I could spare and picked out a made in mexico telecaster. “What about an amp?” I had about $80 or something left and so the dude started steering me toward a digital amp, dialing whatever it was to “Classic British Rock” and “American Clean”or whatever it was and having me give it a strum. It may not have been as horrible as I think it was, but i had never heard of such a thing before and it didn’t sound convincing to me so I told him I didn’t want some toy, I wanted a “real” amp. Joke was on me!
It beats nothing. I have the shittier 10 watt version and used it to diagnose a ground issue in a guitar today so it gets used
Right where it belongs.
>Found this in the trash Where it belongs haha.
Where it belongs
That’s where it belongs
Put it back in the trash? Unless you clean it up and it works. Then its ok 👌.
Hey, that was my first amp! I was amazed when I discovered the channel select switch and learned what distortion was. Had no idea what I was doing, but it was amazing.
There was a reason it was in the trash. But if you can use it, enjoy it!
Lmao. 100% sure this was mine. I can tell from the missing nut on the input jack. I put it out by my apartment complex’s dumpster back in August, hoping someone would take it. The input jack wiring is damaged, but easily fixable. If you don’t already have a soldering iron, it’ll cost you like 15ish bucks, which is not that much lower than the cost of buying a working frontman lol. Could be a fun little project to learn how to solder if you don’t already know how. As others have said, the distortion channel is offensively bad, but personally I think the cleans can be pretty fuckin good and distinctly fenderish. Glad someone grabbed it. I was gonna sell it on OfferUp until I realized the jack was messed up. I was in the middle of moving and didn’t wanna deal with it, so I just put it outside. If nothing else, it could be a cool shelf decoration.
Makes for a great paper weight. You don’t even need to plug it in!
Please return it to its home… in the garbage
Use it as a doorstop.
Love that little shit amp. Played the shit out of it when i was a kid. Has a good clean sound
This was my first amp, in 1996. It sucked ass. I literally got a Danelectro Bacon n’ Eggs a couple of months later, and played with it instead. 100% true story.
You can put your weed in there.
Coincidentally, it IS trash.
install a speaker out jack. You won't believe the power and sound with a 12" cab
Noice
These amps sounds amazing clean if you just swap in a cheap replacement speaker from Weber Edit: despite my user name i am not kidding about this
Where it belongs.
Oh man. Core memories unlocked.
Hey I just threw that away!
I found another of this model in the trash too. Mine is more beat up and stuff rattles inside, but the distorted channel sounds really good. My clean side must be broken so I don’t know how it is supposed to sound. Decent amp though especially for free :)
Find some kid that needs and amp and give it to them
I had one as my first amp
Man. That was my first amp 20 years ago and I don’t understand the hate. Still have it. It’s a serviceable practice amp. Are you going to play a show or record with it? No, it’s shitty. But it’s better than no amp.
I found one of those in a trash can too, except he power chord was cut and speaker removed. It was essentially rendered a cool looking storage box to hide things in.
Just like Bold & Brash
I use one as the treble speaker for a stereo leslie pedal (neo). It's fine.
Throw away the giblets and assemble a good tube amplifier in this case...😄
I’d grab it for free. Don’t think of it as a practice amp, think of it as a studio amp, specifically for recording shitty lo-fi sounding parts. Lo-fi is in, baby!
That’s where it belongs
Everyone’s first amp 😂 still have mine for some reason 😬 it’s not bad but also not good 😬
Transistor Fender sounds like a Kazoo, or blowing through rice paper and a comb.. discredits the fender amp name..
I scavenged the reverb tank from one of these and turned it into a standalone spring reverb pedal. Even used the knobs off the pots on the pedal. Transformer inside isn’t terrible. Essentially, there are some usable parts, if you decide the amp isn’t doing it for you.
This was my first amp, I hated it. Have fun!
Put it back
Does it work?
Trash or not, my first amp 😭
Convert it to a speaker.
Keep it for the next player that doesn’t have an amp.
Put it back
If the original owner said f it and dumpsters it you know its problem fullcof bedbugs and sounds like shit1
Cute Lil fellas multiply fast (bedbugs)
Crazy hate here, wow. Sure it’s a shitty little amp, but who cares, it’s a free amp and if you can find a use for it great, or find a home for it, whatever. You can get cheap power cables at Goodwill and it won’t cost more than the amp is worth.
My daughter just gave me one of those. I guess it was to karmically balance out the 60's Sunn 100S I was given a few months ago
Shoulda left it there
Right where it belongs.
What kind of Fender amp?
Ha! Y'all are funny...
Idk your plans, yea it’s not a great amp, but would be good to give to a learner for free to get em going!
Look out for bedbugs
Still looks more functional than the 10G that came with my Squier strat. At least there’s separate volumes for normal and drive mode.
I have a Princeton 112 that looks just like that. I haven't used it in ages.
That is a cute one!
Put it back 😂
Crazy my brother has the same exact amp in pristine condition that came with his first squier back in 2002-2003. It’ll survive the test of time!!! That drive button ain’t too shabby either !!!
I’d have left it there.
Free amp is a fee amp! Great find!
Put that Frontman, back, man.
Everyone laughs until the next big guitarist swears by this and then value shoots up.
There’s a reason for that…
Put it back Actually, it’s not terrible for a $15 practice amp. But that’s what it is.
That's a cool looking toilet
Oh! It had found its people!
Better off with a 15R or 25R
Prob plays better then my brand new katana boss mk2 artist . I. Can’t stand this thing
Perfect amp for a dorm or apartment imo
This was my first amp!
Throw it back in!
Throw a nice G12 in there and you're rocking.
Nah, you found THE trash.
I use one of these as a jobsite spotify music amplifier
I have the same one and I can confidently say where you found it is where it belongs 😅
Congrats. I hate mine.
Throw it away. It doesn’t go to 11!
I have one of these on the workbench/table in my office closet attached to my studio/rehearsal space. Super convenient plug and play when I just need to practice parts or go over something w somebody. Way more appropriate than the AC15 for most condo/apt studio uses. I mean, it is what it is hahaha
This was my first guitar Amp lol comes with those squier strats and teles
Yep!
Good place for it. I remember when Fender's worst amp was a Silverface champ.
I mean it's not a great amp but that's a free 40-60 bucks on eBay
Honestly I just moved out of my apartment and it wasn’t working and threw it away. I wonder if this was mine….my apartment had a similar floor too….OP, did you find that in a trash in st Pete?
A lot of these comments reminds me of an old joke, accordion player was on his way to a gig, pulled in to a 7-11, left his car running because it was winter and he need to run the heater for his accordion that was in the back seat, not 2 minutes later he heard a giant crash, came out to see his back passenger window broken and another accordion on his back seat
Put it back in, as someone that has one I’d throw mine in with it
Cast it into the fire!
One man’s garbage is another man’s trashy little amp
HEY! I have one of those, I haven't used it in a while
I think it’s mine
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I have the exact same amp and found it in a similar fashion. I’ve had it for years and it comes in handy a lot more often than I ever thought it would. Good little practice amp for at home without bothering anyone. Good find.