Epiphone ES-1000R

I think it started being produced in '94 or '95. For a beginner, this amp has everything you want without being too pricey: 25watts into a 10" speaker, two channels-clean/distortion, 3 band equalier, gain control, volume for both channels, and spring reverb. It also has a headphone jack and a channel switching pedal input(pedal does not come with amp). A beginner should have no complaints about this amp. Its bigger than your useless 15watt combos and its small enough to be a cool practice amp. After you begin to bet better and join a band and play gigs, you'll have ditch this amp and get yourself a larger amp.

I used the amp with my trusty Epiphone Les Paul with mid-output humbuckers. Once again, for a beginner, this amp should sound great. The eq is pretty good...just keep the treb down a bit, the distortion sounds pretty mild, but it doesn't sound like crap. It's just not metal material or anything...The clean channel is pretty straight forward without any buzzes or cracks. I think, with a single coil, you'll hear some more humming than usual, but that's with any single vs humbuck sound. The good thing is the 10" speaker, which gives you a lot more bass and mid than, lets say a useless 8" practice amp. One word of advice though, this amp is way too small to pump out a loud sound that sounds good in a moderate sized cafe. When the volume is above 7, you begin to lose your bass frequencies.

I've had this amp for 4 years or so and it's in bad condition, partially because of my own doing. I used and abused this amp, taking it to smaller gigs and practices, lugging it around town, spilling drinks on it, openning beer bottles on it, using it as a seat, tipping it over, dropping it, kicking it...you name it. Unfortunately, I used to keep some of my pedals in the open back chasis and it broke the reverb unit that's screwed to the bottom. Also, the two wires that are sodered onto the speaker has worn off and they can easily be slipped off. The main problem is, after years of playing this amp at over 5 and 6 on the clean channel with distortion pedals and effects, the speaker has become very worn and it cracks on loud volumes now and feeds back way too easily. All I have to do really is replace the speaker, but its not worth it since I only use it to practice on.

never dealt with epiphone

Overall, I'd say its a pretty good buy if you're just starting to play the guitar. I warn you never to buy an 8" amp because they are very very very useless. If you play to enjoy yourself, or if you're in a smaller band where you don't play excessively loud, this amp is pretty useful. You have an amp that you can use in a (very) small venue or you can just use it to rock out in your room when noone is looking. All in all, treat it better than I did and it should last for a pretty long time and give a pretty nice sound for your money.