“It was so heavy to lift as an 11-year-old”: Josh Homme’s first guitar amp wasn’t even a guitar amp

Amp Week 2026: For many guitar players, their first amp is a predictable choice. Maybe it was an affordable Marshall or Fender five-watt combo – or, for those of a certain age, a primal modeler like the iconic Line 6 Spider or Peavey Vypyr.

For a young Josh Homme, who would later make his name in Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age, it was something a bit more obscure – something that would set the scene for the left-field gear picks for which he'd later be known for.

“My first amp proper was an Ampeg VT-40, and I still have it,” he tells Guitar World. “It was so heavy to lift as an 11-year-old.”

Ostensibly a bass amp, the VT-40 was a choice that didn’t necessarily match Homme's instrument as an electric guitar slinger. In fact, he bought a Teisco Del Rey Tulip at the same time as the VT-40, and, in his own words, found that “two wrongs don’t make a right, but 40 wrongs make a weird.”

He’s spoken to GW previously about how the amp, coupled with his exclusive use of the neck pickup, defined his unusual Kyuss guitar tone. It was an unorthodox sound because... well, the gear and the choices behind it were atypical.

Yet it was the amp's aesthetic, more so than anything else, that drew Homme to the Ampeg.

“I knew I wanted something old, because it's such a tactile sensation,” he says. “The knobs on an amplifier mean something. And if they’re not to my taste, it sort of turns me off.

“In Liar Liar, they say, ‘Don't judge a book by its cover. But that's what people with a shitty cover always say,’ right?” he goes on. “Of course, the cover matters. I do this solely by visual, and then sort of just make it into being.”

Later, when Kyuss broke up, and he kick-started life with Queens of the Stone Age, Homme left the amp behind, finding a new, unassuming secret weapon that has since become his first signature amp.

But Peavey wasn’t the first firm to approach him about a collaboration. Homme also revealed to Guitar World that he turned Ampeg down for one particular reason.

Elsewhere, Homme has credited his off-kilter playing style to his ‘oompah oompah’ upbringing, and has explained why he always writes his songs on acoustic guitar first.