Gallien-Krueger 1000RB Bass Amp

I own a backline rental shop. We stock all major brands, service our own gear, road case and know how to care for equipment. Most gear runs without complaint throughout the year. Some products don't need to see the bench for several years at a time. The GK1001RBH has been a nightmare. It consistently fails. Mostly due to crappy cheap wave soldered boards where the solder cracks and we loose contact. I've had factory replaced boards, power amp, etc. But mostly its' been simply cheap foundation. the amp has failed me 65% of the time.totally unacceptable.
I am happy to stock the older 800 heads and artists do request GK. they dial in easily, have good tone. But the 1001 series..be ashamed GK!

I wanted to update the review of the Gallien Krueger 1000RB I submitted January of this year. I stated that my experience playing through the 1000RB was great. The sounds and features were all there but the amps reliability and my previous dealings with GKs customer service was not. Well GK made it right and so I can give the 1000RB a solid 8, would be a close 10 if it never had failed.

The 1000RB is a versitle amp with enough to power you rig through most any playing situation. The operating noise the 1000RB is little to none very steathy. You can get whatever sound you want from the 1000RB, its very impressive.

When I purchased my 1000RB I put my Peavey Mark IV in my closet, why would I need my old roach when I had this? Well that bit me hard one night at a show when I looked and saw smoke signals flowing out of my amp. The 1000RB has some issues, but they can be updated without killing your pocket-book. I suggest dealing with GK and not bothering with any other techs my experience with even so called "GK Authorized" techs. GK repaired and updated my amp and so far its what it was when I purchased it, very nice!

I was real pissed when I wrote my review earlier in the year. I wrote GK a email stating my problems with the amp and my dealings with their customer support in the past. At first they replied that they could try to repair it but at my cost. A couple days later I got a email from GK saying they will repair and do all the updates to my amp at no cost! Gene at GK made this all good, my amp is like new or better as promised. Thanks for the SOLID my man.

DONT GIVE UP ON YOUR 1000RB IM GLAD I DIDNT! PEACE!

Bought GK 1000RB mid 1998 for $890 it just came out and was supposed to be one of the best at the time. Rack mountable, tuning mute, 500watts of high current power @4ohms, just to name a few. I was playing small shows in the L.A. area and wanted to invest in equipment I would not have to worry about and had a large versitle sound, and it did just long enough to be out of warranty. I would like to rate this amp 8-10 all the way but after you read this you will see why its not getting any more than a 4, cuz fire and bad customer service makes it more of a pile of sh** than anything else.

I played a Musicman Stingray, Ibanez cant even remember what model, and most currently an ESP B304, and Ampeg 410 cabinet. Like I said the 1000RB did it all but not too long.

Im very sorry I chose GK thus far. Like I said above my 1000RB was almost $1000 and it was dead 2 years later. I brought the amp to Buley Electronics in Ventura, CA. This was the GK authorized service shop that was close to me, 45 minute drive. Buley had it for about 1 month before I heard anything. When I did talk to him he said GK has been having problems with the 1000RB and had some revisions(a new design top lid with vents and some internal mods) that they suggested to do as well. You would think that since they designed a $1000 dollar lemon that they would cover the revisions, wrong. Buley had my amp so long(3 or 4 months) that I had to buy another amp in that time, an Ampeg that is still running with no problems. When I got it back from Buley, which was a $200.00 repair bill, I wanted to check it out so I went directly to my drummers house so we could jam for a few. I fired it up, cool, turned it up a little and no sound just my amp clipping out, it was barley turned up!! I tried my backup cabinet and bass, same thing. Back to Buleys. I got a call almost 2 months later saying my amp is done, when I got there I asked what was wrong they said "nothing it must be your equipment". When I got home and tried the amp there was no change, it took almost 2 months for this clown to do nothing? So the 1000RB layed in my closet til yesterday when I decided to just sell it with clipping problem disclosed on ebay. I powered it up and what happened, the f**k*ng thing starts on fire again! This has been the biggest joke, I wrote GK asking for a cost efective solution. I will do a follow up after they get a chance to back up the junk that I bought from the company who promised such a solid product. I rate this lowest til then.

I think the comments above cover it all, the Gallien Krueger 1000RB was a lemon design that was replaced by the 1001RB only 2 years or so after they released the 1000RB. Almost all reviews written have experienced similar problems with the 1000RB. I dont think the consumer is responsible for Gallien Kruegers 1000RB design flaws. I would expect that a $1000 dollar item would have plenty of R&D and quality control. I am going to give GK some time to make this nightmare go away, if not my brother a lawyer. This is my rating thus far, I will retract it if GK helps with this

Its the worst purchase I have ever made, I looked up to GK before I bought the 1000RB. I hope that GK helps get my amp working, I will let you know if and when it does.

I am adding to my review above. Since publishung my negative review I was contacted by Daniel Elliot who is in charge of artist relations at GK. He apologized for my experience with GK and told me that they had improved their customer service. Since I no longer have the amp, he upgraded an old MB150 head I own to a new model. I appreciate the effort TO MAKE AMENDS.

I'm not sure when this amp was made. I bought it new in 1999.I used it for loud blues, blues/rock and funk gigs.It had all the features I needed. I especially liked the D/I level control on the front of the amp and the tuner mute but these are useless if the amp doesn't work..I am giving it a 1 though for features as this amp was a lemon.

This amp had a crisp puncht sound and great transient response sound when it worked but I am giving it a 2 as it was a lemon.

DON"T BUY THIS AMP. It went down on the 4th gig. GK had it for 4 months and I got one more gig out of it before it died again. They then had it for another 3 months. It got me through a gig with Bo Diddley. Turned it on the next night and it died again. Kept begging them to raplce it but they refused. Had one more gig out of it and it died again. I got permission to take it to my local tech at my expense without voiding GK's useless warranty. My tech obtained paperwork from GK that showed over 40 mods that needed to be made to this amp, but only a couplke had been done each time I sent it back. I paid $80.00 to get it fixed and then sold it to a store a $400.00 loss. Bfore I sold it I called GK and wrote to Bob Gallien asking them if they would at least trade it for a 1001RB, the cheaper model. No response. F*** them!

See above.

I am 57 years old and have been playing pro for 40 years. This is the worst purchase , musical or not, that I have made in my life. It cost me about $100.00 a gig to use it. I will never buy another GK again. I now use Walter Woods and Acoustic Image heads.

I bought this used solid state amp from a local dealer.
As a nice feature for me i think is the footswitch which has a boost and
a tuningmute switch.
It also has a aux-in and fx-send and return which i never used.

Sounds very clear, thats 1 of the reasons why i don't use it anymore.
I play a sort of punk and metal in vintage-style so i need a rougher sound.
The times when i thought this amp has enough volume where very rare.
It needs to have good box, which poorly appeares in small punkrock-clubs.

This solid state amp seems to have everything u need to make your sound.
With a normal eq : hi, hi-mid, lo-mid, bass
and "voicing filters" eq : bass, mid , hi which r very cool because
they can go from deep bottom to ultra high.
It has a very clear sound but not enough mid for me. The amp don't like
my prefered settings which brought him to the limit.

ARRRRHH. DON'T BUY THIS AMP!!!
First off u can't use it in a rack because the cooling opening at the side is nearly closed. It has no cooling opening at the back which i don't understand because in use, the rack is opened at the back and front.
NOT AT THE SIDE. I wonder what do they think when constructing an amp.
Next thing my 1000rb gets hardly along well with 4-Ohm boxes. It wents in safety mode after 40 minutes. What a nice surprise at gigs.
But i have to say it has no problems with 8-Ohm boxes. So u always have to bring your own box to gigs which, for me,is sometimes difficult.
Next big thing is, one time at rehearsal, i powered it up and after a few seconds it went down and smoke came out. Although i treat it well.

I was lucky because the guy from who i bought it had good connections to Gallien-Krueger so I didn't pay as much as normal for a complete brake-down. But it took a half year to get it back to europe.
Besides the warranty was far off.

It sounds nice when it works but it actes like a princess.
Not very reliable. I will never ever buy a Gallien-Krueger amp again.
This safety mode gets on my nervs and protects an amp so well that u can't use it. Not good for touring in small rock-clubs.
I got myself a Lab Series L4 which fits better to my music and is reliable like a tank. Seems to be unbrakeable, even after 25 years.
I LOVE MY L4!

features are a little mild, I would like more specific control with and eq, although the 4 band supplied eq does very well for a 4 band..
the direct out and fx send and receive make it nice to take the pre-amped signal and send it to other amps as well, of course if they didnt have this design screw up of being reversed polarity output at the 1/4 inch connections, making it impossible to run simutanious with other amps.. its in the shop right now, because i refuse to lug around useless dead wait in my rack, a very heavy preamp..

sound is very nice.. good and meaty, which i was missing a lot of with my previous peavy preamp... *** alert *** only if you use this amp by itself, will there be a nice sound, other wise, the 'meaty' dissapears when a second amplifier is brought into the picture becuase of the reverse polarity, 180 degrees out of phase.. cant use this amp with others if you want to keep the sound quality, or just take it to there warrantee shop and have them fix it... is doesnt look easy... the connectors are directly soldered into the board...
i still rate the sound good by itself though...

this amp has never broke down, it was just put together wrong.. when i talked to people there, there seemed to be huge language barriers..
maybe thats what happened...

Here is what i want people to see..
The minute I said something about the internal reversed polarity, these people acted like all they wanted to do was pass me along to somebody else, who was busy, who would return my call that never came..
These clowns have not bothered responding to a single email i have sent.. i sent one 3 months ago, and another a couple of days ago.. it's almost like they know about it...
I event threatened in my last email that i would spread this design problem all over the internet if they didnt respond.. and no responce..
when I took my 1001 rb in for repair of the problem, they said as long as they didnt have to order any parts, they could be fininshed in a week or two...
he said they were moving locations (yeah probably out of town) and there systems were not together yet, and they didnt have access to the parts that they were waiting for, which they have already been waiting for a couple of months!
so the repair man told me,.. "if we have to order a part... we have absolutely no idea how long your amp will be waiting for it's parts, but at least it may be a couple months"
i paid 706.00 for this thing.. the service sucks, I dont plan ever to buy there products again... it produces good sound, but there is a little more to it than that...
I think next i will try the ampeg svp-pro preamp...

i have been playing for about 9 years, if this amp were lost or stolen i certainly under no circumstances would replace it.. because just to get it to the point were it should have been when i bought it is rediculous.. overall rating will be very low because of the internal audio reverse polarity or 180 degrees out of phase problem built in...

I bought this amp used for about $540 in 2001. It is a solid state and it has plenty of power . And lots of control of your sound with high mid,mid to low, and lows . Very good presence on this amp.

I am using a 2000,1993 musicman stingray's , 1990 samick and a 1961 hofner.Played on a mesa boogie 2x15 diesel and 4x10 ampeg .I play a lot of mainstream heavy rock music lot disturbed,stp,chile pepers,white zombie,with my cover band. all 4 strings and half the time detuned to low c. Love the sound fat and full and in your face. but a little thin on the high g string.

I had a mishap once dropped off my cab during a show from the vibration of the the bass . Thats how powerful the amp is or my setup and the master volume was only on 3. Did not turn on after that.Had it shipped out to GK

It took 2 months to get it back but the amp was used and out of warrenty and they still took care of it .And when I got it back they even installed 2 fans in it as well as some other hardware inside which was not in there before.The Amp was even better than ever and now my high g string sounds even better.

I have only been playing for about 2 and half years . But I would definatly purchase another gk in the future.

My 1001RB was made in late 1999, I have had it for 8 months and love it. My band plays hard music, and with the 1001RB i can get the exact sound i want.

It has a Tuning mute button, -3dB button, 4 band active eq, boost, effects loop, and Speakon speaker connectors. It is solid state with plenty of power for any show.

I use a warwick thumb bolt-on and i get awesome sound with the 1001RB. My band has played alot of larger shows and the 1001RB has plenty of power. The 2 guitarist in my band use a Mesa Boogie Single Recto and the other uses a Mesa Boogie DC-10 and the GK can stand up the both of them.

My first 1001RB had somthing wrong with the protect circuit, I had it sent to a tech and got it back in 2 weeks turned it on and it went on protect and wouldn't turn back on. I talked to GK and had the firest one sent back and they sent me a brand new one for free. I have had the new one for a few months and have not had any problems with it since then.

When i had problems with the head i called GK numerous times and they were very helpful, they took care of my problems as soon as they could.

The only thing i dont like is that you have to bring the head to a GK authorized service center(there not always close), if you bring them somewhere else it will void your warrenty

I have been playing bass for four years and have used alot of diffrent amps. The GK 1001RB is the nicest amp out of all of them. The only other amp i would think about buying is the GK2000RB. If you need an amp with tons of power, reliability, and great sound try out the GK1001RB you'll love it

Made in 1999. This bass amp has a lot of features. I'm still reading the users manual on everything. It's pretty much a high end professional amp. I choose this one because of the many features I couldn't seem to find on others. The footswitch for the extra stage gain and the mute are very nice for stage work. There are so many features I can't list them. At 500 watts, I'll never need more power.
I haven't had a chance to play with the effects loop yet but switching channels and having the control boost settings is great.

I use an Ibanez Soundgear 4-string and love the sound. I have a Hartke 410 XL cabinet hooked up to it. The response is amazing. Low noise and bottom low ends jump out of this thing. Getting the right tones out is
somewhat puzzling. I've used the thing only a dozen times so I'm still just getting used to it.

After using the thing 5 times and less than 2 weeks, I had something really go wrong. I had just powered it up at rehearsal and smelled burning electronics. As I looked around the room to find the culptrit,
I saw smoke billowing out of the head. 2 seconds later, sparks were flaming out the front! It has a grated face place and I could see what looked like a Roman candle going off inside. WOW! Powered it off ASAP but this puppy was toast. Now I wonder if this was a fluke, are 1000RB's lemons, why did GK drop the 1000RB and come out with the 1001RB model?

I dropped it off at the store where I got it, MusicMakers. I had to wait 5 days before their authorized service technician got around to looking at it. This was not a GK issue but GK forces everyone to go to an authorized dealer. I was down for the whole time without an amp that I had paid $800 dollars for. Since this was under 30 days and as bad as the thing was burned up, I had hope for same day service. There's no repairing this giant fuse. I didn't open the thing up in fear of invalidating the warranty. You could still smell the chard guts even when I went back to the dealer.

Eventually, the company rep said yes to a brand new amp. It took about a week from when I returned it before I got a replacement. The warranty is 2 years for electronics from GK so that's not too bad. I'm afraid I'm going to need it.

To me, it was very obvious that this amp could not be repaired. I thouht GK was a high end amp and at the money I paid, I was expecting to be treated a little better. End the end, GK did the right thing and replaced it. It was the dealership that took their sweet time.

I love the sound, power, features, .... except did you ever have a car where the engine just blew up on ya? Would you buy another if that happened. Well, that's what this amp did. I would be interested in the failure analysis report on this box. Are all GK's the same?