Gibson GA-30RV Super Goldtone

Gibson GA30RV Black and Gold 1 12 inch 1 10 inch vitage celes 30 and 10 speakers 2 channels clean & overdrive. Reverb controls for each channel.2 way foot switch channel change and boost.Built with complete quality porcelin tube sockets, 11 tubes and all gold plated connections. Speaker outs, 8 & 16 ohms ,effects loop with volumes for in & out. This thing weighs about 81 lbs and very solid. Looks Like PURE CLASS AND SOUNDS LIKE PURE CLASS. Rate at 9 only because no Trem.

The Sound quality is fantastic. I have a 1959 Gibson Discover and it is very simular to its sound but much much bigger. It breaks up adding the overdrive but also leaving a dry signal at the same time unless you crank the gain all the way. To me it articulates like the Billy Gibbons sound, very harmonic and very responsive and dynamic. I play Pauls and Strats through it and I'm in HEAVEN. Tired of the Fender sound? Concider a Gibson amp. They are incredible. This amp will break windows and send shivers up and down your spine. I hear these refered to as studio amps. They can handle studio or live set up no problem!

Treat it right. Don't bang it around, When turning it on and off let the tubes heat up and cool down for a moment. USE THE STANDBY! Always have a back-up any thing can happen not always being the amps fault!

I wrote to the service with Questions and they answered right back. Pretty cool.

Been playing 30 years. This amp is one of my best. I have Blk face fenders, Silver face, Orange, Gibson, There all fantastic. I will have many more stories and songs to write with this amp. The first one I ordered got dropped in shipping and smashed, think brown% I would search for months to find another in good condition! If after 4 hours you still have a ? Just keep playing!

this amp has it all "everything u need" been looking for this amp a while now. celestion speakers are my favorate, 10' and 12" 2 channels with 5 way swicth 3 channels (1 and blended) has a boost too. 2 effects loops. build like a tank not for the meek...

AWESOME TONE ac30 on the juice!!! flame thrower...best classic rock tone ever.. i've owned almost every thing out there, this amp is right for me...I ALSO use a discontinued nighthawk with it perfect match.

dont know only been a few days, its 5 years old and it's mint...

called gibson and the ******** never called me back.. cant blame the amp..pencil pushers

the amp is killer!! it's very heavy fun just to open her up loud and tear it up....

This is one of the early 2000's model Gibson GA-30RV Super Goldtone combos. It's a 30-watt class A amp with 2 channels that are switchable with the standard 2-button footswitch and blendable with the optional 5-button footswitch. Each channel has its own EQ, reverb, and gain, and the amp has an overall master volume.

I use this amp for everything from indie/alt rock, to downtempo ambient metal, to pop, to acoustic accompaniment. It is incredibly versatile. It response incredibly well to humbuckers, both woody flat-response humbuckers and really bitey high-gain pickups.

Now the one thing that this amp continuously gets downgraded for is the difficulty in finding the 5-button footswitch option for this amp. Quite frankly, the amp is useless without it. The clean channel sounds great, but there's really no depth to the distortion channel by itself. The really unfortnate thing about the amp is that it has the ability to bridge channels, but only with the 5-button footswitch. This is really the only thing on the entire amp that's poorly designed.

BUT - there is hope. A company in Indiana by the name of British Audio Service makes an auxillary 2-button footswitch that plugs into the jack for the 5-button that allows you to bridge the channels and control the effects loop in addition to the single channel switch and boost on the standard 2-button. This is a godsend. Find it here:
http://www.britishaudioservice.com/shop_main_gibson.shtml

Trust me, this makes the amp go from a 6 or a 7 to an easy 10. The blended channels makes this the absolute most awesome sounding amp i have ever heard. If you own this amp and don't own a 5-button, please do yourself a favor and buy the auxillary. It will transform your tone in ways you couldn't imagine.

As mentioned, without the auxillary switch, this amp is probably a 7, but with it, it's the perfect sounding amp for me. Absolutely perfect.

The amp is a little on the trebly side (like any class A amp) but it is easily remedied because the EQ is so responsive.

I generally keep my settings at
6-2-2-10-7.5-1-7.5-4-9.5-6-2-6. It'll blow you out of the water when you bridge the channels and let it rip.

It's also a really quiet amp and responds well to pedals - my setup goes:
Gibson RD Artist with Burstbucker Pickups/Custom Telecaster with GFS Humbuckers -> EB Volume Jr, Boss TU-2, Boss DD-20 Gigadelay, Ibanez PH-99 DuoPhaser, Fulltone Supatrem, Fulltone Choralflange, Jim Dunlop Rotovibe, Teese RMC-2 Wah -> Super Goldtone with E/H Holier Grail Reverb in the effects loop. The only thing that I could vote it down on is that the delay repetitions tend to be a little over the top with high-end, but that's more the delay's fault than the amp's.

It fits my primary style beautifully - I play lead for Mansions, an indie/alt rock band, and I've used it for a number of other styles as well, and it's never really let me down. It's got a very marshall/vox distortion sound. So it's not going to hold water if you're playing scooped-mid speed metal, but anything requiring really thick, heavy, full distortion will be well-suited by this amp. It is a killer amp.

This is really the only reason i would downgrade this amp. I tour full-time and keep it in a road case, and I'm too poor to have a backup, so I really just have to hope. Unfortunately this guy has let me down a couple of times. Once before a gig in Kentucky a diode in the power section blew, which left me without an amp. When I brought it to my amp tech, he pointed out that about 3 of the diodes had degraded completely due to Gibson using cheap, average components. Frustrating to say the least.

In addition, the amp has a 12" Celestion Vintage 30 and a 10" Celestion Vintage 10. Both are rated at 60 watts, but I've now blown the V10 twice. It's really frustrating. Fortunately, Gibson has also set up the amp to run sufficiently on 1-speaker without altering the impedance load.

So reliability is my one complaint about this guy.

Customer service on this is kind of a pain because the amp has been discontinued, and the design has been moved to England and Trace Elliot is covering support, which makes it really difficult to find any information on it.

However, the manual is really useful and the schematics are available online, so if you're capable, you can fix a lot of the stuff yourself.

Also, Gibson was genius in labeling everything on the board, and labeling the tubes and what they control directly on the circuit board. So if you have a problem, it's really easy to troubleshoot.

And besides, it's way more useful to have your own local tech than send it off to the manufacturer every time something goes wrong on it.

This is the best amp I've ever owned. It's heavy as all hell - 80 lbs, but it's awesome. Buy the amp. Buy the auxillary footswitch. You'll love it. I've owned the amp for 2 or 3 years now and I've never kept an amp that long - usually I get tired of an amp within 6 months. This one will be with me for a while. Guaranteed

This is the tweed model falling between the 1950s two-tone GA30 and the mid-60s 'Crest' models; believed to have been made in 1960 or 1961. 20"h, 22"w, and 9.5"d covered in the darker of two Gibson tweed tolex materials. Two channels with twin inputs each, footswitched reverb on ch. 2, volume for each channel, tone, reverb depth, and a 'tone expander / tone snuffer' switch in the negative feedback loop that switches a cap in/out of loop; sounds pretty good in one position, like a blanket over the grillcloth in the other. 3X6EU7, 1X12AU7, 2X6V6, and a 5Y3 rectifier. Would have been nice if it had a speaker out. Finger-jointed cabinet construction is very sturdy. This amp has some of the common mold stains caused by the water in the tolex glue interacting with the cotton backing of the tolex. Some Gibson tweed amps have no stains at all; others are covered ... go figure.

I'm just a toe-tapping, back-room geezer. Play mostly 50s/60s classic R&R, a little C&W, and a little R&B on a Guild starfire w/ humbuckers. I have a limited repetoire however the GA30 does fine for the little I play. It's cleaner and louder than some of the other Gibsons from the period; more like a Fender Pro or Super. The reverb is lush enough; not rain forest and not too thin either. It has an 8" Jensen C8R and a 12" Jensen P12R but the 8" is a little quick to breakup; not the desireable distortion, the cruddy/muddy thing. Like most amps of the day, it's tonal range is limited by it's circuit and controls but generally a robust, strong, sweet sound tilted toward the bass end of things.

Most of the Gibson products from the period don't have the high build standard of comparable Fenders. I don't play out, don't push any of my amps too hard, and I do my own bench work. At 15 watts, this amp really isn't a serious gigging amp but in most other circumstances and when properly refurbished, it wouldn't be any less reliable than any other vintage amp. There isn't anything in the amp that an amp tech couldn't fix if it came to that; it just isn't that complicated.

N/A; easy enough to fix or have fixed.

This a fine amp if you like or prefer Gibson over Fender sound; rich, warm, harmonic, thickish, compressed, and chimey; very typical late 50s sound and appearance. Not as clean as a comparable Fender and not as much headroom. Probably more of a collector than player's amp. I own, or have owned, a series of Gibsons; GA1RT, GA5 Skylark (Crest), GA8 Gibsonette, GA18 Explorer, GA19RVT Falcon, and this GA30RV. Of these, my favorite is the 2X12AX7, 2X6V6 GA18 but the GA30 is right there; I like its reverb better than what I was able to get out of the GA19RVT that used a 7199 for reverb send/return as opposed to the GA30's 1/2 6EU7 and 1/2 12AU7 send/return respectively. Strong, warm amp; not especially versatile but that's what pedals are for.

This USA Made Gibson Super Goldtone GA-30RV amp was made and discontinued in 2005. I purchased one of the last three the retailer had in stock. Very lucky cat I am indeed!

Features:
30 watt Class A 1x10 + 1x12 combo. Yes two differently sized Celestions! 1x10??? and 1x12??? (Celestion Vintage 10
and Vintage 30
Tubes: 5 x 12AX7/ECC83???s ,2 x 12AT7/ECC81???s and 4 x EL84???s. Yes 11 tubes!

Weight: 75 lbs. Built like a brick....house. Yes Sir!

Has two channels with possibility of three if you are lucky enough to find the discontinued 5-way foot switch. Came with the 2-way unit.

I use this amp all the time with my Boss GT-8 effect unit and my new Dean Guitars USA Soltero. Wow, what a nice variety of sounds you can get with this baby. I bet eric Johnson would fall in love with this amp if he had one to try out.

Retail is/was $2395.00 and realistically sold for $!,595.99. Bought at closeout for $999.95. Gift if there ever was one. Thank you Lord.

Sound quality is awesome. Clean, dirty. Country, Jazz, Rock and even some serious metal if you have some additional effect pedals or the boss GT-8. That makes this thing complete I tell ya. Like i said I use it with my new Dean Soltero and wow, this amp should only be used with a serious guitar that is well suited for studio play. That way you can really hear and feel the quality it delivers. Not too many effects needed with this gal. Clean as clean/clear can get. Can get nasty too when driven hard. Sounds great at low and high volumes. man this Class A 30 Watt amp get loud. Very solid!

Well, it's been taken apart and put back together just to reset the tubes and check out the wiring and I tell ya, at 75 lbs. you better find a place to put it and just forget about moving it. Built to last and that's about it. I wish Gibson had kept in in their stables but they screwed up by building too much amp for the time/era we are in. Over engineered! Not one problem to speak of.

Gibson is pretty good about the support although this amp has and probably never will see the Gibson headquarters again.

Been playing several years and use a Dean Soltero, Steinberger, Fender stat and Dean Hardtail. Only effect unit is that awesome Boss GT-8. That being said I can cover any, and I mean any sound out there including what the combination of that 10" and 12" celestion speaker(s) offer with those 11 Tubes. Just awesome I tell you.

Continuation of previous review...
I use it now with the 5-way switch. Allows you to combine the two channels together. Absolutely amazing tone. This thing is a electric guitar players dream.
This amp deserves a 12 for tone shaping.

The amp matches all my guitars with very little fiddling around. Makes the Clapton Strat sound incredible (shimmery). The tele bites and growls with authority, and the Strat SSH becomes a nicely versital StratoPaul/LesCaster.

Did some tube swapping, found that NOS tubes really like the amp.
Used RCA&GE 5751's (blackface), Phillips 12ax7a(crunchy R&R), RCA 12ax7a (JTM45), a really old RCA 12ax7 that made it sound like a 50 year old bassman amp. I can only imaging what a mullard or telefunken set would sound like.
I can change tone tubes like a different suit of clothes. Way too much fun.
This amp is a stress reducer. It breathes big time.

Only gone one through one set of el84 power tubes in past 4 months.
Not bad considering the amount of hours per week this amp is used.
I'm a died in the wool 6L6 user. Didn't know what to expect with these, I'd only heard the complaints about voxes and some of the other boutiquers out there that had a crash and burn on stage.

Only had one bad day with a tube. Turned out to be a reverb return tube clattering with a heavy overtone. Replaced it, problem solved.
Give it a 11 for uummph, awe and inspiration.

Just like any other tube amp. Keep it dry, far from the kids and the wankers, give it TLC every few months and it will last a long long time.

Ended up getting the 5 way footswitch from a UK Trace Elliot ebayer.
Good discount price, but the shipping brought the price back up to US retail.
Tried Gibson for the footswitch. They sent me the schematic. Shucks.

My only complaint, this is one heavy box.
The celestions... which are great sounding speakers add so much weight to the thing.
Maybe a pair of lighter weight alnico blue english speakers or those new fangled Jenson NEO series speakers. We'll see.

Amp has two channels, both work well. 5 function footswitch adds channel switching, mixing, boost, effects loop, and reverb on/off.
Comes with a 2 button footswitch - channel switching and boost(add a stage of gain).
EL84 power tubes, Class A.
12ax7's pre-amp.
Two speakers - 10" & 12" Celestion Vintage 30's
Line out - pretransformer.
Discontinued amp, Might become hard to find. Mine is a demo.
Heavy.
Plenty of power even without the boost.
Haven't use effects loop.
Easy tube/circuit board/speaker access.
Great blue/rock/jazz/country amp.
No headphone jack.
Can play as a two speaker amp or a 1 speaker 10" or 1 speaker 12".
Can plug in a 16ohm cabinet along with internal speakers.

Strat S/S/H, Tele52.
Blues/Motown/Rock/Country/Jazz does it all.
Very little noise without boost. Boost adds gain and some hiss. No big deal. Filtering is top notch.

Amp chimes, chunks, sings, slaps you in the face. You do it, it comes out. So far so good.
Clean channel can be sweet at low settings or nasty when turned up.
Haven't needed the distortion channel yet on a gig. Still using my pedals until I get more comfy.
I've made it sound like a Tube Screamer, and a Plexi.
Distortion has a two knob set-up gain & volume with a master.

TONEbaby.

Talked to British Audio Service. The don't see these coming in for service like some of the other models.
Someday I might have to work on it. Schematics and parts lists are readily available.
Always carry a back-up.
Never broken down.

Gibson answered my questions right upfront.
Service with a smile. Patience.

Been playing 45 years.
Play a Gibson GA-15 as a back-up.
Use a Fender 69 Vibrolux Reverb.
I'd buy another.
I love its TONEbaby.
Took a couple months to decide.
Wish I had a oil well.
This amp makes you sound like yourself. It's not for someone looking to sound like a specific artist or stylist. If you have the chops it brings them out front to your audience.

Bought new, 30w,1x12,1x10 Celestions. The 12 and the 10 give it a great tone. I'll just mention some things that I don't think anybody else mentioned, maybe they did.

One of the coolest features of this amp that nobody mentioned here, was the fact that you can mix ch1 and ch2 with the 5way foot switch. How cool is that? How many other amps can you think of that can do that? That feature gives this amp a voice all of its own.

Another feature is the parallel and series effects loop switch. You can either mix the dry guitar signal with the loop signal or keep it separate keeping the dry guitar signal unmolested. Parallel effects loop is great. It keeps my guitar signal clean while using my full loop. Another great feature is that the 5 way switch can turn on or off the effects loop. One switch, great feature. Now I don't have to do the Irish Jig to turn on and off different effects. One switch, one foot stomp. Cool. Makes my life easier.

I think everyone else already mentioned the rest.

This amp is one of the best. From Clean to Dirty and everything in between. Class A cleans up the mud in those overwound humbuckers and single coils are just awesome.

I've been mainly using the 57 Goldtop with it but the 54 Goldtop sound great as well. The Strat, Tele, Jaguar all have their unique sound that actually come through this amp. No guitar gets muffled or squashed like some other amps are so great at doing. Gibson guitars, Fender, whatever, bring em all on, this amp will make you sound good.

So far so good...

Haven't had the need

This amp is the shit. Listen to Fuzzy (4/21/04), he know's what he's talkin about.

Class A amp. 30 watts of all tube signal. 12 inch and 10 inch vintage Celestions. 6 spring reverb (very good). 5 button footswitch. Great effects loop!!! A very loud amp that breathes with the player. Incredible response and sensitivity, while very quiet in the soft passages.

I play a Gibson ES335 and a stock USA Fender Strat. The other guitarist in our band plays a PRS 10 top custom 22, (he uses a Gibson Goldtone also). A former second guitarist in our band also had a Gibson Goldtone before he sold it to buy chemicals and tried to replace the Goldtone with a cheap Fender amp. He used to say that SRV, Hendrix, Page, Gary Moore, Angus Young, Keith Richards and The Beatles all had a "goosey" tone? He tried to convince us that all of these "goose" tones were worn out and old and we need a new garage sound. Well he lost the gig and is now washing dishes at a local diner and bragging to the bus boys and the other dishwasher,(his sound tech) about his fame in our band. We sound so great now with two Goldtones! They do a great class A Stones and Beatles sound and step on a footswitch and you are in the AC/DC zone. You want Led Zep, Jimi? Tweek a few knobs and presto!!! Our band is booked from the summer all the way through the holidays doing weddings, clubs and corporate parties. We play mostly classic rock and country and this amp is perfect for all of these tones!!!

Never failed!!!!

Have never used them but they have a great website!

This amp is perfectly suited for the classic rock or country sounds. There are lots of other good amps out there but the Goldtone is on the top of the list of Tone, Reliablity, Versatility, quality workmanship and price. I would honestly say that you can get real Marshall Plexi tones, real British Vox tones, real Blackface pre-CBS Fender tones and real Matchless tones without spending many thousands of dollars, spending extra money and down-time in repair shops and not use some trashey sounding modeling amp. Of course I would replace it if I was to lose it somehow. It took many years of experimenting with all kinds of different amps to finally settle on the Gibson Goldtone.

30 watts, class A tube amp. Two channels, clean and gain. Reverb, effects loop. Definitely get the 5 way foot switch. Does what I want it to do... i.e. it sounds like a guitar amp should in my opinion.

I have owned this amp for about two months and have fallen in love with it. To me it is everything I have been looking for since I got rid of an all tube combo in about 1978 (i think it was a Guild). SInce then I have owned an 70's Ampeg (to clean), Peavey (nice but no warmth),Marshall Valve State (decent), and Fender Twin (warm, clean, but no distortion w/o effects).. Nothing quite did it for me tone wise until I got this amp. I play a Les Paul through my GA30-RV, and use no efects. This amp sounds killer on it's own. I play classic rock like: Tom Petty, Stones, AC/DC, etc.. I generally play using both channels at once (clean vol on about 5, and gain channel on about 5, master around 4).. To my ears this amp sounds like a vintage Vox, or Marshall cranked.. but also has great clean warm sounds.. It's awesome.. beautiful sustain and feedback.. Crunchy when cranked but not dirty or harsh.. I can't say enough about how good the amp sounds to me.

Solid as a rock.

ok, called them once.. seemed a little clueless frankly, but doubt I'll ever need them.

Fantastic to my ears.. if you like Rick Nielsen, Angus Young, Tom Petty, et al tone.. then this is the amp for you.