Gibson GA-30RV Super Goldtone

Wow. With the optional footswitch (I got the footswitch used from a local music store), you get basically 5 sounds:

Channel 1 - Clean to slight crunch, nice edge
Channel 2 - Very crunchy to high drive, ala Marshall (basic vox to marshall)
Channel 1 & 2 Together, mix 'em as you want them
Channel 1 with Boost
Channel 2 with Boost
Channel 1 & 2 with Boost.

On top of all this, you get cool speaker configurations:
The 10 and 12 together
The 10 alone
The 12 alone
Either of them, or both, with an external cabinet.

Add to this versaitility independent reverb controls (with some true sensibility, for instance, if you select channel one and two together, by default only reverb 2 sets the level (thank god)).

Add to all of this a Series/Parallel effects loop. You can make it sit in series with the Preamp - Poweramp, or parallel, and mix in the amount of effect with your straight signal!

TALK ABOUT FEATURES - This amp rules on features.

Oh My God. All I can say is get your best axe, and get yourself to the nearest dealer. This thing covers the tone, from Matchless to Marshall, with Vintage Vox inbetween.

I have sat with it and tweaked controls, and the speaker settings above, and gotten tones from edgy sparkle, to full Van Halen brown, or Steven Vai sustain. Can clean up pretty nice - but this is not a fender.

I love this amplifiers sounds. Really, get on over to a dealer and play with one.

I have no idea although it is a tube amp, and tubes do blow. But I like that! Because they are easy to change, and different valves give different sounds.

Other than that, they do say in the manual that they have laid out the amp with traditional point-to-point wiring priciples. However, there is still some circuit boards in the amp, although not in the sound chain.

Lastly they use all porcelain tube sockets with gold plated connectors.

Should last quite some time. I honestly havent had it long enough to speak to reliability.

I would anticipate the worst, ala typical Gibson and Fender.

This is the best amp I have ever had, or heard.

My main guitar (when not on my Vicente Carrillo Rio), is a PRS Custom 22 10 top, with tremolo. The only effect I use is a delay. The guitar has Dragon II pickups. Rotating through all of the selector positions on the guitar yields fantastic sounds from this amp. I have been hard pressed to set it to sound bad. For me, that is a first. I have used so many setups with a narrow sweet spot. With this rig the whole thing is sweet spot.

I am into playing alternative/indy pop with this setup, although the tone from this would stand up to nearly anything. However, if you are a shredder, find something else. This thing lacks noise, and does not create that false electronic wall of distortion. This amp is all warm, harmonic, sweet soul of guitar sound.

I think you really should at least go try one out - the sound is boggling.

I love this amp!!! I bought it brand new in 2001 and have had it for over a year and a half. 30 watts of class A power. Two GREAT sounding preamps-both with footswitchable boosts (very useful). Parallel or series effects loop. Interesting speaker configuration (1x12 and 1x10) but after you get used to it, the combination of the two speakers as well as individual speaker miking techniques, yields a wide pallet of tones. Very quiet channel switching. Surprisingly loud. This amp is at home in any venue. Tone controls are very precise, even a half notch of tweakage can entirely change the charactaristics of your tone (especially the Middle control on the Dirty channel). The preamps are both brilliantly tuned with vast versatility on either channel.

I've used about every type of guitar with this amp- Les Pauls, 335's, SG's, strats, teles, you name it. This amp responds very well to all of them. I typically use a Les Paul Classic with it though. The amp can dish out pretty much anything (unless you are looking for a Mesa/Boogie Rectifier distortion). This amp sounds like a hybrid between an AC-30 and a Marshall JCM 800/900. The clean channel sounds great! It gets really glassy when you give it some juice, and when you turn the channel volume fairly high it yields a great clean crunch (especially with the boost ON). This amp really shines through the dirty channel. By keeping the gain around four and cranking the channel volume, the tone is thick and ballsy with great clarity. By switching the boost ON, of course you get more gain, but the dynamic of the distortion is very tight and focused. I normally plug it in to my Mesa 4x12 with vintage 30's. You wouldn't believe how huge this amp can sound. It's my secret tone weapon. Oh yeah, and the accutronics reverb on this amp is lush but not overbearing. It doesn't color your tone, it just makes it BIGGER. So there you have it. Anything from a boxy Vox-esque clean/crunch (I A/Bed it with my AC-15) to a loose Orange like grind (A/Bed with my Orange AD-15 1x12) to a full on balls to the wall Marshall JCM 800/900 (I've worked with both) This amp really covers it all.

I've had this amp for a year and a half now. I play it often, and when I play it, I play it hard. I've never had even a glimpse of a problem with it. I've traveled all over the country with it and it's been a complete dream the whole way. I know I'm letting down my responsability tag, but I've never even had to change the tubes in it yet. Even though it's a handwired point to point class A amp, I don't even bring a backup amp. It's proved itself to me already.

I've never had to call Gibson.

I've been playing for 11 years. My gear collection rivals a music store and this amp is by far the best sounding amp I own. I'm even considering buying the head version of this amp too. The natural tones are great, the amp sounds great with pedals in front of it (which we all know is a rarety if we admit it), it's got just enough features to give you great tonal freedom, yet not enough to bog you down with a bunch of extra curcuitry that just eats up your tone. The only thing that bothers me about it is it's weight, but it's not a big enough issue to give this amp a less than perfect rating. So far I've had TWO of my fellow guitar playing friends hock their AC-30's for one of these bad boys.

I believe this is a 2001 model, Class A 30 watt via 4 EL84's. It features 2 independent preamps (one for clean, one for dirty) and a boost for each. Effects loop, 6 spring accutronics reverb (seperated by channel, which means you can have one level of reverb for one channel and another level for the other channel). One Vintage 30 and one Vintage 10 speaker. The 30 carries the low end while the 10 carries the shimmer of the high end. The optional 5-button foot controller is a must. You can play thru both preamps at the same time, almost like playing thru 2 different amps!!! It may cost another $100 but it's definitely worth it. The provided foot controller sucks. No LED lights or markings or anything! You don't know on stage if you're in boost mode or not, so get the 5-button.

I play classic style rock with a modern edge. This amp is PERFECT for anything classic rock or blues. I play a '93 Gibson Nighthawk, a '90 Les Paul Studio with EMG's and a '88 Amercian STD Strat with LSR Roller Nut, Schaller locking tuners and a Hipshot Tremsetter (Yeah it has a little bit of tone). Higher volumes give you a fuzz style distortion with humbuckers. It really will kick your ass. If you back off a little the overdrive is UNBELIEVABLE!!! I've never heard an amp sound so good. I also own a Fender Twin and it kicks it in the ass. I've searched for the perfect sound and have now found it. This amp will bring you one step closer to heaven. It is the definition of a rock guitar amp. I couldn't imagine anything sounding better.

When I first bought it I had some problems but took it in still under warranty and it sounds great with no problems now.

Warranty worked - no prob

This amp is incredible. It's made by Trace Elliot under the Gibson name, but they did a GREAT job on it. If I ever lost this or it was stolen I would have to track down the jerk that did it and execute him. This amp is better than sex. I've been playing 16 years and have found my bread and butter. Check this amp out.

This 30W 1x12 + 1x10 class A tube combo was manufactured in the UK around 2000 or 2001, weighs in at 75 lbs and is built to last a lifetime. Lists for $2,400, Musician's Friend sells for $1500, I got it from Mars Music during thier liquidation sale for $1000. Outer features include: heavy-duty handle, metal corner protectors, rugged rubber feet, black vinyl/tolex, gold piping, brass speaker grilles, no-nonsense two button foot switch, and heavy-duty switches and knobs. Guts include: 11 Tubes?4 EL84s, 5 12AX7s, and 2 12AT7s; 2 channels?channel one consists of master, volume, treb, mid, bass, boost, reverb-channel two is the same but substitute gain and level for volume; off/standby/on switch; speakers?one 12" Celestion Vintage 30 (50 oz magnet) and one 10" Celestion Vintage 10 (27 oz magnet); Reverb?6 spring accutronics; FX loop?send and return level controls & series/parallel switch. The complete signal path (preamps, FX loop, 'verb, & power stage is 100% class A tube. The GA-30RV is not hand made (though is a worthy opponent to most boutiques out there), but is built and laid out using very high quality components (no, it doesn't come stocked with NOS tubes) and point to point wiring principals. The tube sockets are porcelain and the jack sockets are gold plated; power/output transformers and chokes use high-grade laminations, and windings are resin soaked. This rig pumps out more than enough power (30W class A is hotter and louder that 30W A/B and which is much louder than 50-60W solid state-how is this possible? I don't know the electrical/physical reason for it, an engineer may tell you this is hype and bullshit generated by tube heads and amp manufacturers, but check it out for yourself it is true-) . Pit it against a 100W Line 6 Flextone II XL 2x12 and it held its own and more volume wise and kicked its ass in every direction tone wise (of course you know the tone wise part of it already, I'm just telling you that the Goldtone pumps out all the power you will need, unless you need a full stack.)

Using a Custom Shop Class 5 Les Paul with BurstBuckers and a cheap guitar with single coils. I use no FX because I have no FX (really don't want anything getting in the way of its natural tone). The Paul sounds great clean and great dirty. I use channel one for clean to super clean and warm country/jazz type sounds to slightly overdriven complex sounds ala Faces, Stones, Chuck Berry etc., and channel two for sound from Trower, Cream, Bluesbreakers, Zep, Allmans to clean and all in between. The gain is fat, creamy, and just blooms with all sorts of rich harmonic complexities, very easy on the ears, in fact it massages my ears as the notes decay and reveal themselves in all of their mathematical subdivisional fractional glory. The amp is capable of that expensive sweet warm tone (great for jazz and blues) as well as that brutal but soothing overdriven tone (picture John Bonham's drums but only on a guitar). This amp just inspires you to play, practice, and jam.
If you are looking for that Slayer/Pantera sound then keep shopping amps; although I have played some Priest, VH, Metallica, and Ozzy thru it and it does hold its own.
Overall, very responsive, full, robust, complex, detailed class A tube tone and power.

I've been using it at various volume levels and settings, hauling it all over hell's acre, and sitting on it since March 2002. No sign of any scars yet. In fact, it sounds better now than it did last month.

Very helpful customer service in Nashville; they'll talk to you about music and equipment all day long-they really seem to know their stuff.

Been playing 15 years and listening to music since I was a fetus.
I enjoy this amp immensely, but would probably replace it with a 1963 Vox, Bogner, Top Hat, Matchless, Victoria, or Peavey--NOT!
I love everything about it, and it looks like a cool piece of furniture to boot, very traditional and classic grille.
I realize that these reviews are somewhat self serving-we buy stuff, feel passionate about it want to sound off to someone, want reassurance that we bought the right thing, and want to read, talk, and think about our toys as much as we can. Truth is I don't visit chat rooms, bulletin boards, and the like, and quite honestly I'd rather be playing thru my GA-30RV right now, but my wife is sleeping and I can't be dissin' her at this hour, so here I am writin' all you foos. OUT!

Oh yea, gots me a Vibro King too and it Kicks the Gobson's ass on pure clean tone but not the dirty tones.