Guyatone GA-1000

The Guyatone GA-1000 is basically a Fender-like amp, with 4 EL34 power tubes and 5 12AX-7 preamp tubes. It has a solid state-rectifier. It has two independant channels with two inputs each. Each channel has gain, bass, middle and treble controls. The first channel also features a little switch to chose between instrument or vocal. It has a spring reverb which can be assigned to one or both of the channels. It has a tremolo effect, which can also be assigned to one or both of the channels. Last but not least, it has a headphone jack next to the speaker jack. Both effects can be switched on/off with a footswitch.
No effect send/return, no preamp out.
Due to its age, it earns 8 points. A second speaker out or an ohm switch at the output would increase that.

I tested this amp with my Fenix Strat copy, which has excellent wood and hardware and can compete with any good Fender Strat. The neck PU is a Fender American Standart Strat SC, the middle PU is a pretty thin sounding Shadow SC with hum-reducing extra coil, the bridge PU is a Rockinger Blade Screamer, somewhat equal to a Seymour Duncan Hot Rail. For distortion sounds I use an Ibanez Metal Charger foot pedal. It is connected to a Guyatone "President" 4x10" speaker cabinet.
This amp has bite! In fact, I never heard any guitar amp with more treble than this one! Clean sounds are really sparkling, reproducing the finest details of your playing. The character is like a Fender, but is sounds much more evil. Far less bass, but more highs than you ever need.
When you switch the first channel to vocal, you get more bass in your sound, and it sounds really great with my strat, especially the neck PU. It is that legendary vintage Strat-through-Fender-amp with an extra dose of sparkle. Ideal for surf music.
Putting a distortion Pedal between the guitar and the is pure fun. With the treble control, you can at bite to even the muddiest distortion sound, and my Metal-Distortion-pedal sounds much more like a fuzz when used with that amp. Sonic Youth would like that sound.
If you an additional preamp and crank up the Guyatone's volume, you get a very dirty distortion sound, which I can't compare to anything I heard yet - except my fist guitar "amp", an old tube radio with the guitar connected to the turntable input. Again, the Guaytone has way more highs.
The Reverb is really crap. It sounds really thin and adds lots of noise to the sound.
I can't test the Tremolo because it's broken.
The amp is very noisy, but an amp tech told me that's because the caps are old need to be changed, so it should be more quiet when reparied.
Anyway, the amp's sound scores 10 points because I fell in love with that sound.

When I got this amp, it broke after about two weeks. Since it spend at least 10 years in a hot attic, all the capacitors were dead an killed the power amp stage with DC.
It desperately needs a cap job, but I guess any amp of that age needs that.
I can't tell you any more about reliabillity, but the amps interior makes a good impression. The only thing that might need replacement are the tube sockets, since they don't seem to hold the tubes very tight.
Five points...

There is no support from the Guyatone any more, since they were out of business for a long time.
If you own this amp, you are left on your own. Just like almost any vintage gear.

I definately love this amp! I got it from a friend in exchange for a Valvestate combo, and I definately made a good deal!
To me, this is the best sounding amp I ever played, and I tried the best! With all the amps I tried before, the pickups of my guitar sounded somewhat equal, more bass at the neck, more treble at the bridge. With the guyatone, switching between pickups sounds like switching the whole equipment!
What I don't like at all are the noise, the bad reverb and the broken tremolo. I plan to replace all the caps in the amp, hoping to get a working tremolo and less noise. Since I don't use reverb, the bad sound of it doesn't hurt me at all. Possibly I'll get me a digital delay one day.
This amp is a pretty rare thing, if you are a collector or vintage fan and find it one day, get it! If you want top-40 sounds, need channel switching or a "standard" sound, don't buy it. This amp has it's own character.
If this amp was stolen, I'd possibly jump off a bridge since I don't know where to get an amp like that again. In fact, this is the only GA-1000 I've ever heard of in my whole life. I searched the whole www for signs of it, but I could not find anything. So, if you own this amp or know of someone owning it, please mail me!

Full 10 points, because I know I won't find an amp that suits _my_ needs better than that.