Pignose G40V

Master-volume, treble, bass, mid and presence. 2 6L6GC power-tubes, 3 12AX7 preamp-tubes. As mentioned; your basic Bassman-clone in a small package with a no name 10" speaker (chinese?) No faults in this straightforward set-up. You get what you need.

The set-up seems good in theory. A simple all tube design, no more no less. The sound is unfortunately not very good in reality. I use a Tele with standard-weak pus. Still this Pignose is way to sensitive in its input stage and it is almost impossible to play cleanly at anything above beedrom-level. I've had a tech install a gain-reducing knob at the back of the amp - an absolute necessity IMO. I've tried to connect the amp with a 2 12" cab and it opened up the sound quite a bit. The included 10" speaker does not let the guitar "come out". There is plenty of Boogie/Marshall-like distortion to be had for the inclined. The Pignose is very loud and it is also very noicy. In fack an all tube amp should not be this noicy. You hear more noice than guitar-sounds at low and moderate levels.

Only had it for three days before returning it. This amp runs very hot, and as mentioned before; it smells. No good signs - although I can't really tell about the reliability.

Been playing for 25 years. Had an exellent 100 W Traynor combo earlier, but wanted something lighter. Bought this Pignose to hastily. Pherhaps something for a Boogie-lover on a budget. Don't know. Would not buy again. Bought myself a Fender Blues Junior instead which is only 15 watts - but what a tone!

Not much, very basic, maybe too basic. It has the Treb, bass, mid, and presence controls (presecnce does a lot) and it has outputs for 4 and 8 ohm. The supplied speaker is rated 8 ohms and plugs into the 8 ohm output Even though there is no channel switching or efx loop (which id probably never use) you can still get some really hard sounds from it. It is tubes, which is the main reason i baught it. It is good for the music i play to an extent I can get some reallly hard sounds from it, but when i want to really use chops or palm mute, i like the sounds of the marshall more

I have a really crappy squire but i installed a seymore duncan pickup, but i use my friends 74 gibson Les paul custom, and it makes the cleanest of clean, and can make a pretty dirty distorition The amp is not noisy at all, but my squire makes it hum (bad pickups) and the remote control for my CD player makes it make bleeping noises I think it has a solid state rectifier. The clean doesnt distort much at high volumes, ive only put it up to 8 becuase the thing is loud as a mother but i dont think it would distort any higher. THe distortion isnt taht heavy, like it doesnt have much body, but that may be beucase the 10" speaker I have hooked it up to my friends PA speaker, and that adds a really screaming treble (it has a 12" horn) but i still cant get a thunder sound out of it even with the PA cabs 15" woofer. It suits me for practice with my band and jamming, but i couldnt imagine it being very good on stage for a HardCore show, it wouldnt put out enough to make people want to dance, or mosh. I want to get a marshall VS100RH. But it is a really good blues amp

I transport it every week, the only bad thing is the tubes loosen every so often I have had it for about 4 months, and nothing bad has happenend yet, i can see it going on the road, but i dont think it has sufficient watts to play a show or hall. Still, nothing has happenend yet.

Pignose is very good with support, they gave me loads of info for the amp beofore i baught it, and let me pay sale price a day after the sale ended.

It is a very good amp, but doesnt have the power and badassness of a marshall, still i love my pignose, and i would use it as a backup for a gig, or for jamming with my friends, seeing a 4x12 would be annoying to lug back and forth to practice every week.

The G40V is a 40w all tube single channel amp. It lacks reverb and sports a bassman type circuit. The amp has both pre and post volume controls with treb, mid, bass and presence controls. It also has no effect loop. The cabnet is compact and relatively light. It comes with a 10" 75w capacity speaker on board.
The amp, for the price (around $250 in most places), is probably exactly where it should be in terms of features. You'd likely pay more if the amp had reverb and an effects loop. I have a rack mounted reverb unit anyway and I've never used effects loops all that much.
It's small enough to use for practicing and loud enough to use for gigging. My main use of the amp is for gigging. I have a champ clone that I built that I use for practicing. I play the Pignose through a sealed back cabnet containing two 10" vintage Fender gold back speakers.

Just the onboard speaker - The little speaker just won't cut it for gigging. It just doesn't have enought low end (I play blues). Don't get me wrong...the little speaker does sound good, but it doesn't have enough ooomph playing against another 40w amp with a 12" speaker.
The amp through a cabnet is a whole 'nother story. I play the Pignose through a sealed back cabnet containing two 10" vintage Fender gold back speakers. This is an awesome combintation. A fellow guitarist told me last night that my Strat was the best sounding Strat he'd ever heard. I believe it was the combintation of the Pignose and sealed back cabnet. A Strat through a bad amp sounds terrible. The onboard speaker isn't disabled when the cabnet is plugged in and it adds to the volume of air pushed by the amp.
The sound is pure tube tone...a glassy break up with plenty of bottom end through a cabnet. My Pignose has the stock Chinese tubes and I'll eventually replace the preamp tubes with NOS to even out the harshness.
With the pre and post volumes you can dial in clean all the way up to crunch. Very versatile!

I've talked to Steve Ahola (one of the other reviews here) about his problems with the output transformer. I didn't have that problem with mine but Pignose must have had other problems because they rushed him a replacement. I trust Steve's opinion on the construction although on the outside it looks very well made. We've talked about similar short cuts (or should I say corner cutting) in construction that Peavey makes in it's Classic series of amps.
I've used it on gigs with no problem but I've owned it less that 6 months. So right now I'd have to give it a fairly high mark on reliabilty seasoned with Steve's comments on the amps construction.

I've contacted the company for material on the amp and they rushed pamphlets, catalogs and stickers to me. I also like their bulletin board on their web site. I've asked several questions about the amp there and their techs emailed back very fast.

I'm very pleased with the amp. It's nice to see the reaction of people when I come in with the little amp vs. that after I've played it. The tone is fatter'n heck especially through a cabnet. For the price the amp can't be beat. You could buy a ton of them for the price you'd pay for a boutique amp and the tone of the boutique amp wouldn't be any better.

Just a quick update of my previous review. See comments under reliability.

After posting my original review hear I discovered problems in the construction of my particular amp that should be noted here. The amp always did run hot, with a burnt plastic smell that never did go away and a crinkling noise that I eventually traced to the power transformer. A thorough inspection of the circuit boards revealed several areas with smoky arc marks where the copper was not completely etched away. The connections to the chassis mounted tube sockets also seemed to be wired up with little concern for the high voltages involved. Although the amp sounds great with a well-designed tweed bassman/Marshall-style circuit, I have definite concerns about its reliability and would recommend that the amp be inspected by a qualified amp tech. Once the boards are checked and any excess copper is removed, and all leads properly dressed with adequate clearances, I would upgrade its reliability rating to "8". (That work has been done to my own amp and I would not hesitate to depend on it now.) As mentioned above, these problems were noted on my own amp and may not be representative of the other G40V amps out there.

These mods are offered for educational purposes only with the author assuming no responsibility for your results.

This is a very basic all tube amp- no reverb, no channel switching, no fx loop- but it can get a wide variety of great sounds by adjusting the Volume and Master Volume controls. With the MV set high and the Volume set accordingly, you can get the basic clean Fender sounds. If you turn the MV down to around 5, you can get the classic cranked Fender tones. With the Volume up to 10 and the MV set accordingly, you enter Marshall/Mesa Boogie territory. Other controls include the 3 tone controls along with a Presence control that is quite effective. While the amp doesn't have all (any?) of the features we expect from a modern amp, the sounds are great: "all killer, no filler." For the price, you can buy two of these amps and use an A/B box for amp switching rather than channel switching.

The amp design is based on a '59 tweed bassman with an added preamp gain stage. Used with my strats with Fralin and Van Zandt pickups, I can get all of the sounds I WISH I could get from practically any modern mass-produced amp under $1,000. At low gain settings, the clean sound is very much like a vintage Fender. At moderate gain settings, the amp sounds like a vintage Fender cranked up or overdriven with a stomp box. At the higher gain settings, the amp sounds like a Mesa Boogie, with a very smooth distortion. One drawback is the limited bass response of the 10" speaker, so if you are playing rhythm you'd probably want to plug an extension cabinet into the 4 or 8 ohm speaker jacks. For blues and blues/rock leads the 10" speaker sounds okay, but you can get more volume by plugging in an extension cab.

The amp is built very solidly, which can be a drawback if you would like to modify it at all. The circuit boards are mounted with push-on insulated standoffs dabbed with glue, as are all of the screws mounting the tube sockets and transformers. With all of the connectors reinforced with glue, it is highly unlikely that they will ever vibrate loose. However, if servicing is ever required you will probably learn a few new cuss words from whoever works on it. The ceramic tube sockets are mounted directly to the chassis, which is a fairly heavy gauge sheet metal. All of the pots are mounted on their own thin and long circuit board which can be removed by unscrewing the pot knobs. The pots themselves are the small diameter style which may require replacement after 5 or 10 years. If you were to use it for gigging, I'd recommend using an extension speaker instead of the stock 10", just to keep the strong vibrations from 40 watts away from the tubes and other components.

I e-mailed the distributor a long list of questions concerning the design and construction of the amp, which took them a few days to research before getting back to me. Other companies I've dealt with on-line would not have bothered to do that, but would have referred me elsewhere. When I sent an e-mail thank you note at 8:00 at night, the sales manager responded back in less than 5 minutes with further information I requested (where to order a schematic).

I've only had this amp for a few days but it gets the sounds I've been looking for from my other amps, which include a 65 Pro that was modded with a Torres SuperTexan kit, and Peavy Classic 30 & 50 amps which I've modded myself to eliminate the harshness of the OD channels. As for the almost total lack of modern features, what is the advantage of being able to footswitch over to an OD channel that sounds like crap (Peavy Classics, Fender Deville amps, et al)? An FX loop at the input to the power amp would be a worthwhile addition, as you could add in reverb or whatever, along with using the FX jacks for pre-amp out and main amp-in. My last comment is this: why the hell can't Fender and Peavy design an OD channel that is as versatile as the preamp section of the G40V, which can be set for the whole range of clean to mildly overdriven to high-gain modern distortion? For many of the modern amps, user reviews warn us to avoid the OD channel completely and just plug something like a Tube Screamer into the Normal channel for leads.