Randall RB1000 Road Warrior Head

This particular head was made in 1993. It puts out 300 Watts into 2 ohms and it sounds totally awesome. It has a built in compressor, contour switch, 7 band rotary equalizer which can be turned on by a footswitch , effects loop, variable level direct out, both 1/4 inch out and XLR. It is only one channel but thats all I need. It has every feature I would want in a bass amp and the sound thumps. I play a 5 string and to my ears nothing sounds better. I play new rock loud and dirty but I like the bass tone to be loud, deep and very clear and this bad boy does the trick with power to spare. It is 100% solid state but it was made by Randall, Irvine,CA.

I us Bartoloni pickups and the tone is exactly what I want. Deep, punchy and very low noise. Being a bass amp I am not interested in getting any distortion from my rig. It is a clean 300 watts rms and with the 7 band equalizer you can get whatever you want. It records incrediblly well using the direct out.

I bought the amp used and it had a bad power transformer. It still worked but you could fry an egg on it. The amp is 10 years old and 300 watts is a lot of powere so I think it is just do to being used at loud volumes for a long period of time. When I put the amp on the test bench I found that my preamp power had dropped on the negative side of the power. Even before I changed the power transformer the amp always worked without a single problem other than the hot transformer. This thing is built extremely well as I checked it out from the inside out.

I am an electronic engineer so I have never sent the amp to be repaired. I did have to try and find a schematic and I was shocked when I called the new Washburn/Randall. I had heard that they were not helpful or supportive of the old randall amps. The gentleman that helped me was one of the nicest guys I have ever talked to at any factory. He immediately sent me the schematic of the amp and gave me suggestions for where I might purchase a replacement part. I don't know if this is recent or what but speaking to this one employee totally changed the way that I feel about Randall\Washburn.

I have been playing for 27 years. If it were stollen I would set my automatic ebay search to find me another RB1000 or RB2000 or RBA500 or a RBA 500ES or RBA500HT and I would bid like a mad man. I would definitely replace it. I compared it to the Red line Carvin 1500 Watt bass head, High power Ampeg bass head, Trace Elliot, SWR, Fender, Lab Series, Crate. You name it. In all honesty there are no other features that I wish it had. For the size, sound, power, flexibility, features, you can't go wrong with this amp. I will never get rid of mine.