Rivera K-55 Knucklehead

Les r??glages : canal 1 ( saturations ) graves, m??dium, aigus, volume, gain et boost ( booste le gain )
canal 2 : graves, m??dium, aigus, volume, gain, boost, bright ( modifie le type fr??quences aigues, les rendant + p??chues ) notch ( creuse les m??diums )
+ 2 r??glages communs : focus et pr??sence ( tr??s utiles et efficaces ! )

Cet ampli poss??de des r??glages simples et ultra efficaces, j'ai eu beaucoup d'amplis chez moi, entre autres, mesa quad+2 ninety, peavey classic 30, mesa v-twin rackmounth, marshall jcm 900. Aucun de ces amplis ne poss??de une pal??te sonore aussi grande ( except?? le quad pr??amp, mais qui est 100 fois plus compliqu?? ?? r??gler pour des r??sultats sonores pas meilleurs ). C'est pourquoi je lui met la note maxi, malgr?? un petit regret : pas de r??verb int??gr??e.

Une vraie Tuerie !!! J'arrive avec cet ampli ?? aborder tous les styles :
Jazz, blues, rock, m??tal etc ... Et la polyvalence rejoint la qualit?? !
J'ai enfin trouv?? un ampli qui me permet d'alier des mes types de sons clairs favoris ( SRV, mark knopfler ) et mes saturations favorites ( Santana, gary moore, black sabbath, angus young ) !
( mes guitares sont une fender stratocaster customis??e et une les paul standard gibson )
J'arrive m??me ?? imiter le son de mon autre ampli, le peavey classic 30 de fa??on tr??s convaincante ( avec + de profondeur et de pr??cision )
Rien ?? dire ?? part que c'est fabuleux !!!

Aucun probl??me pour le moment ( un an d'utilisation ). L'ampli ?? l'air t??s costaud ...

Comme dit pr??c??demment, en 15 ans de guitare, j'ai essay?? beaucoup d'amplis ( dont mesa boogie quad+2 ninety, peavey classic 30, mesa v-twin rackmounth+2 ninety, marshall jcm 900 100 watts, roland JC ). Enfin avec cet ampli, j'ai trouv?? mon bonheur. Il allie ce que j'aime en son clairs et en satur??s. En + il me permet de jouer dans d'autres styles que ceux que je joue habituellement de fa??on + que convaincante ( m??tal, jazz ).
Que puis-je esp??rer trouver ailleurs un ampli qui me plaise d'avantage ? Honn??tement, je ne pense pas !!!

The features have been covered by other owners.

It's a versatile amp with nice cleans and distorted tones. It's a two channel head with boost. I've used this amp during band reheasale and to be honest that's where it fell short. It has a boatload of head room!! Insanely loud!

again this amp has nice glassy cleans. The distortion seems to be a bit piercing to my ear. It's pretty hard to eq this amp. It's not forgiving and it the louder it gets the harsher it can sound with overwhelming bite. The distortion isn't brutal but certainly a Marshall on roids is the best I can describe it like the others here have said. It's pretty muddied and doesn't have that certain crunch like the british amps have. It's very quiet and built very well. High quality constuction and componments. Once again when I took it to band practice it was damn loud but looses defintition and roar. I wasn't impress afterwards. I guess that's why Rivera discontinued this model.

Built like tank

I've heard great things about their customer support

Not sure what year it is. I'am probably the third owner. It's either id to late nineties. This amp definitely has versatility written all over it. It can go from clean jazz to hard/heavy rock. Metal wouldn't be it's strong point because it has a bit more of a saturated distorted.. which I love! Amps that can do metal have more of a compressed and tight sound like Engl, Framus,and Krank are gear toward that. Not this Rivera. The newer Riveras can do metal with ease. But the K55 can some metal but not within the caliber like the above mentioned.

This is a two channel head. Channel 1 is aim toward the Marshall sound. Not quite though. It has like a medium between an american/british sound. very cool. Channel two is base on the Fender twin/bassman with a notch pull knob for switch between them. It's got a great effects loop and the input jacks are metal not plastic like many amps that are being made today. I love the Focus and presence knobs. It really helps you fine tune and add sustain to your sound. I wish it had reverb though. But the other K55 has that feature. Other than that with the ninja boost...(dumb name no offense) and gain boost are great add features!

I use this amp as my main or backup along with my Laney VH100R! Great amp as well! This baby has got tons of power! 55 watts of pure tube pwer! Loud as hell!!

This amp has a pallete of sounds!! It's just as versatile as my Vh100r! The clean can stay clean at high volumes without breaking up!! Or it can give you some grit to it for dirty clean or raunchy blues. The distortion is great! If you like AC/DC like distortion? It's there! If you want more hard to heavy modern distortion? It's there also. You'll need to learn to use the Focus and presence knobs to acheieve the distortion along with your gain knob of course. Overall great tight, full but saturated distortion! Very rich! I have to make a note that the cleans are awesome! very fenderish with alot of character. I use a Gibson Les Paul Classic and ESP EC-1000 with JB/59 pickups! Both guitars sounded great! I play more modern style rock and this amp is perfect for it! The K55 is very, very quiet! Definitely a live and studio amp!

Not sure...but the components and construction looks top notch! From what I've read from the others. They seem to be very well made. Plus this is a 90's model and it's been good to me so far.

I email and called Rivera for about two weeks and haven't gotten a response...I have to take points off this one.

I've been playing for 12 years and having own my fair share of amps like Marshall DSL.....too compressed sounding and not to mention a slight delay footswitching between the channels annoyed the hell out of me. Mesa Stilleto duece, nice sounding amp, nice cleans and distorted tones except when you play palm muting....that's when it blows chunks! The ACE and second version has certainly improved on it's weakness. Engl Thunder/Powerball....not impressed. Doesn't cut through the mix well and has to be cranked close to it's max point for volume...not good for a tube amp. Line 6.....very processed...but you can get some good tones if you spend hours, days, and weeks and so on tweaking it. Orange Rockerverb 50. Very nice amp as well. But has it's limitations as well. Like a bad rep for reliablity. I was lucky that mine was a good one but I ended up selling it because of various reasons. Wasn't loude enough for me. Eq isn't flexiable....very subtle difference in sound when you hear it. Not very dynamic and responsive as my Vh100r or K55. Overall I love the amp. Took a bit of time to tweak it but nowhere as sensitive as my Laney...she was a bitch to tweak! But in the end She sounds great! If you get a chance to grab on of these little treasures? Get one! They are fantastic amps!

I really dont use too many features provided with this amplifier. I do know that even with a blown El-34 this amp kicked out some nice clean tones while I was on stage. Ninja Boost provides a definative overdrive difference on the clean channel(although never needed with me). Provides a array of overdrive tone styles from death metal to funk.

I love the sounds that this amp provides for the music I play. I am in a hardcore/deathmetal band and this amplifier provides every bit of distortion that I want. It goes way more than head to head with solid state Marshalls and such. '55 is very loud, even at "3".

Never have had a problem except for tube replacement.

Always recieved an answer to my e-mail questions within a day or two.

I love this amplifier. I have owned Fender amplifiers and Trace Elliot amps and have never been so pleased with either.

Enough, and more than most, although verb would have been nice.

The distortion channel, and the clean channel is the perfect platform for pedals. Just an awesome amp for the $$$ compared to other amps in it`s class, like the Bogner Shiva or the Budda SD30. Nice fat lower mids if that`s your thing, or blackface cleans if you don`t like mids with the pull pot.

This is the second one I`ve bought, and my 1st shit the bed on the channel switching, and they sent me the parts and gave me instructions on how to fix it, and I bought it used. Pretty F`n good. My new old one needs nothing, and never has.

They don`t make em anymore, but they`ll bail you out if you have a problem

Best amp for the $$$ hands down. I could have ranted and raved about this SOB, but it`s great and blows the shit out of the R55. Paul done good on this one, and that`s all I can say. The clean channel works great with pedals, and If you want to plug straight in, it kills on both....peroid IMHO.

This amp have serval features. Dual channles and boost for each channle and focus knob.
I think the simpler the better inmost cases. This amp is pretty simple but very sensitive. Love the sound of each channle but I can't switch from clean to heavy sounds with out the mids sounding like two different amps. But the boost for each channles works nice. I really like the one channle 2 boost. I think you can get lots of great tones but I can't seem to be able to switch from channle 1-2 very evenly.

I play a Fender Squier Jagmaster with a Seymour Duncan invader bridge and Seymour Duncan 59 in the neck. I also play a SG standard. OK laugh about the Squire Jagmaster and INvader. But I ad this invader way before Blink182 came around. I love it for heavy hardcaore stuff. And the Jagmaster well it sets up better and has good tone with out any amp.
I had a MArshall JCM900, Mesa Boogie MK3, Line 6 Flextone 2,
The Rivera has put them all on the shelf. The Distortion is my favorit. I play around the SAn Francisco metal-punk scene and I have managed to step out of the Marshall sound, which I love, but the rivera is just more tone and you have two channles with boost for both of them.

Gig every weekend. never a problem

CAlled to order a footswitch. None of that phone hold, dial pad mojo. Just a guy to take my order.

I really like my amp. I can for now sit back and grow it to this amp a bit instead of out growing this amp.

The Amp was made in 95 or 96, I bought him 96. Was quite hard to get this baby in germany. I was 18 and found one in a small city next to my town - the shop soled out and they had Riveras - never saw one in a german shop again!! The amp fits me hardly perfect - on stage I have to change both volume and master in each channel twice in the set. And I don't think I get more Booster than the one I use for solos. I think every amp should have switchable Mastervolume settings (would be my wish) but don't we all get along? I use every feature of the amp! Ah we play a Bluesy70sRock-Grunge-Stonerrock-overtheedge.... yes we sound like us!!!

I mainly play an Gibson Sg stand. Pickups.
Suit my lust for blues aswell as high gain solo and bonecrushing rythm sounds. The clean are sweet, especially in Blackface setting uiihhh. I heard lots of shitamps and there are many good ones too, but really better than this one - no!!!
I use several Fx Ibanez Fl-301, DD5, CS3, CE5, Crybaby Wah, MXR 133 - loop works nice too.

No Problems ever!!!
Thats important to me!!!

I met Paul Rivera at the Frankfurt music convention and complained about rust at the cornercaps - he shipped me new chrome ones for free to germany. THX Paul
P.S.: Eloxiated Metal does not stand me

Perfect!!! Strangely I use it with a 4*100W Rath 4*12 Thiele-Style cabinet. That provides me headroom - o.k Vintage 30s sound better for the clean sounds and it's a 55 Watt amp - but well it works perfect for me. The cabinet is Killer, opensounding, powerfull, articulatet tons of bass - wow. Hope I can stand the chance to lay my hands on a new Reverb model.

I bought this amp new in '95. This is a straight forward amp with two channels, but each channel has some great features, like gain boosts and eq pulls. There is an effects loop with variable gain, though I have used it sparingly. And with focus and presnece knobs, it is really a tweakers delight. Some folks have complained about its lack of reverb, but I like the fact that Rivera left out that feature on this amp. Let effects companies worry about good reverbs and let Rivera make great amps.

This is an amazing amp. Reviewers are contantly comparing it to Marshall, Fender and Boogie, but I really feel this amp has its own unique voice. In my younger days I used this with a Jackson Fusion Custom (loud humbuckers - we were all young once), and now I use it with a tele custom (single coil bridge, fat humbucker near the neck). This amp has aged nicely as I have matured as a player. I bought it when I was 17 (I am now 26), and it has been a lasting investment.

I agree with some of the reviewers that this amp could stand for just a tad more gain in channel 1 if you are seeking true brutal saturation. However, this is still thick stuff, and its added low frequencies can make this amp sound heavier than say a Marshall. What's amazing about this channel is how it still lets the guitar speak. I play really colorful chords (like major 7ths, major ninths, minor 11ths, lots of open strings), and you can still hear so much clarity with the gain up to 10 and the boost on.

Channel 2 is the "clean" channel but if all you are looking for is clean tones from this channel, then you are really missing out. I'm not a blues player, but you can get some great SRV lead tones out of this channel. If you turn down the lows and up the highs, you can get a great crunchy rhythm tone that I love. Playing open chords is a dream. Or palm mutes or power chords... This is the sound of rock and roll. It's not a Vox, not a Fender, not a Boogie, but it has some of the best aspects of each. Like I said, it's really its own beast.

Additionally, because of its beefy low end, you can get some amazingly warm jazz tones out of this. I'll use this with my ES335 and I am simply blown away. I did my undergrad in jazz studies and I chose this amp to perform my senior recital. It's just that good. Really warm... Expresive... Nice bite.

Some people have complained about the ninja boost being to much of a boost on channel 2 and only good for solos. It really depends on how you set up the amp. This is my primary rock amp and as mentioned earlier, I use the "clean" channel for deeply expresive and slightly distorted tones. With the gain around 9, the amp will stay clean when my tele is struck lightly and break up in all the right ways when I really lay into it. With the ninja boost on, it's more of an even distortion, with elements of compression due to the extra gain. A little jump in volume is noticeable with the additional gain, but not much. I set up the amp so that there are different gain levels, all at relatively even intervals: channel 2, channel 2 with ninja, channel 1, and channel 1 with boost. Amazing. Only if you use the amp for pure clean sounds does the ninja boost act as a clean volume boost.

Amp has been taken on tour with no road case or a back-up and performed wonderfully. My only problem was with the foot switch. While on tour, the cable went bad. I assume this could happen to any footswitch after use (and abuse). That is the only reason for not giving a full 10.

I ordered replacement tubes from Rivera once (a few years back). They were very friendly, but the tubes were on backorder. After placing the order, no tubes were ever sent. They never charged me; it was just as if they misplaced my order. That was my only experience with the company.

Don't try to make this amp sound like other amps. Let its voice shine through and you will be very happy. I recommend this for all types of rock playing (classic, modern, indie, etc.). It is also excellent for Blues and Jazz. It would not be my first choice for ultra-bright clean tones (modern country or rock-a-billy playing; I'm not saying it can't do it, but it has a little more color than traditional clean tones) or true heavy/death metal tones. It takes some time to find all of the best tones in the amp, but they are in there. And it's worth experimenting with.

Two channel head without reverb. Channel 1 referred to as the "Marshall" channel, channel 2 referred to as the "Fender" channel. Each channel has independant gain, bass, mid, treble and master, with a focus and presence control which covers both channels. Channel 2 also has a bright switch and a notch switch. Each channel has it's own independant boost function. Series FX loop with both send and return level pots. 55 watts, with 5 12AX7's (Sovteks) in the preamp and 2 EL-34's (Svetlanas) in the power amp. Included 3 button footswitch (channel select, ch1 boost, ch2 boost). This amp was made in 2000, so it has the factory gain mod.

Real nice feature set for a two channel amp. Some people might like reverb, and a half power switch would be nice.

I play a hollow ash Tele, and like classic rock type tones. I haven't played humbuckers through it yet, just single coils.

The general classification of the two channels is fairly accurate. Ch1 to me is Marshally, ala JCM800. It's not quite as smooth as a good Plexi, or an Egnater, but not overly fuzzy. It has a little of that JCM treble attack when you hit the strings. The EQ is VERY sensitive and wide ranging. This is good and bad. Due to the wide range of the controls, you should be able to get any EQ settings you want. But they can be sensative and interactive, so mild knob changes can have strong results. I was initially surprised at the relatively low amount of gain, with the gain knob below 7. You can definitely set this channel to cleaner tones if you wish. Above 7, it becomes more sensitive and you can get some higher gain sounds.

The boost on ch1 is really nice. Adds the right touch of gain and volume to be used as a solo boost or third channel.

Ch2 has a good clean tone. By playing with the bright and notch switches, you can get a variety of tones. It has more life and character to it than a Hot Rod Deluxe, or a Twin. You can get some of the sparkle of a Vibrolux or Deluxe Reverb. You can get some of that sparkle, but still have some beef in the low end.

At least at the volumes I typically play at, the boost for channel 2 is unuseable....too much volume boost. Some people recommend keeping the boost on and setting relative levels that way.

Rivera claims that the focus knob adjusts the "tightness" of the sound, to make an open back cab sound more closed backed, or vice versa. It really sounds sorta like a presence knob for lower mids to me.

For pedals, I run into a Budda wah, Fulltone Fatboost, Fulldrive 2 and ChoralFlange, then into an Ernie Ball volume pedal. I've also tried a Fulltone Distortion Pro. Between the two channels with boost, the Fatboost and FDII, I have all the gain levels I could need. The DP sounds like crap through channel 1, so I've taken it out of my chain.

The tough thing about multichannel amps is getting good tones out of both channels. Neither of these channels would qualify as my favorite tone for that gain level, but combined, it's one of the best marriages of two channels I've come across.

Think about it....how many other 2 channel amps can you name where big name artists make their living off it's clean tones (Albert Lee) or it's gain tones (Korn, other rockers)?

Haven't had it long enough to say. Appears to be built really well, so not concerned about how rugged it is. I have heard that it is VITAL to use appropriate recommended (power)tubes in Riveras. Failure to do so will burn through tubes, and might cause damage to the amp.

Haven't had it long enough to say. I have heard good things about their service, however.

Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised with it. I did the trade without having played one, just off reviews. This amp can be a lot more work in finding your tones, but you will be rewarded with it's flexibility. Probably not the best choice for the plug and play crowd.

1994 I believe. 2 channels (Fender, Marshall). Ninja boost (ch. 2), gain boost (ch. 1)...3 button footswitch. Pretty basic Rivera head. I do like the Notch pull knob on ch.2- gives you the option of tweed vs. blackface Fender tones. This one's got EL 34 Tesla's in it, but I'm probably gonna put a pair of 6L6's in there. 12AX7A preamp tubes.

Killer blues overdrive. Sparkly clean tones and can really dig down for some heavy distortion. I really enjoy lightly overdriving the Fender channel (2) and channel 1 sounds great for some AC/DC hard rock type of stuff.

It's 10 years old and still cooking fine.

Haven't talked to Paul yet, but he seems like a nice guy.

I love this thing-- huge improvement over my 15w solid-state Marshall practice amp. I'm considering a THD hotplate attenuator so I can really harness the power of this badboy.