Randall RG1003 RG Series Amplifier Head

Let me start off by saying that this thing sounds great for what it costs. If you have the money for a tube amp and that's what you want, get a tube amp. If you don't want to shell out $$$ for a tube amp, get this. I am getting great tones out of it in drop c on my 6 string, and A# / A tunings on my 7 strings. I am running them through the RD212v30 cab, and the tones are great. If you can manage it, it might sound better with a v30 and a g12 series speaker combination. Even ran through my 2x12, this thing is loud enough to perform in small venues without your cab being micd. Definitely recommend and would purchase again. Would recommend a noise gate pedal to go with this head when playing at high volumes.The footswitch does what its supposed to, and has a decent cord length.

Its loud and sounds good when it worked. All of the potentiometers are pretty much shot. 2 channels no longer work. I bought this a couple years ago so there is no longer a warranty. I cleaned the pots with contact cleaner and it still did not work. After some research, it appears this is common with this amp now that people have had them for awhile. If I get ambitious I will order new potentiometers and replace them. Otherwise, for someone that is not mechanically inclined that is willing to dive into and tear apart something like an amplifier, I would save your money and put is towards a nice tube head (Mesa boogie, EHV, Marshall etc.).

Great amp! Plenty of punch! The first one I got had a problem out of the box however with an intermittent cutout issue. It took 3 weeks to get a replacement however. Randall will take 2 weeks to "evaluate" it first before replacing. Of course no one tells you that. So that is why the 4 stars. The delay was a problem as I had gigs to play and had to rent equipment. Money I didn't want to spend. Well, enough gripe about that.The amp itself is excellent for metal (it's a Randall!) with the right speakers & ohm rating.I found that if you run high impedance (16 ohms), the low-end was weak. No thump joy. Change that to a 4 ohm cabinet and now you get some serious thump. Of course that depends on the cabinet you use & speakers. I spent some time getting the cabinet to my liking. I have a Seismic 2x12 Luke (it's a bit oversized) enclosed cabinet with 2 Peavey Black Widows (8 ohm - in parallel -> 4 ohm cab) and I have 2 sides (back & bottom-longways) inside lined with 1" foam (the kind you use on a bed you get at w-mart). That foam configuration tightens up the low end and keeps it from making the "thwack" sound from too much bass reflection. The Black Widows are 1208-8 with a low to mid-high freq range (Usable range specs at 50 hz - 3.5 Khz). I run an mxr 10 band eq in the effects loop & an mxr smartgate in the front. This provides excellent tonal tweak-ability and a nice tight sound. The amp controls are pretty tweak-able in and of themselves. A little goes a long way when dialing in tone. Also, you need to be careful with the gain. I find that 12-1 o'clock on chan 3 is sufficient. More than that will cause things to get fizzy-fuzzy (unless you like fizzy-fuzzy, then hey, have at it). Chan 3 is your lead channel. It has more headroom for volume and has a bit more bite. Chan 2 is more the rhythm channel. Sounds great but a little less bite & vol. The clean chan is super crisp & clear (thank you solid-state). Can't ask for more than that. With my setup I can get some serious Poisonblack type tone. The more master vol the better it sounds. It's got a set of cojones! With the vol at 5 and chan vol at 7 it will move serious air. I can say that this does have the ability to provide some good heavy sound with thump & bite under the right config (I had different speakers (Eminence) and they were way to mid-high-ish. Lacked thump\low end). I use this for metal & my Carvin V3M for everything else. Amp tone is all subjective so experiment on your own. Guitars & pickup play a huge role in the sound as well so keep that in mind as well. If you are on a budget and want a good metal amp, this is a good investment for under 300.00 bucks. I get compliments on my sound all the time. Usually from people who spent a lot more than I did on their rig. My whole rig (cab, speaks & head) is under 1000.00. 299.00 head, 179.00 cabinet, 260.00 speaks with a GT of ~740.00. Add 300.00 in pedals (EQ,Gate, Wah, Chorus, delay) and I have a great rig for around 1000.00. Not too shabby. A final note, I find that active pickups (EMG's in my case) sound really good through this head. Tight & crisp.

Very noisy amp. Loud hiss at any volume.

Sounds killer,very convenient and properly made control of the sound.Great job!

This amp is very nice for the price it sounds ok but not great or super beefy like other people make it out to be

Didnt like the distortion chanells they were Muddy sounding and the reverb is Terrible on top of that it stopped working after 1 hour had to return it not very happy about it 😣

I've had this amp now for about 5 months. As of now, I really like it, but it was a sort of frustrating road to get here.Firstly, I purchased the amp at the end of February. Due to an insane work schedule in March, I wasn't even able to test the thing for about a month. When I finally hooked it up, I got about 10 minutes of play time before the amp simply stopped. Complete shutdown. and I was now a day over the 30 day return.So I called, and was directed to a local service for warranty repairs. They gave it back after a week, saying the transformer had gone bad, which I had suspected. Took it back to the studio to jam some more and got about 15 minutes in before the SAME thing happens again. Drove down the next morning to the shop where I had warranty service done and dropped it off again.Get calls a few days later, Randall wants to know what cab I'm driving, etc. (2x12) and I didnt hear anything for a few more days. Finally get a call from the tech saying they had gone through and found SEVERAL stages of failure in the amp head, total lemon. They ordered a new one for me to pick up, which I did, and which has been problem free.SO, buy this, but test the s**t out of it before the first 30 days, and run it through the ringer to make sure you've got a solid piece.And don't use the built in reverb, it's total s**t.:)