what's wrong with my gallien krueger 1001

1. Is your instrument putting out enough gain? Try it with different basses to be sure. If you bass has a battery, change it.

2. Check all cords for bad. Is your speaker cord wired correctly to the connector?

3. Try it with a different speaker, just to be certain.

4. Possible that you might have a lemon. It happens with every company eventually.

 

Have you checked your battery?

 

I had a similar problem with my 700rb 112 combo. It had intermittant periods of little to no volume. I resoldered three solder joints in the head and it has worked great since (about a year now).

 

If you continue to have problems with it, let me know and I can have that taken care of for you. If you just bought it, it's under warranty.

First though, is the -10db pad in? You only need to put that in if the clip light is coming on.

 

There seems to be a lot of people having trouble with the soldering on these amps... and if it isn't that it seems like something else goes wrong as soon as they get it home and it needs to be fixed... Is there something wrong with GK's quality control????

I'm just wondering because I was thinking about buying one....

 

My 1001 is about 3-4 years old. Nothing to report but reliable service every time, FWIW.

 

Sign me up as another GK user with 2 heads with solder problems, Both now work great after being fixed.

As others have mentioned. Check the pad button, Volume knob at least at half (starting point). boost and master at half (again starting point).

that should be loud enough to have people ask you to turn down.

 

crank the master and boost up, that has more to do with volume level than the volume knob, make sure you are using speaker cables not instrument cables. If these are ruled out it may be internal.

 

-If this is a brand new head I suggest you return it for refund, or call GK's technical hotline for assistants. This is not okay performance for new equipment.

 

I just got my amp(a GK 400RB-III) back from the shop and on the way out I got to talking to the tech. He went for 10 minutes or so describing to me how GK has the worst quality control/service/design if you consider all of the products they have ever built. He described to me entire series of cabinets and amps where virtually ALL of the units manufactured failed. This is not from personal experience, and its far from gospel, and is probably tainted a bit because he was miffed after GK stopped honoring his official dealer status after a buyout a few years back. Anyway, I don't doubt GK's poor quality control; I have had a couple of problems in the past and have heard pf other people's too.

 

My problem was solder joints on the pre-amp board to the knobs. Look closely. It was hard to find the two joints that needed to be re-flowed.

 

There were some design flaws in the first generation of 1001RB and 2001RB heads, but all of that has been fixed. The second generation of 1001RB, 2001RB and 1001RB-II heads no longer have any of those problems. Unfortunately, there are a few of the first generation amps still out there. Our heads have a two year warranty. if you're having trouble with one, let me know and I will make arrangements to have it fixed.

 

I have a 400RB I bought used that had some bad solder joints that I had fixed. I thought it was just age. It works fine now.

As for trying to achieve loud volume, I would turn the master volume ALL the way up. Turn boost all the way down (or use it sparingly, it gets fuzzy quickly). Use the preamp volume as your overall volume control. If you have to turn the preamp volume to the point of clipping, one of two things is probably wrong:

1. The amp is defective
2. the speaker cab is defective

500+ GK watts into an 8-10 cab should be painfully loud! Have you tried a different cab? Can you take it back to the store and try yours side by side with one just like it?

As for another option, nothing else has that much power/portability and costs so little. Only amps close would be SWR 750 or Ashdown EVO 500, but both are over a grand new. See if the dealer or GK will swap yours out with another one.