[DREW KRAG PLAYING GUITAR]

DREW KRAG: Hey gearheads. This is Drew Krag with Gearwire.Com, doing an amp walkthrough with the Pignose G40V. You may be familiar with the Pignose line. It started a very long time ago as battery-powered amps. They were geared towards being very portable and very warm sounding and very useful for practicing. Generally playing with groups, they weren’t loud enough, so an amp like this, the G40V, I was very excited when they came out. I’ve always liked the Pignose sound, and this amp definitely takes it to the next level.

So, let’s take a look at some of the specs here. It’s a 40-watt tube amp with a 10”, 8-ohm speaker which is custom-made by Pignose. It features two 6L6 power tubes, and those are I believe -- Oh, shoot. We’re going to have to just do a shot.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Oh no. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

DREW KRAG: And three 12AX7 preamp tubes. It has a 4- and an 8-ohm speaker output, a volume master, a pre-volume, a treble, middle, bass, three-band EQ, and a presence knob as well. It was designed in the USA but it is manufactured in China.

So, let’s take a look at this amp. I’m going to start playing through this amp with an American Fender Strat, and we’re going to go over some of the various tonal characteristics that you can obtain using this amp.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

So, right off the bat, you can hear it’s got a very warm sound quality to it. There’s really now way around that with this amp. I’ve been tweaking it for the past 20 minutes and every single setting I get has that very warm tube warmth to it.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

So here we have a little bit more of a clean tone.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

But you could hear it still has a little grit. I’m going to tweak it a little bit right now. I’m going to turn the pre-volume down and the master up so we can hear a little bit of the more types of clean sounds we can get with this amp. I have to admit, it’s a little difficult to get a clean tone out of this amp.

[DREW KRAG TWEAKING PIGNOSE G40V]

So, I’m turning down the pre-volume and turning up the master a little, and you may or may not be able to hear. We are picking up a slight radio station coming through the amp. If you’ve ever experienced that, that’s actually a very normal phenomenon especially when you’re shooting in the studio Chicago.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

So, you can hear it’s a little bit warmer.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

But we still have that grit.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

I’m going to try a different pickup selection.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

And yet another.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

So, you can really hear those tubes coming through. There’s really no way around that. If you’re looking for a real transparent, super clean amp, this probably isn’t the amp for you. If you’re looking for a real tube sound and if you like the sound of 10” speakers (I personally do like the sound of 10” speakers), this might be a good amp for you.

So, let’s crank it up and get a little bit more distorted sounds and see what we like. Turning up the pre-volume and turning down the master.

[DREW KRAG TWEAKING PIGNOSE G40V]

So, I got the pre-volume at around 12 o’clock, master is around 3 or 4 o’clock.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

So, you can hear it’s starting to break up a little bit more.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

You got that real screechy Strat thing happening. You can try a different pickup now.

[DREW KRAG PLAYING A FENDER STRATOCASTER THROUGH A PIGNOSE G40V]

So, I think it has a great blues sound to it. It’s a very warm amp. As I keep suggesting, there’s really now way around that. It’s with all these tubes, the 6L6’s and 12AX7’s, you’re just going to get that warm tube sound and there’s no way around that, but then again that’s what Pignose’s signature for, so that’s what you’re going to get with this amp, and it gets pretty loud, 40-watt, 40 tube watts go a long way so you can definitely play this amp at a gig, you know, with a band, but if you’re into the more super heavy rock, this amp may not totally cut it for you especially if you’re going for some cleaner sounds, some louder cleaner sounds, that would be a difficult tone to achieve with this amp.