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Randall G3 Rh300 vs Rh300+


FinalHope

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Hey everyone, I was at Guitar Center in Des Moines today and tried out the Randall Rh300 with a Gibson Les Paul Custom. I plugged in and it was like INSTANT METAL MAYHEM!

 

It was the best tone I'd ever heard in person! The salesman said that it was previously owned by Josh Rand of Stone sour, since he lives in Des Moines and is a frequent customer there.

 

I guess why I liked it so much was that it was already dialed in to his settings. All I did was up the bass a bit and reduce the gain and I was in tone heaven.

 

But alas, I could not buy it. I am flat broke.

 

I was wondering what exactly the differences are between the Rh300 and Rh300+ because I will save up and buy one used.

 

I really like the overall tone of the 300 and was wondering of the 300+ is entirely different or like "The G3 on steroids" according to Randall.

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The non-plus has a host of problems related to basically sloppy engineering, from cabinet noise (to the extreme at times), poor precision when dialing in the EQ, highly microphonic tube noise due to the aforementioned cabinet stress when it gets going, oh and also turning the {censored} off when you turn it up to a certain point. That was the real kicker for me when I had mine. Get loud? NOPE, turns the {censored} off.

 

The G3+ are better in every way. Sound better, built better, perform better.

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I would buy a new RH300GH+ for full price if I had the money. I believe they run for about $550-600. $400 is a good buy, and the amp will not let you down.

 

They are not very noisy, in my experience, but that really has to do with a lot of factors. They don't have a lot of SELF noise. But any high gain amp has amplification factors than can easily exceed 1000x and higher compared to your guitar's source voltage, so if your environment is electrically noisy, your guitar picks it up, and all of a sudden it's quite noticeable through no necessary fault of the amp's. If noise is a concern, ditch the NS2 and buy a Decimator to be done with it forever. I recommend the G-String.

 

Oh, by the way, the RH150G3+ would probably cover all your needs, but for just $50 the extra power of the RH300G3+ would come in handy. Frankly MOSFET or not you don't want your solid state power amp getting too close to the edge of its performance parameters if you can help it.

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I would buy a new RH300GH+ for full price if I had the money. I believe they run for about $550-600. $400 is a good buy, and the amp will not let you down.


They are not very noisy, in my experience, but that really has to do with a lot of factors. They don't have a lot of SELF noise. But any high gain amp has amplification factors than can easily exceed 1000x and higher compared to your guitar's source voltage, so if your environment is electrically noisy, your guitar picks it up, and all of a sudden it's quite noticeable through no necessary fault of the amp's. If noise is a concern, ditch the NS2 and buy a Decimator to be done with it forever. I recommend the G-String.


Oh, by the way, the RH150G3+ would probably cover all your needs, but for just $50 the extra power of the RH300G3+ would come in handy. Frankly MOSFET or not you don't want your solid state power amp getting too close to the edge of its performance parameters if you can help it.

 

 

 

 

I was thinking of using this for home use so the 150 would be enough for sure. Do you think there is any tone difference between the 150 and 300?

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Well, yes and no. It's as I said about headroom. Push the solid-state power section hard and it sounds... less pretty. MOSFET sounds a lot better than some other solid-state options because it does have some harmonically pleasant clipping that occurs, similar (to an extent) to a tube power section, but it's still not the kind of amp that is going to sound its best when it's straining heavily. So it isn't about maximum output; really 300W is only about ~3dB louder than 150W. The added headroom is just to make sure that even when you need to be loud, you're (to the greatest extent possible) not maxing out the power section. The more room it has to breathe, the better it's going to sound. Push it to the limit and the sound will suffer.

 

However Randall is really honest about their wattage, when they tell you their amp will do 100W or whatever they're dead serious. You can count on them to perform at the specified level which is more than can be said for some solid state amps. The 150W version is going to be hella loud, I just think that since you've got the option of going for the 300W for just $50 more, if I were in your shoes I'd take it.

 

But as far as the real tone goes, no, it's not like one has some super cool features the other lacks. Just comes down to power amp headroom.

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The non-plus has a host of problems related to basically sloppy engineering, from cabinet noise (to the extreme at times), poor precision when dialing in the EQ, highly microphonic tube noise due to the aforementioned cabinet stress when it gets going, oh and also turning the {censored} off when you turn it up to a certain point. That was the real kicker for me when I had mine. Get loud? NOPE, turns the {censored} off.


The G3+ are better in every way. Sound better, built better, perform better.

 

 

a friend of mine bought the plus model due to the bad reputation of the non-plus models. it sounds great but it has the same problem of turning off once the volume goes past 4. maybe he got a lemon, but it really made me weary of the g3 line alltogether which is a shame because they are killer sounding amps for the price.

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a friend of mine bought the plus model due to the bad reputation of the non-plus models. it sounds great but it has the same problem of turning off once the volume goes past 4. maybe he got a lemon, but it really made me weary of the g3 line alltogether which is a shame because they are killer sounding amps for the price.

 

That sucks. I guess I don't need an amp anyway.:cry:

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a friend of mine bought the plus model due to the bad reputation of the non-plus models. it sounds great but it has the same problem of turning off once the volume goes past 4. maybe he got a lemon, but it really made me weary of the g3 line alltogether which is a shame because they are killer sounding amps for the price.

 

 

That is really weird, there was a local shop that sold Randall where I lived before moving out here a couple weeks ago and I played two G3 in a row, factory fresh, with the "turn off" problem, but since they released the G3+ I've played many of them from the 75W 1x12 to the bigger combo units and heads and they had none of the problems of the previous ones.

 

An especially annoying G3 (regular) problem was that due to some engineering problem, the transformer made a {censored}-load of noise that manifested as a loud, constant hum unaffected by volume. Never heard that in a G3+, either.

 

It would suck if the high volume = turn off problem persisted across the line. I know that the higher end Randalls don't suffer from that, like the V2 with its 400W MOSFET power section...

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