Gibson Falcon GA19 RVT amplifier

[jrschrock]

Does anyone know how to tell when these were made? I'm thinking mine was 62-64, but I'm not sure how to find out for sure? Any help would be great!

[RageAgainstAgeBand]

I got my Falcon in 1962 or 63. Kept it until 1967 when I traded it for a Baldwin amp! That was the second dumbest move of my life. The dumbest move was selling my 330 - cherry for $100 to a pawn shop in Houston in 1970.

 

I recently saw a Falcon selling on eBay for about $900. These days I play a Les Paul double cut with 24 frets and a Mesa Boogie Mark V. But, I wish I still had that Falcon. It had the greatest clean tone.

[Rame]

Unfortunately there is not a way to date the old Gibson amps to a specific year as there is not serial number log to reference or anything like that. The GA-19RVT Falcton tube amp was made from 1961-1967. It switched from a tweed cover to a tan cover in 1963 so that info may help you narrow down a date range.

 

It may be possible to get date codes off the potentiometers in the amp. But that will really only date the potentiometer and not the amp. Sometimes it can help narrow the date range a little more but it is far from precise or definitive because the pot could have been made a year or years more before it is actually installed in the amp. If you already have the date range narrowed down to a couple of years a pot code may not provide further info.

 

Having said that, in this example, if your amp has a tweed cover and the pot code dates to 1962 then we could fairly safely assume this amp was made in 1962. So sometimes it can help a bit.

 

If the pot has a code on it, it will be on the back of the casing and be 6 or 7 digits.