One of the three candidates for the revered position of Bob Bogle’s lead amp for the historic 1960 recording of Walk Don’t Run is a Gibson GA40.  According to Del Halterman’s book, a GA 40 was brought to the session along with the Fender Vibrolux.

The GA40 was the partner amp to Gibson’s flagship solidbody electric, the Les Paul. It is not a 40-watt amp as the name might suggest; a pair of lower-powered 6V6 output tubes put out a conservative 14 to 16-watts.  The GA-40 has an unusual "pentode" preamp section - meaning it has five functional elements other than the three of the standard 12AX7 dual-triode—called a 5879. The 5879 sounds nothing like the 12AX7 found in Fender’s amps.  It is compared more to the early Vox AC15s with pentode preamps, but probably has a completely different tone as well.

GA-40s with two-tone covering made between 1956 and ’59 are generally the most desirable, because they have the preferred circuit and tube configuration.  The Gibson site says “Part of what’s so groovy about this amp is that it is nothing like any of the Fender designs from the same era that have become such classics.”

I always assumed that Bob Bogle either used the Fender Twin Amp or, if our choices are truly limited to a Fender Vibrolux and the Gibson GA40, then the Vibrolux.  To suggest Bob Bogle used a Gibson is like suggesting Hank Marvin of the Shadows used a Fender Twin for Apache.  But then again a GA40 might just be the essential component to Bob’s also-elusive Walk Don’t Run sound.


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