What I did to change the flavor in my Gestalt was to have core classes (I swapped out Paladin for Inquisitor)and then a limited choice of "matches".
Each of those classes had 4 a player could pick from to pair up the core class with.
For instance:
Barbarian could choose one from Druid, Oracle, Ranger and Sorcerer
another was:
Oracle could choose one from Bard, Fighter, Monk, Sorcerer
I see no power difference from a normal 1rst level PC. They just add flavor, more choices, and split people from pouring x amount of point buy points into 1 or 2 stats.