Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)For the money, this a very decent preamp. I really have to review it with 4 stars, although I feel for the the average musician it would be a 3. First lets get to the pros:
Its rugged, small, and compact. I bought 2, one was a backup I never used. They stood up to the wear and tear of touring. The Gainiac II has a VERY awesome clean tone, the classic warm tube sound. I actually know a lot of bands that have used this preamp to record clean tones. Its wonderful and really can't be beat IMO. The distortion channel is also very good. A nice clear sound, not the static fuzz that extreme distortion causes. Great for hard rock/80s (I used to cover some Van Halen songs that it was perfect for). I wouldn't say its going to give you a death metal tone without pedal assitance, but if you want a clear responsive distortion, this is it. I saw a lot of complaints on Musician Friend's website that the Gainiac lacks a thickness and tone, but I honestly cannot hear it. I used DiMarzio Evolution pickups and the Apex Aural Exciter in front and powered it with an ART Sla-1 power amp so perhaps that is why I never heard this lack of tone.
Ok the cons:
The tube is very hard to get out. Don't get me wrong, its an awesome tube but there is always room for improvement. The Gainiac II is noisy on the overdrive channel. This can be solved fairly easily with the power amp and a good noise gate. I used the noise gate on my processor and it fixed everything right up, but some may not be as fortunate to have a good gate. There is only one output on this unit, which I got by fine with. There are no effects, just a clean and overdrive channel, which was ok for what I was doing. Also, there is no on/off switch and the AC adapter is fairly large. Recording directly into a computer gave kind of a rough tone but I'm not a recording expert.
My verdict is if you're looking for a preamp/power amp guitar rig, give this little unit a try. Its hard to fine the good Line 6 preamp that used to sell for $500, and the only other preamp I would ever consider is the Prophecy (which will break bank). You will have to do some tweaking, but for the money I think the Gainiac deserves a little attention and some surprising tones can be achieved. Also, for the price, you can afford to decide if the pre/power setup will be right for you. If this isn't something that you want to keep on a live rig, it will always be there for tracking down cleans in studio.
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