magee Posted March 11, 2013 Share Posted March 11, 2013 For sale is a valve preamp from Dave Hall. Many Basschatters love Dave Hall's hand-made eq and dirt boxes: well this one appears to have the lot. Five valves, eq control, two channels, footswitch, headphone option, effects loop. It's a £640 for £125 for a reason, though: it needs a good service because it doesn't all work. You can always get it to do the basics – two channels of dual gain stage tube preamp warming up or distorting of the tone – but some of the more sophisticated features are not so reliable. I think it would all come good with a service but I've moved to all-valve amps so don't really need it any more so am keen just to move it on as is, hence the low price. This really warms up the sound beautifully and adds full on all-valve fuzz if needed. I had really great results with a guitar as well. This is a piece of UK hand-made kit and it allows for several different kinds of distortion so is quite flexible. The issues are, though: some of the switches are a bit shoogly; the eq section doesn't seem to make much of a difference; the two channels behave differently (the red channel has more distortion in it than the blue, I find); and I couldn't make out how to make all of the nobs and switches work (which is likely as much to be user error as anything). You can have the settings very low to add some warmth but this gets gritty pretty quickly once you start feeding the sound from the first valve through a second one. I'm selling because I found I didn't like as much grit in my sound as I thought I might. A review of it from a fellow basschatter is here: http://basschat.co.uk/topic/5239-dha-vt5-studio-bass-preamp/page__p__787470__hl__dha%20vt5__fromsearch__1#entry787470 Anyone is welcome to come and try it in Glasgow. Price: £125 shipped Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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