So, what you need to take away from this is that as long as you are happy using the direct out of the Grandmeister 36, no worries – use the power-soak, need be. But if you plan on using the speaker out either to drive a speaker cabinet or a load box such as the Torpedo Live, I recommend avoiding the use of the power-soak. This problem may be unique to my amp, but I highly recommend you play the Grandmeister – specifically setting the power-soak to its various settings – and listen to it before you buy it.

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The MIDI programmability is a very nice feature. However, since I have had to use pedals for my gain channels, it does me little good! I pretty much have a good clean preset that I leave it on and configure my signal chain externally. The other 127 presets are doing nothing for me!

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Bottom line – the problems I had with my amp effectively negate all of the reasons I had for buying it.

 

Overall Impression

My experience using the Grandmeister 36 has not been ideal. I wish I had bought a nice one or two channel tube amp instead.