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Rating And Reviews: Dean Markley GT1200 Amp

3 watts. 3 in. speaker. Built-in tuner.

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Dean Markley GT1200 Micro Amp with Built-In Tuner

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"One of the World's Best Practice Amps?" submitted December 5, 2010

By a customer from hotmail.com

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Features

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Musical Background: I'm a professional drummer (have been one since the mid- 1970's) who began playing the guitar about a decade ago

Music Style: As a drummer, I play everything from Mozart to Marley, and from Miles to Metallica. On guitar, mostly blues & classic rock.

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SPOTLIGHT REVIEW

Sound: Dean Markeley offers three versions of this same little clip-on plastic practice amp -- the GT1000, GT1000T and GT1200. The first and last two of these have black polycarbonate shells (the 1200 has an on-board tuner, while the others do not), and the 1000T has a Transparent light blue polycarbonate shell. All of them have the same basic amp features: a 1.7W clean setting, a 3.0W overdrive setting, volume and tone a 3" speaker, one input & one output jack, and a little spring steel belt clip, on the back. And both operate for anywhere from 12-30 hours on a single 9V battery, depending on the settings used. These amps' clean channel is better than you'd expect from a little pipsqueak thing in a shiny plastic box that looks like a kid's toy (in that it remains clean until you get the volume up around 7), and although the bottom 25% of the volume scale is really too quiet to be useful to anyone (except maybe an electronic keys player), from 3-7.5 they sound like a scaled down version of my Fender Champ: clear, articulate and warmer than most folks expect. When you switch over to the overdrive setting, that's where the real fun begins... Plug in a Standard Strat, set on the forward Quack channel (between neck and middle pickups), then roll the GT1000 or 1200's tone dial down to 3, set the amp's volume to about 8, and you've just about nailed Jeff "Skunk" Baxter's ratty lead tone from Steely Dan's "Reelin' In The Years". Switch to an HSS Strat's lower "quack", and dime both the volume and tone on the clean channel, and you've got the rhythm track tone from Molly Hatchet's old "Flirtin' With Disaster". Strap on a Lester Studio (neck pup), switch to the amp's high gain mode, drop the volume to 3 and tone to 2, and you've just nailed Clapton's "woman" tone from "Tales of Brave Ulysses", or switch to the bridge pup, w/volume on 2 and tone on 8.5, and you're in opening chapters of Page's "Since I've Been Loving You" territory (though, admittedly, with less top end). Next, strap on an out of phase Tele, boost the guitar's volume to 6-7 and the amp's volume to 3.5 and you're ready to put your stamp on "Communication Breakdown" -- and all at a volume level you can use in an apartment, without permanently pissing off the neighbors. Though I'd never expect to see an amp of this caliber listed on album credits, the range of sounds possible between its two gain settings and two adjustment pots (plus those on your guitar or mp3 player) may surprise you. By the same token, unlike the previous reviewer, I have enough common sense to know that if I push the output from a dimed high-gain pickup through a 3W power, volume and tone stack (also dimed), and try to force all of that signal bandwidth through a paper-coned three inch "mouthpiece", my new investment isn't going to be "new" for very long! But if you look after your equipment like I do, it'll return the favor for many years to come. Feature: This amp has a volume knob, a tone knob, two gain stages (one clean, one overdriven), a headphone jack, an onboard tuner, a spring steel belt clip and a solid, yet convenient battery access door -- even an input jack for a 9V wall wart (if you'd like to cut down on battery consumption) -- and all for about the same out-of-pocket as a Zinky/Smokey amp, which only has a line in and line out. And, best and most importantly of all, it actually sounds decent enough to put in front of a Blue Snowball mic and use it for demo scratch tracks! (Don't ask me how or why it sounds as "tubey" as it does... but somehow, it manages to. Now, how much more could anyone reasonably expect from a 5.75x 4.25x 2.25" plastic box? Ease of Use: Let's just say that if your brain function is up to the task of forming chord positions with your fingers, the operation of this amp shouldn't cause you any major challenges! Quality: Look, folks, this is not a Mesa Boogie, a Fender, Orange, Soldano, BadCat or Bearpaw Growler; it's just a cheap little practice amp, designed for low volume reproduction of scales and other basic techniques, packaged in a surprisingly durable plastic box and marketed at a surprisingly low discount store kind of price. Even so, it's remarkably durable, and mine has treated me so well, through the years, that I've bought another half-dozen, or so, and given them as birthday and Christmas presents to friends. It's not made to be gigged with, and its polycarbonate case and solid state circuitry are pretty dependable, so the issue of backup gear shouldn't even enter the picture, as long as you treat it as what it is, rather than something else. Mine has fallen off countertops, chairs and friends' keyboard racks and road cases more times than I can count, and still looks & sounds the same as it did when I first brought it home, so it doesn't owe me squat! If it ever broke or "wandered off", I'd replace it in a nanosecond -- I'd have to be nuts not to! Value: As a drummer, I work with a wide range of other musicians, in an ever-wider range of settings, and no one I have ever met (and shown this amp to) has ever failed to be utterly blown away by it! In rehearsals with both the Alt-Rock quartet I'm now recording with and the cool jazz sextet I frequently gig with, it's THIS amp that everyone reaches for, anytime they need to review a passage on someone's mp3 player. The sound quality is flat-out amazing for a little plastic box with a speaker in it, and when you consider its size and cost, and then you factor in the included tuner, it's no wonder that this is passed around like a cute groupie on a 1970's metal band tour! Manufacturer Support: I've never had to phone Dean Markeley about this amp, but when I ran into challenges with a 60W keyboard combo of theirs, almost a decade ago, they were easy to reach and easy to deal with, so I'm giving them a "7", which is the "10" for that old call, less a few years. :) The Wow Factor: It's small, it's cute, it'll fit in a compartment of your backpack, gig bag or hard case; it's loud enough to irritate neighbors late at night, but can be dialed down quiet enough to practice @ 3am without others hearing you, and delivers a range range of tones... What's not to like? Overall: This was one of the first amps I'd ever bought; the other was an Epi Valve Jr. That was back in 2001, and I still use it at least 3-4 times a month I've had mine for far longer than I ever expected, when I bought it, and have since bought and given away half a dozen more of them to friends, as Christmas and birthday presents.

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"this is a rip-off" submitted October 29, 2007

By a customer from aim.com

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Features

Ease of Use

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Musical Background: Active musician

Music Style: Rock, alternative

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Sound: horrible sound Feature: gain is an ok feature but it blew the speaker the first day i had it Quality: bad quality and i said sounds bad and the speaker blew out of the box Manufacturer Support: zzounds is always good The Wow Factor: looks cool and looks and sounds like it would be decent but its not

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