Overall, for what it does, I'm completely satisfied. Personally, I don't want a lot of gizmos in a unit like this. That just adds more complexity, and as far my experience with music equipment is concerned, complexity oftentimes translates to quality problems. This unit does one thing: It boosts and warms up your input signal, and it does this job incredibly well for low priced as it is.

Sound
I was a little dubious about it at first, considering the price, minimal feature, and honestly bought it as a low-cost experiment to see how it would work. I can honestly say that I couldn't be happier! As a pre-amp for a dynamic mic, this little unit works amazingly well. Vocals sound warm and natural and you get that "right in front of you" punch that brings vocals to the front of a mix. As a guitar pre-amp, I love it! It really warms up and richens the sound of my Strat (I have vintage Tex-Mex pickups which can get a bit twangy at times), and with my ES-335, it helps balance out the sound without removing the low-end crunch that I like. In either case, turning up the drive produces a very nice, smooth distortion that doesn't turn into a wash if doing quick chord changes.

Features
There's not much to this unit, but there's not supposed to be, and that's the beauty of it. I do have to say that the meter is practically useless when used with a guitar in small-venue, low volume applications. Even at low gain settings, the… read more TUBEPre really packs a punch, so I don't really rely on the meter for monitoring signal levels in these situations - so I set up my sound simply by listening to get the levels on the unit and my amp dialed in. As far as other features are concerned, thank goodness for the pad and 80kHz filter! My home studio is in my garage and I've got a noisy computer, a freezer and the water heater there. The filter works very well in filtering background noise, and the pad really allows me to use my volume knobs on my guitars!

Ease of Use
Four buttons, two knobs... How much easier can it get? I'm amazed that some people have had problems with noise. I must be lucky, but it's possible that they've set up their levels weird. Going on a recommendation that I read, set up your Gain first with tube drive dialed all the way down. Then introduce more voltage to the tube to achieve whatever warmness (or drive/overdrive) you want. Especially if you're going into an amp, there's a balance you have to achieve between the pre and the amp. It's not something you're going to solve right away. You have to a do a bit of tweaking, no matter what product you get.

Quality
Absolutely no problems with quality. The unit is well-made and the blue, brushed aluminum body looks really slick. Some people have mentioned getting a bad tube out of the box, but I haven't had a problem yet. I guess I'm one of the fortunate.

Value
This is a great value. For under $100 you can't find anything better.

Manufacturer Support
Haven't had to use them yet...

The Wow Factor
As I mentioned above, this unit looks slick. It's got sort of a retro control face, and a beautiful blue brushed aluminum body. It's also very sturdy. I'm going to buy a couple more so I can dedicate them to particular applications. I'm also going to try using different tubes than the stock ones as some have suggested to see what kinds of sounds I can produce.

Musical Background:
Active Musician, Home Recording Hobbyist

Musical Style:
All sorts from Classical to Rock read less