That doesn't sound quite right to me. Although I've not had one of these Ampeg units I have had a few different pre-amps over the years and none have been excessively noisy, IMO. Obviously if you start adding high gain drive and lots of high end then things get inherently noisier but at clean and low gain settings you shouldn't really be having the problems you describe. And all the pre's that I've used have had plenty of volume boost available too, even with clean sounds, so if you're having to crank it to reach unity then it sounds like something's not right. If you bought it new there should be at least a 12 month manufacturers warranty so drop the retailer a line about getting it replaced. If you bought used there's not a lot you can do about it, unfortunately.