Dave Hall VT5 preamp, £150, Glasgow

[magee]

For sale is a big box of valves put together by Dave Hall, the VT5. 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.

This really warms up the sound beautifully and adds full on all-valve fuzz if needed. I had really great results with a six string guitar as well.

The good thing about this is that it's lots of valves for the money and is a piece of UK hand-made kit and it allows for several different kinds of distortion so is quite flexible.

Buyers should be aware, though, that it doesn't work fully and perfectly (and never did in my hands). 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. So I can't guarantee that it does much beyond adding warmth or fuzz, but it may do, I am not the most sophisticated user.

This is fully reflected in the price: this is £150 for a pre-amp that cost £639 when new.

Any issues are, I'm sure, just natural wear and tear and the preamp just needs someone to spend more time learning its ins and outs than I have. It adds controllable distortion but I can't vouch for what else it can do beyond that.

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: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/5239-dha-vt5-studio-bass-preamp/page__p__787470__hl__dha%20vt5__fromsearch__1#entry787470"]http://basschat.co.u...__1#entry787470[/url]

Anyone is welcome to come and try it in Glasgow. I am happy to post at buyer's expense.