Gallien-Krueger 2000 CPL Guitar Preamp

I bought it used, but great. Footswitch and all. Many features, two channels, chorus with depth and rate pots, spring emulation, param eq VERY EXTEREMELY sensitive and tone-changing. Noise reduction works fine, compression too. Also, it has a patch panel on the back, allowing many different setups, useful as hell, sometimes.

Sounds bassy and heavy metal. I don't hear it not beeing strong enough, Guns N' Roses used it on the Use your illusion tours. We run it through a Fender Blues Deluxe '95. reissue, using a yamaha pacifica 2 hum guitar. Sounds strong and very metal. I'm giving it a 9 because my guitarrist actually didn't like it, he plays U2 and Pink Floyd kind of stuff, and it sounded extremely metal to him. I (the drummer/producer), on the other hand, LOVED IT! I'm an old headbanger. ;)
I guess it's not everybody's cup of tea...

It sounds great but somewhat noisy due to ground. Extremely susceptible to grund noise of any kind (with noise reduction works fine, but still, ground should NOT be a problem in a device of this kind), I don't find that good at all. But, beeing transistor and all...
Otherwise, perfect, unbreakable, and when I opened it to check the grounding connections inside, it looked like new (that was a year ago).
So it's a 7 because of ground noise, but hey, maybe it's just my house that has REALLY bad electricity...

Fabulous. I've contacted them, they responded right away. They didn't have a owner's manual, but the guy sent me schematics (so willing to help!). It made me go online, find one on ebay, PAY the guy to scan and send me the manual for it, and THEN I sent the .pdf manual back to G&K. :)))

What should that be called, factory support?! ;)

"Don't ask what your customer support can do for you, ask what YOU can do for your customer support!".
Anyways, the guy was thrilled, I recieved a thank you note, and now everyone can get that manual online.
I like the 2000cpl THAT much! :)

Guys? Someone told me some time ago that a Rocktron Voodoovalve is a far better buy than this thing. I wanted to go smash the guy's head. Nothing comes close. I used to play Pantera, Dream Theather and Pearl Jam style, even in a Pearl Jam cover band, I'm a classical pianist, jazz and heavy-metal drummer (now playing something between the Manic Street Preachers and U2) and recording technician, so I know sound. It is amazing, really is. Worth every penny.

This is an addendum to my review below, because I've gotten a few questions from people regarding the footswitch for this model. Any of the switchable functions will work without the footswitch, but if you want to switch them remotely, you have to use the specific footswitch that was designed for this unit. It's a long metal box with five switches mounted on top and red LED's to indicate status. It has switching for channel, gain, reverb, chorus, and compression. It connects to the preamp via a 1/4" stereo jack (TRS).

N/A for this review.

This is no simple, on/off footswitch. It is full of circuit boards and wiring. I bought the preamp used but it didn't have a footswitch with it. I found the footswitch on Ebay for about $70, then I made my own 1/4 stereo cord to connect it since this didn't come with one. The footswitch doesn't work as it should. Something is haywire between the channel switching and gain circuits, so this thing is basically useless without those particular things functioning correctly. The guts of this thing are too complicated for me to troubleshoot, and to me it's not worth repairing, so it will just sit in the closet.

N/A for this particular review.

I still like the preamp, and it would be nice to have a functional footswitch for it, but in reality I'm just a one-sound person anyway, so I can live without it.

Single rack space solid state preamp made in 1988. Two channels; four band fixed EQ on each channel (10k, 5k, 500 Hz, 80 Hz); built in stereo chorus and reverb; noise gate (not channel selectable); unadjustable compression, also not channel selectable; master volume, volume for each channel and gain for B channel; XLR and 1/4" stereo outputs, effects loop (fixed level), auxiliary stereo input, headphones output. Made in 1988. Floor pedal with five controls, channel A/B, compression on/off, +10dB extra gain for channel B, chorus, reverb. No MIDI.

Lead channel good for Rush/Allan Holdsworth type fluid liquid sound. Distortion is somewhat lacking in edge to be useful for heavy metal. Iron Maiden tried this out on "Seventh Son" and it doesn't do it. The clean channel is always very clean. Half-distortion not very useful, sounds better near full blast. I got it for the Alex Lifeson sound and it does the job.

Never a problem since I got it in 1988.

Bob Gallien helped me out in e-mail. It doesn't get much more personal than that!

I've had it for 13 years. I'd swap it for the MIDIfied version but not much else. I'd consider getting a JMP-1 or something similar for the tube crunch but those machines could never be my primary amps...

Single rack space preamp; two channels; five band parametric EQ on each channel; built in stereo chorus and reverb; noise gates for each channel; compression for each channel; master volume, volume for each channel and gain for B channel; XLR and 1/4" stereo outputs. It's got the features I wanted.

Nice clean sound. Distortion is a bit edgy at low to mid levels but great at full gain (heavy metal shred). Chorus and reverb are great but both add noise, so the noise gates make themselves useful. My bass sounds great through this thing. I'm using a Crate SPA 200 for power.

Haven't had it long enough to render an educated opinion, but it looks well made and I've never had a problem with a solid state amp.

I called for an owner's manual and they mailed it next day, which is nice considering they don't make this anymore.

I traded a noisy, unreliable tube amp straight across for this thing. It helped that pre-amps, and solid state generally, aren't real popular with a lot of people. I'm willing to sacrifice a little warmth in distortion for solid state reliability. This pre-amp had the exact features I wanted and it's a quality unit, so I'm happy.