ART SGX 2000 - Looking for opinions

[milletm]

I was looking at getting a used ART SGX 2000 Pre-Amp. *Does anyone out there have any experience / opinions on this unit and the Express upgrade?

Also, *any opinions on the SGX vs. the Digitech 21XX series?

[tommy west]

I bought one of these about 8 years ago and took it back the next day. Basically due to its "solid stateness" and lack of balls. This is only my opinion though but if you are looking into preamps *I would recommend the Marshall JMP1

Good luck!

[bammbamm]

If your using it exclusively for the fx, great, good versatility, but if you want a preamp, go another route, ART's preamp tones suck, IMO, go with an ada mp1 or other preamp for clean and dist. tones. Also, ART has issues with their products, the "Audio harness" always flakes out and causes glitches in the display and audio levels. Any questions?
Bamm

[jemsite]

I owned this circa '92. It sucked then and it probably sucks more now, especially the preamp. I guess if you get it for like $50 and need some signal processing (bypassing the preamp) for recording it's passable but it will suck the tone out of your rig for the most part. It also is very complex to use. The MIDI pedal stinks too and is expensive. I don't like digitech either so save up for something better ...glen

[bammbamm]

Actually I found the units i had (SGE Mach II's) to be pretty simple to use, and once I learned some tricks, it was a valuable tool for getting my ideal lead tone before I went "Boogie" and I still have the x-15 ultrafoot, a versatile enough controller to do what I needed as far as expression control, it doesn't make the best "whammy" pedal but for reverb and delay ducking, it worked fine for me. The preamp still sucked though.
Bamm

[alienx]

Hi,

I agree completeley with Glen. Wether SGX200 nor Digitechs bring convincing amp-sounds, where the digitech fx-section is really rich. I had tried both of them and after a while I recognized that I need a solid amp tone and not all the effects in their presets in that intensity. I'm using now permanently a Rocktron vooduvalve. I had also used from time to time a friends Marshall JMP-1, which is a good preamp for distorted sounds. But to get that tone I use the vooduvalve pure or sometimes also with Marshall stompboxes infront of it. The Guv'nor 2 gives a good JCM800 type distortion.

Good luck!

[milletm]

Hey everyone, *thanks for the feedback. *I was primarily looking for something to enhance my studio and it sounds like this is not the way to go. *

I appreciate all the feedback and thanks again!