I have been drooling over these for a couple years now, the Grandmeister 18, 36, 40 amps. I got my Switchblade combo in hopes that is was a cheap alternative, and it is, but still....those glowing blue heads are so coooool
Somebody was selling a Deluxe 40 on Craigslist recently, specifying NO TRADES. So, what do I do? I offer him a trade - haha...I told him "I know you said no trades, but if I don't ask..." and he said "Y'know, I may actually take you up on that" and a trade was born. I gave up a nice US built Peavey EVH Wolfgang Special in exchange for the amp and I think we both did alright in the trade.
Turns out, I know the guy already - he's a local guitarist - friend of a friend (friend of a few of my friends) - and a really nice guy.
This amp is a lot like my Switchblade, but with some more bells & whistles. With the 4 voicings, I find it a pretty adequate replacement for my MP-1 Classic. The Classic also has 4 voices, but two are clean (Solid State and Tube Clean). The Brown channel on the Classic is very close to the Crunch channel on the Grandmeister - you can push it to overdrive really easy and it sounds great. Then, the Grandmeister has two distortion channels, whereas the Classic just has one. So, each has an advantage, each has a trade-off.
The effects in the amp sound pretty good, as good as my multi effects (Boss MS-3) for sure, but I have a lot more options available if I use the multi effects instead of the amp's onboard stuff...let me explain. The stock footswitch comes with buttons for each of the 4 channels, and 3 more buttons to toggle the Boost, Delay, and Modulation FX. So, that's all four channels plus 3 options for each one.
The Boss has 4 buttons, I set each one for a channel in the amp. Then, it has a button that accesses 4 stompbox type effects within. That's one more than the amp. Then, I also have a Boss FS-7 switch that is set to access the Boost and Delay in each patch. Essentially, I have SIX options for each patch. Much better, I can stack a couple delays on a clean tone if I want to, which is nice.
So, here's the first pic of many, I will have a review as soon as I plink around a bit