My good friend was getting rid of it, offered it to us for a decent price, my studio partner and I went half and half on it.
Best sounding preamp I have ever played through, bar none. The range of distortions and eq on this thing is ridiculous. Soaring leads, thumping bass, light crunch, shred-o-rama. It's sitting on top of my Sovtek and giving me instant knob-tweaking pleasure. LOVE this thing. Honestly I'm not sure I've heard a SansAmp product that didn't rock my world in some way... this is kind of like every SansAmp I've ever heard, wrapped into one.
Damn skippy, don't blame ya for grabbing it. I owned one for years, regret selling it. The friend that bought it works at a local music store, after all these years he still teases me when I go in about how he's "taking good care of it for me" and that someday he'll sell it back to me. Another plus - he plays in a band that routinely gigs locally and it has always stayed part of his live setup, the things are durable as hell, it still works 100%! I remember one of the presets, think it was the "tele" setting, man, whether it was a true tele or not, that was a fave of mine!
I've also read over the years plenty of well known names use/used the PSA 1 at one point or another, Jake E Lee, Blues Saraceno, etc.
no wonder these things still sell for so much on ebay! I kept thinking I'd snag one. They bring some coin! MUST be stellar.
Too bad you didn't have that relavation a year or so ago. I sold one in pristine condition back then for a really decent price. :)
http://bass-guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Tech-21-Sansamp-PSA1.1-Preamp?sku=480041&src=3WFRWXX&ZYXSEM=0&CAWELAID=26039567
That's the 1.1 version. Same sound and circuitry, adds some features, like more program locations and a headphone output.
The original PSA-1 goes for around $300 on ebay used. We got ours for about half that.
I still have the pictures of the really clean one that I sold (
http://www.nwdreamer.com/Pics/Sold/Tech-21-PSA-1/ ).
Mine went on fleaBay for $380 last February. :)
Then I guess it wasn't too bad that I missed it, since we paid 200 less than that...