A little late to the party here, but thought it would be worthwhile to share my opinion of the Gieseler preamp I recently purchased. By now I've got about 200hrs on it and feel I can give a decent write-up of it's performance.
I purchased the preamp and DAC at the same time from Clay and both were delivered in mid February. Since then I've put them through the ringer with all the different music I've got ranging from classical to hip hop. I can say without doubt that this is the most pure sounding preamp that I've had the pleasure of owning. I've previously owned a few passive preamps such as Electra-Print PVA, Tortuga Audio LDR3 and most recently a "Lighter Note" by Uriah Dailey. For a short time I used an Audio-GD DAC/Pre and found it to be nice having gain adjustments for the output. But through all of that, I kept finding something missing in the presentation with all the previous preamps. The passives lacked drive, the Audio-GD seemed to lack detail so as many of you know, we are constantly pushing for that happy medium. A place where we get extreme musicality that brings chills to our spine and makes us want to listen more. This is what you'll get with the Gieseler preamp. I feel this preamp may be in my system for a very long time as it's very versatile with it's multiple inputs and remote volume control.
I do have a few critiques though. As I explained to Clay it seems there needs to be a bit more fine tuning on the lower settings of the volume control. At the minimum setting the volume sits at about a 7 o'clock position. On this setting there is no audio (as it should be), but instead of slowly becoming linear throughout the motion it seems there is a dead zone where basically no audio comes out, and that zone is from 7 to about 9:30. As Clay has explained this was due to programming and will be addressed shortly after the new DAC/Pre combo unit comes out. I feel that dead zone can be much better used to very slowly ramp up the volume and jive better with the rest of the volume range. Speaking of which, it seems the remainder of the volume control rotation is quite good. I feel that is kinda mimics what most logarithmic potentiometers do, but not exactly.
On one of the smaller class D chip amps I've got it seems that I can easily dial in basically any volume setting I'd like, with the remote and with the manual adjustment. The remote has coarse and fine adjustments which come in handy. But with my ATI 1502 amplifier it seems that the preamp's output and the input on the amp just don't jive well. Directly after the dead zone it seems that it starts driving my amp with a bit too much signal, resulting in a very limited range of volume before it becomes too loud. This said, I do wish the preamp had some sort of high and low gain switch for those of us who might like to swap out amplifiers from time to time. On that same note, I was told by Clay that when they're finished with the dac/pre he will begin working on preamp code again and send me a swappable chip that will fix this. Perhaps that code/chip can be custom tailored to mesh exactly with my amp? I'll let Clay answer that one.
One other very small quirk' while the volume pot is moving it's a bit loud mechanically. I'm not sure if this is normal as the only other remote volume control / preamp I've got is in my Sony STR-DB930 which uses a motorized Alps "Black Beauty" potentiometer and is dead quiet throughout it's movement. So who knows.
As for me, I'm quite happy with the preamp and I do think that once the coding gets fine tuned on the preamp I believe it'll be a mainstay in my system for years to come. For those of you who are interested in this preamp rest assured that Clay is is a world class guy offering world class audio equipment at very competitive pricing. He works hard to produce mega value packed gear and it's clearly audible when you listen to them. Well done, Clay. Will definitely buy from you again as I hear you're working on a power amp. Would love to have an all Gieseler rig and will buy it from you the moment it comes out.
Cheers,
Steven