New Kuassa preamps - Gainia series

[Burillo]

Apparently Kuassa has released new pedals (and a free poweramp sim)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwCeVhWbfrI

I've played with them for a bit yesterday. The HB (rumored to be Matchless HotBox) is the one that resonated the most with me - sounds very saturated and meaty. The TD (apparently modeled after Chandler Tube Driver) is really good as well, but either I'm doing something wrong, or it's very noisy - and not in a "background noise" kind of way, but more of a "f**ked up tube" noise, like there's something wrong with tube biases. I didn't particularly jive with the XT one (dunno what it's based on) on its own, but it works well when paired with other Kuassa distortion pedals.

Overall, a lovely collection!

EDIT: turns out "background noise" was user error - or rather, it's the poweramp (Pillar). it sounds very fuzzy when it's heavily overdriven, i do not like how the saturation sounds at all. i prefer keeping it on low gain. fixing the gain staging everywhere in the chain has fixed my noise issue.