Ok, I will do my best to answer everyone's questions that aren't asked here yet, in which I also had before I purchased this item. This trainer is just amazing. It helps you out in so many ways. First off, this CAN be used simply as a portable amp, exactly as the "Dean Stack in the Box". I know I'm not reviewing that item, but I would like to give some information about it. The Dean stack in the box is a great portable headphone amp. It has great volume, great distortion, and most of all (in which no one else covers) it carries through great pinch harmonics great. Unlike the portable pignose amp, where it does not carry through pinch harmonics one bit. The Dean in a box though can be a pain changing the 9v battery, which can lead to the wires breaking, wich is what happened to me. It was still an amazing product though, with amazing sound, and amazing pinch harmonic carry through.
Now, with that said, it leads me to this. THIS guitar trainer, has GREAT sustain also, and carrys through pinch harmonics just like a normal amp, and jsut like dean in the box. They will not die out like the pignose amp. Also, it has a rechargeable battery in it, so there are no wires to rip off, like dean in the box while changing a battery. This is also built like a tank. Super tough and durable. Makes you want to take good care of it right away. The rechargable battery on it also lasts a long time. I would say well over many many hours.
I want to clarify what exactly the guitar cancelling feature does. It does not cancel the guitar out, so you can substitute your own. It instead pushes all other sound (vocals, drums, etc) into the background (which is dim but still heard) while the guitar in the track shines through so you can hear it clearly and study it more, note for note. Let me tell you, it works very very well. Like one reviewer said, you do hear wayyy more than you have heard before. And this is coming from me, a guitarist of many years, whom has an ear for music, and picks up on every single note and plays by ear. I was even very amazed.
I will now do the best I can to break everything down into all the positive parts of owning this trainer, as there are no disadvantages that I have found:
* This trainer CAN be used as a portable headphone amp, without any song playing in the background, and it does have many amp effects, from clean, to overdrive and distortion for metal (which I play). It has great affects like reverb, chorus, flanger, overdrive, etc.
* Is not cheap, like other portable devices, so no wires will break off changing batteries, since you simply dont have any batteries to change.
* Built very strong and durable.
* It DOES let you create sub-folders, so you can put entire folders into it and sort by artist or albums, instead of having one long list ot a thousand tracks.
* Guitar cancelling feature (as described above) works fantastic.
* While playing a track, you can adjust the volume of the track playback, and your guitar volume, so if the track volume, or guitar volume is higher than the other, you can equalize them at the same volume, or make your guitar volume louder, or the track volume louder.
* You can slow the track speed down 50%, which is amazing. You can also keep the pitch the same, so whether you speed the track up or slow it down, it wont sound like a chipmunk, or someone from a horror movie. It keeps the original tone. You can, however, turn this function off.
* You can turn the pitch up or down, so if it is in standard e tuning, you can chance the tuning of the song. Although it WILL NOT drop all the way down to drop d tuning or anything like that, it still works great.
* You can quickly pick a start and stop point for it to start looping, so if there is a solo, or any part like that, that you want to keep going over and over until you learn it, you can loop it.
* You can create a playlist, just like on an mp3 player.
* This can be used as an mp3 player (although I never would, since it's expensive, and I never want to break it.
* Has a ton of storage. About 900 MB worth (actually a hair more.
So all in all, this trainer is simply amazing! It does exactly what it says it does, and a whole lot more. Even if I didn't need it for a trainer, but was simply looking for a portable headphone amp for travelling, I would easily choose this over dean stack in the box or anything else. I was not disappointed one single bit. I love this thing.
Hope this helps! Enjoy!Get more detail about Tascam MPGT1 Portable MP3 Guitar Trainer.
