will
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Guy,
The stock Zstage comes with jacks for only one source whereas the CSP3 accommodates two sources.
The Zstage is a very simple circuit and quite transparent, especially with Jupiter caps. It gives you several main areas to play with and quite a lot of flexibility within these.
It runs everything through a 12AU7 or 12AT7 tube giving you the tube beauty of refined tone and harmonics.
These tube families have different signatures, the AT pushing things more. Both can sound really good in my Zstage, but I usually use 12AU7s lately.
Then within each family, each tube make and vintage usually has notable variations of general tone, range, and dynamics. So with several different tubes, you can tune your whole sound to taste, or just change things up when you feel like it.
The stage needs it own power cord and ICs, and you can tune to taste with these.
And finally, once everything is tuned to your liking, you have gain riding. With the Zstage 0-5 volts range, you can push more or less of its tube sound into your system. At the same time, retaining a given volume, you can ride the gains of the amp with the Stage gain. By increasing the Zstage and lowering the amp, the same volume will have more of the qualities you tuned into the Zstage, but as important, by pushing the tube and circuit harder, you add weight, body and dynamics as you increase the gain on the Zstage.
Or by increasing the amp gain while reducing the Zstage gain, you increase the balance of the amp signature while generally leaning the sound.
This can be very useful for tuning various recordings more to taste...too thick, or too lean, both can be touched up some with gain riding.
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