first, thanks to everyone who has posted here. lots of good information found here.
second, i was a g-b user before, now i'm a g-b artist (or whatever the proper nomenclature is), so you can take whatever i say now with a grain of salt.
went to the g-b hang in l.a. today. it was big fun. doug johns is a mo-fo and a good host. some other guys got up and played through the gear.
one thing i learned from the hang is that the streamliner definitely has a *lot* of different sounds in there. i heard it go from modern funk/slap stuff to flatwound funky/jazz stuff to one guy doing thrash (overdriving the tubes very nicely). pretty great, imho.
meeting jeff genzler was great. the man is *listening* to what people have to say about the gear and has some great ideas. i think the streamliner is a good indication of that.
semi-review:
i took possession of my streamliner 600 this last week and thought i'd give some thoughts on it that might not been covered by other folks.
first, i play 6-strings (overwound passive pickups, no preamp), and it kills for them. the low b string speaks really well; high c string is very nice. i'm still messing with the mid section to figure out what i like. also, i have a 12-string (6x2) and the high end on the sl600 really brings out the octave strings—and this from a guy who is rolling the treble off a little (and turns off tweeters). sounds great with both flatwounds and roundwounds (as people have noted).
as many people have mentioned, the streamliner is a different animal than the shuttlemax stuff (i have a 12.0). not better/worse. different. complementary. i probably like the shuttlemax a little better for fretless *so far*.
also as people have mentioned, the gain switch (a feature on both the amps) is really great. this is where the magic happens for me on the amp. i like pushing in the gain button and making the gain a little louder than the volume—makes the amp very touch-sensitive.
also, most guys seem to have compared to other micro amps or the aguilar stuff. yesterday i was checking the sl 600 against my 1970s ampeg v-4b. to me, the sl600 can get that lee sklar 70s thing without breaking a sweat—way better than my ampeg, which is kind of odd, if you think about it. the sl600 has better low end and better high, and has less of a strange midrange thing that's always there in the ampeg. (i know this could be tube age and so forth, but the tubes are *not* from the 70s). the sl600 also takes a bass with pretty hot output way better (no inadvertent distortion) and gets louder output. i was hopeful, but frankly somewhat surprised about all this. probably the only thing that ampeg beat the sl600 on was a certain "something" coming from the power tubes. can't quantify it, but there is something about a tube power section that a class d power amp is probably not going to be able to cover. that being said, it's, what, about a 10th of the ampeg's weight? overall, it's more of what *i* want out of that kind of amp. oh yeah, the ampeg doesn't have master volume.
got the oem gig bag. seems fine, i'll know more later. odd smell (i guess it's whatever they do at the factory for these things)
i'm surprised that no one mentions the ability to change voltages on the g-b stuff. i don't travel a lot right now, but i did in the past and hope to again in the future. seems to be a huge plus to me (vs. the markbass stuff, for instance, which doesn't have that feature—odd since they're european).
cabs used: epifani t112, epifani t110, stack of epifani t112/t110
caveat: not gig usage, home studio usage (but since i know what the other things sound like at home vs. live, i have a pretty decent idea).