"Great Practice Tool, and a Great Value for under $100."

Feature:
Lots of useful featuers make this machine a great practice tool. Change pitch, key, speed, and guitar/cd volume balance. This will keep you playing for hours.

Quality:
Seems very well built. It much larger than I expected. The cd player has a motor driven tray that accepts the cds/cd-rs. I prefer this method to the cheaper "press the corner to pop the lid up" method.

Value:
Great value for under $100.

Desirability:
Very pretty product, but too big to be "sexy". I personally wouldn't want it any smaller or lighter out of fear it would wind up on the studio floor.

Sound:
The presets need a lot of tweaking. Fortuntely tweaking them is very easy. A big improvement in tone comes from changing the amp cab simulation. Choosing 4x10 gives a much bigger tone that either 1x12 or 2x12. You also have to pump up the level for certain presets - level of 25 is unity but a lot of the presets use a level much lower than that.

Ease of Use:
The machine is pretty much power up and go. The quick reference guide is helpful in finding out how to user the built-in tuner (press up and down simultaneously) or how to change the order of the effects in the loop. To just play along to a cd you really don't need any direction at all.

"alesis playmate blows tasacm trainer away"

Feature:
unlike the tascam, this includes power source,does everything it claims,the effects are great and clean(tascam effects were completely unusable unless you want your guitar to sound like a low flying jet)

Quality:
no complaints looks and feels like a quality piece of equiptment havnt had it long enough to vouch for its long term durability havnt dealt with customer service

Value:
well worth the money !!

Sound:
I first bought the tascam guitar trainer,it was all around junk sent it back and got the alesis soooo glad I did!excellent sound quality and so easy to use you wont be disappointed with this product!!

Support:
dont know

Overall:
if lost I'd buy it again immediately!!