They are excellent Joe, nothing short of excellent.
Yes I wanted stepped I/O gains as well.
Does what it's meant to do and very well across the spectrum, something a LOT of "named" equalizers I have heard fail miserably to do.
As I say I do not think it's a game play changer but it is a very nice unit.
Only my TC 2240 modded has a silkier high end, and I have another EQ which I use as a compressor/tone box, lol.
It all works.
I ran some tests on it against the Flux Epure II I was demoing last week during some downtime, what I noticed is that although the analogue EQ doesn't SOUND coloured as such, as in it's not obviously gain AND harmonic distortion making it sound more bassy, for example, I used a whole dB and a half LESS of boost on the analogue EQ against the Epure, to match the same subjective "amount of bass". And on top of that, the analogue EQ has downwards extension, and by that, what I mean is not only did it add bass where I asked it to, the shelf seemed to be active a lot lower and was bringing out elements of the mix I just couldn't tease up with a digital EQ.
It's funny because not only does it have this effect, but also you can get carried away and keep pushing the gain on each band, as it gets "nicer" sounding the more gain you put in, as if the headroom is designed to close up in a pleasing way that doesn't just sound like your hitting a transformer too hard.
Versatile.