Peavey Pro-Fex II

I love the pro fex II, very easy to use. Hooks up real easy. Doesn't have a shut of switch, you have to un plug it unless you have a shut off switch like I do.

It sounds great. You can create all kinds of sounds. I split mine off with Marshall stack on the left and Swr bass amp on the right for a great Heavy Metal sound.

The only problem I have had is that I rattled a part loose in side the pro fex II and it quite working on me. Cost me $40.00 for a tech to fix it. SO DON'T SET IT ON AN AMP OR ANYWHERE TO WHERE IT WILL VIBRATE THE UNIT! I lost my custom settings when the tech did the fractory reset. there was one setting that I loved and I can't remember what it was to reset it.

Peavy's customer support on getting the pro fex II problem that I had SUCKS. They never contacted me. I wish that I could give them a negtive 10 rating.

If I could find a better one I will, but I haven't yet! don't need to buy a new one, buy it on EBAY.

I bought the Profex II when it very 1st came out in the late 80,s at Tarply Music store. It was also the very first effects preamp I had ever bought. I paid $749.00 for the rack, $289.00 for the pedal board. I remember when I went to Tarply to get it, I felt as if I was just going to settle for the ProfexII I really wanted this other model, But my Dads Church had an acount there, I had to pay it out I was young.[I WANT IT NOW!] Over the years I,ve used and played thru loads of different equipment and 20 years later all I still use is my Profex II and my Vintage, not vintage reissue, Super Lead 100 Marshall Stack with 1960A and 1960B Green Back Cellestion Cabs. I,ts the best, most thick, full, Very Warm, and Versital I have ever played. I play all styles at my Dads Church still today and by far the best one I ever used. I used to baby set these big church tents at night during revivals, Me and Randy Rhodes used to jam all night long, it was great.

I use Profex II thru Marshall Original Vintage Super Lead 100 w\1960A and 1960B greenback cabs. My guitar is the 1st. issue Model six, neck thru body, Jackson Charvel, cherry\black , w\same original Jackson pickups. No noise problems EVER and I create any sound In my head that I want. Quickly and easily. I love it. My favorite artists would have to be Hendrix, Rhodes, and The Satch.

I've had it for 20 years never given me one problem.

not one problem

I said all this upstairs.

Easy to get around the factory presets and user assignments. The editing process is pretty straightforward as well, but takes a little time to get used to especially with things like EQ. Getting a consistent final output between patches can be difficult.

I've used this unit with Mesa and Roland amps, usually with LP or Strat-style with humbuckers, and I've never really been that impressed. It seems like the people who designed this unit intended for every patch to be heavily distorted, so clean patches tend to be poorly matched in terms of levels and extremely noisy. And to make matters worse, most of the distortion sounds are sterile to begin with. You also get some nasty clipping and breathing out of the compressor. On some clean settings with heavy chorus/flange/EQ/comp, it buzzes and distorts out.

What it does, it does consistently. The lens for the floor unit display fell out within a few weeks, though.

Not terribly versatile. I suppose it is OK if you use distortion in every patch and don't have a great need for warmth. Difficult to gig with because of the level mismatch.

Hi,

I got an really interesting email from a guy that actuually opened up his bassfex(yes this is relivant to the Pro-fex II) and the curcuit board for his Bassfex said Profex II. Meaning the exact same curcuit boards are used in both the Pro-fex II and the Bassfex. The software settings are different. Pretty interesting

I played through a Profex II and yes it is easy to use. The sound is good for digital. I prefer the Profex I because it has an internal power supply. I realy hate the wall wart supllies that these things come with.

Yes, it's reliable.

Peavey has always been great.

I wish Peavey would go in the same direction they were going in the late 80's early 90's. They totally ruled the rackgear era as they had such a great selection at really good prices. Peavey's digital pre-amps from the early 90's are way more advanced than the transtube stuff with built in effects that they have now.

By the way, I am looking to buy a Profex I if anyone has one for sale at a decent price. Email me.

Upon buying this unit back in the early 90s brand new for $500.00,I have found it very easy over the years to program and use on stage and the studio..The owners manuel and the foot controller are a must have because you will get lost programing the effects..

I use this with a Carvin X60B head and a Carvin whole stack...Or sometimes with my 100 watt Carvin 1x12 amp..It is not noisey at all,very clean..All the effects are strong..I can get the George Lynch and the Yngwie sound with no problem..This piece of gear is really good to grow with as a player..I have used it on every recording and live show since it was bought...

This is reliable and road worthy...

Never had to...

I have used it for all styles from 50s,hard rock,heavy metal to Death metal and it delivers..The pre programmed factory area is helpful to dial in that certain sound..It has unlimited uses...

This is a simple rack-mount digital preamp. I've owned it for about 10 years and it has stood the test of time. I used to run the Pro-Fex direct to the preamp bypass on a Heritage tube amp. It sounded pretty decent (and still does). Patches are easy to edit but it is difficult to change settings on the fly. If you have a chance to get the digital floor pedal with the box, get it. The Pro-fex patches can be set-up before sessions and one toe tap can be used to radically change settings between songs.

You can get a wide range of sounds from the Pro-Fex. If a decent sound cannot be found, check the guitar, poweramp or playing. Distorions sound overly harsh (although I found a nice Santana-like overdrive in this box). Once I discovered the difference between tube and digital distortions, I've gone strictly tube (although this is a matter of taste since some seem to prefer digital distortions). I used a Digitec rack effects processor with its two 12AX7 preamp tubes for many years with the ProFex. I much preferred Peavey's digital effects over the more costly Digitec effects. The Peavey could not touch digitec's distortions though. I've added a Mesa Studio Preamp, Bottle Bocket and 50/50 power amp to my set-up. These days I mainly use the ProFex for the midi channel switching of its chorus and delay in the Mesa's loop. I play an American specialty Strat, a Guild S-300, and Martin and Alverez acoustics. I gig regularly and have even ran my acoustic into the ProFex through a full-range high-end speaker (sounded better than my church's Fender acoustic amp!). Ten years ago I would have given this unit a 9. Today, while it still sits in my rack, I do not use it much.

It has never let me down in the years I've owned it.

I've never had to deal with Peavey

This unit is OK but I'm moving to simplify my Rack. Right now I'm dragging around 8 spaces. I think I can get it down to five with my Mesa pre and power amps and a simple power conditioner. I have ancient pedals that provide very nice chorus and delays (the only things for which I now use the Peavey). I don't think I'll sell the Profex though. I plan to use it as effects for my home rack recording unit. I just don't want to drag so much gear anymore. This is a great little unit for those just building their rack. I've seen them sell for $100 dollars in local pawn shops. It provided me years of pleasurable usage. These days I've found other equipment (costing costiderably more) that simply sounds much much better.

This effects unit allows for individual effect placement in any configuration, something which is ommited from many newer effects units. Setting up the chain and effects levels is very intuitive. In response to the previous submission - you can setup the level of each effect by hitting the edit button when the cursor is over the arrow following the effect in question. To edit an effect you move the cursor over the effect and hit the edit button. This brings up the parameter page which involves highlighting the parameter and dialing in using either the scroll wheel or left/right buttons. Most effects are straight forward to set up - however a certain amount of finger tapping is required when editing the parametric EQ.
Input level can be setup from the front panel - for which a red/green clipping LED is supplied. The same LED can be set to monitor the effects loop return but this involves changing a global setting. The output level is set from the back panel - it would have been nice to include this on the front.

The effects included are...
Compression
Overdrive
Distortion
Chorus/flange
PannerDelay
Speaker simulator
Coil tap
4 band Parametric EQ
Effects loop
Classic EQ
Noise gate
5 band graphic EQ
Two pitch shifters
Envelope filter
Splitter
Stereo simulator
Reverb

The delays and chorus are distortions and overdrive are usable. The multitude of EQs allows the user to shape the sound to almost any requirement. Compression does bring up the noise and should really be used sparingly and the reverb and pitch shifting don't stand up to close scutiny. Over the years I've been adding new items to my rack and currently run a Rocktron Piranah into the Profex 2 followed by a Digitech Quad 4. The tones from the Piranah are infinitely superior
to the Pro Fex, which is to be expected from a tube preamp and the reverbs of the Quad 4 are are much smoother than the grittness found in the Pro Fex 2. Effectively the Pro Fex has been reduced to EQ and chorus duties. In the context of recording the Profex 2 would not stand a chance, however as a dirty home practice box it works fine.

I bought this unit when it first came out in the UK back in 1992 and it's never broken down. I've had to replace the power supply after dropping - take note all those manufacturers who insist on using PSUs.

Only delt with them once for a PSU replacement - and were very helpful.

The Profex 2 wins on it's intuitive user interface with the ability to place effects anywhere within the chain. Also with the ability to midi map patches (meaning an effects chain need only be created once if used for more than one patch) the Profex is still certainly more flexable than many of todays low budget multi effects units.
Where it falls down is on the sound quality - not that it's terrible, but given the advances in technology since this was released there are many much better sounding units out there.
Overall I would recommend this unit for a beginner who is not too bothered about recording but wants some additional sounds to add to their canvas.

It pretty easy to use if you're familiar with other rack processors. The manual is a must though. Not because it's difficult to program but because it gives you a better idea of what each parameter does for each effect. The only complaint I have here is that there is no overall volume control for each individual patch. This is a real pain if you have only effects in the chain. For example, say you have EQ - chorus - reverb in one patch. How do you boost the volume of that one patch? You can't unless you say, add a compressor to the chain and boost that. When using distortions this isn't a problem. One other thing is that you'll need to create your patches before you get to the gig if you wanna you it live. You won't have time while you're playing. In the studio this is no problem. It's also a must to get the Pro-Fex II floor midi controller with it. This makes it all worthwhile. To be honest, it's no more difficult than other rackmount preamps/processors.

This baby sounds awesome for something that began production in 1991. You can really create some beefy distortion patches or big warm jazz tones. You need to experiment with all the EQ and stuff first, but once you get used to it, you'll realise it's all there. The only problem that I have with it (as with all other solid state preamps) is that you have no real touch sensitivity which you can only get with 100% valve amps. If you want a very slightly overdriven tone you need to create a new patch rather than just working the volume knob on the guitar. The effects are pretty good too, but if thats all you want it for you should look somewhere else. Where it really shines is the preamp section. The effects are just a bonus. However having said that, the effects sound pretty good if you tweak them, theres a lot of versitility and there is a split feature where you can run some effects left and others right. It won't make me sell my Laney or Fender valve amps, but If you put this thing with a VALVE rackmount power amp and a really good sounding cabinet, you got yourself a really good sounding, very versitile, and portable setup. I'm quite impressed with the possibilities here but like I said, just wish it was more touch sensitive.

I dont know about the newer peavey stuff but the older gear from peavey was unbreakable. One thing I'd like to mention is that the Pro-fex II has a limited amout of memory. For example if you have a chain consisting of Compressor - distortion - 2 EQ's - chorus, there is no room to add anything else such as delay. Then if you are lucky enough to be able to add delay then try to adjust the delays parameters, it thinks "What's going on!? You're confusing me!!!" Then craps out. This isn't a reliability problem though but still worth mentioning. It still works as well as the day it would have come out of the factory.

Don't know. Haven't dealt with them.

My style of music ranges from Jazz to country to pop to Prog Rock. Been playing for about 9 years and also own Laney and Fender amps (valve of course). I believe I got a great purchase here for $500AUD including the profex II midi floor controller. You can usually find them cheap second hand. If I had the choice of buying a brand new preamp for $2000 then have to fork out another $800 just for a floor controller, or a quality used Pro-Fex II with the floor board for $500, I'd go with the Profex II again. I will never replace my valve amps, but for something so versitile and portable, you can't beat it. Please feel free to email me with questions or comments.

This unit is fairly easy to use if you are familiar with processors. It is basically like any other effects processor. To edit patches you may simple turn the data knob or use the editing arrows. The only problem is referring to the manual to know all of the abbreviations for the effects.

This unit has many effects and you can arrange these effects in almost any order. The compressor is not bad, but not great either. The distortions sounds kind of synthetic, bot like raw distortion from a amp, but overall, and after some tweaking of the EQ you can get a good sound. You must tweak the effects a lot. More than you can ever dream of. Expect at least an hour of editing per patch before you get the exact sound you are looking for. If you are a great musician and know how each effect sound be set in proportion to another, then you can get good sounds fairly quickly. I play a 77 Telecaster Deluxe w/ two humbuckers and a real Les Paul and a Tex-Mex strat. I play every type of music possible except that disco stuff, country, and pop music. I run the left and right outputs direct into the soundboard w/ a poweramp. No more lugging around half-stacks and stuff. Running direct gives you a different sound than an amp, but both have advantages and disadvantages. But overall, this has a good sound. Worth buying.

Put it in a rack case and you will have no problem. Take care of your equipment and you'll never have a problem.

N/A

I'm a musician. I'm never completely satisfied. I've owned and still own a Boss ME-30 a Digitech RP3 and an old Ibanez processor. Multiple amps and i still use all of my stuff. I wish it had flanger and phaser, but i can live w/out that. i'f you a a serious gigging guitarist, plan on getting a good reverberator b/c the reverb is the weakest effect. I try not to use it unless i have to. i chose this one primarily b/c it has good sounds and b/c it came with the MIDI floor controller. The floor cnrtoller make the unit worth every penny. this is the best i've found, unless you buy Rocktron processor, but that's a ton of $$

This is an awesome effects board!!! I have played country music for 10 years now, and have always preferred to play clean. Recently, the sounds of country have really changed. To keep competetive, I had a friend offer me this unit at a great price. I am a computer programmer, and programming this unit was extrememly easy.

Again, having played clean for so long (with the exception of a little chorus and reverb), the Pro Fex offers an extremely warm chorus, compressor and eq's. The reverb could be a little better, but overall, the sound quality is great.

My friend could never figure it out, and only used it in the basement at practice. He nor I have ever had any problems with it.

I would love to find another Pro Fex to attempt digitizing some audio effects with it. I love it, and don't see myself letting it go ever.