Rocktron Piranha Tube Guitar Preamp

Very easy to use. See other reviews.

hands down the best preamp I've ever used and I've used a lot of them: Ada, mesa boogie, Marshall, etc. I use the rocktron with a furman pq3, rocktron intellifex xl, and a retro-sonic stereo chorus. I frontload this into a '73 100 watt Marshall. My speakers argenz-benz g-flex. I run the Marshall at about 4 to open up the harmonic structure and dynamics of the marshall and control the overall volume with the piranha. I use a midimate to switch everything out. The preamp tubes in the Marshall are Ei ecc83 and for the rocktron I use tung sol 12ax7 for both tubes. Contrary to alot of reviews you can get any clean sound you want all you have to do is keep the volume of the presets low on your distortion low (below10) this will give more than adequate headroom for your clean settings. The high gain aspects of this preamp in are unmatched in my opinion both in dynamics and harmonic content. The furman pq-3 really help though to add low end and have better control of midrange scoop.

Built like a tank. Instant patch switching with absolutely no latency. I've used this preamp for 10 years with know issues whatsoever. You don't need a backup.

Jim is a great guy and is more than willing address any concerns you have.

10

Just a quick addition to my review (huge thank you to Thales from Gammoth for reminded me). I found the cause and solution of the crackling noises by accident. Well, the noise (when palm-muting, crackling like when stepping in the broken glass) was caused by the DiMarzio EVO 2 pickup. I've swapped it for active EMG 81 and the noise is gone absolutely.

Well, it has MIDI (caution - MIDI can be used only for switching patches, no control changes as I've read somewhere), few buttons, 99 memories for patches, clean/distorted/more distorted sound - nothing complicated really. That's good. Manual is quite good too.

Now this is a very complicated question with Piranha. I experimented a lot with settings and especially with tubes, because the preamp was rather noisy and produced strange crackling while palm muting. Now I'm almost satisfied, though some noise still remains. I found as the best this combination of tubes: clean tube (marked TB1 on a cirquit board) - Marshall 12AT7 (12AT7 turned out to be much better for the clean sound than 12AX7); dirty tube (TB2) - Tung Sol 12AX7 (very powerful and rich sound, low noise). And carefully with settings. I play kinda thrash metal and use modern (more distorted) sound with gain never over 50. The sound is really brutal and pushing. Overall the sound is great and aggressive, just the noise spoils it a little, though when the whole band plays, it's not audible at all.
My rig is: Focus JCK with DiMarzio EVO II pickup or Aria MAC 7 with DiMarzio PAF 7 -> AKG GuitarBug -> AKG WMS 40 receiver -> Rocktron Piranha -> Boss VF1 (in the Piranha loop) -> Marshall 9200 tube poweramp -> Mastersound 4??12 box.

10 with no doubt. Built like battleship.

No doubt here too, Jim Chowning from Rocktron is excellent guy, experienced, very friendly and helpful.

Overall this is an excellent piece of equipment. I really don't undestand, why Rocktron discontinued it or why they don't produce something similar. It's really very very flexible, you can dial up any tone you wish - from sweet cleans (with 12AT7) over slightly distorted blues to absolute massacre. Only flaw is the noise in heavy distorted sound. If you'd find the way to get rid of it, please drop me an e-mail.

i use this preamp live and in the studio. the piranha has a wide range of useful sounds but the bottom end is too loose for speed metal. for speed metal you need an Engl E530. for everything else this preamp kills! i have tried the preamp with a variety of guitars and cabinets and i am amazed by the great tone i can dial in (was rockron on crack when they stopped making this unit?) i am able to get a dream theatre to fender twin clean, with a vox ac30 to blackface grit, to full out marshall meets booogie distortion and beyond. you can get many great tones if you just use your ears and stop paying attention to the knobs and settings. the tone circuits are active, meaning if you dial up your favorite old marshall tone settings it may sound like crap. use little changes in tone controls. i also have the peavey tubefex preamp and the difference is that the rocktron has much more highs and lows available. i can get the peavey sound by dialing down the highs, so don't let the other review scare you off.

midi switchable analog tube preamp with built in hush.

built like a brick! 7 years with no backup and no problems ever.

rocktron is one of the best when it comes to customer support. they have mailed me parts for other fx on the road at no charge. they supplied schematics and tech support for free. how many other companies will help you troubleshoot and repair your own gear on the road?

for the money, it can't be beat. no modeling can touch this reality. if you have money to burn, buy a triaxis. if you just need a real solid quiet tone machine, this is it.

I'll give a short list of features: 1U rackmount, two 12AX7 preamp tubes, MIDI with 100 presets, front and back inputs, XLR simulated outs as well as regular jack lineouts, easy to use frontpanel knobs and pushbuttons for storing presets.

Others have mentioned the easy-to-use front panel buttons. I agree with them - this unit is a breeze to use. Good sounds can be dialed in quickly, and saved with a few presses of buttons. The parametric mid is simple to use, just turn the knobs. Much better than pushbuttons.

Only minor drawback is that the pushbuttons seems to be either too sensitive or sometimes don't react. Anyway, these can be replaced, and I just might...

The manual is simple and straightforward, and tells you all you need to know.

Am using an Ibanez RG-350EX tuned drop-C into the piranha, followed by a poweramp that I designed and built myself (125W solidstate), into a Marshall 1922 with two Jensen C12N 12" speakers.

There's very little noise even on high gain, and what is there is quickly removed with the HUSH controls.

I have replaced the chinese (Audio Glassic) tubes with Sovtek 12AX7LP's, and sometimes I run a GE 12AT7 in the first socket.

The Sovteks tightened the whole thing up a bit, turning a good preamp into a great one. The clean sounds very good, and is easily brought to a slight breakup when the gain is turned up. The distortion button brings out the marshall-ish distortion sounds, and another push brings out screams of higain. Forget the guys who says it can't reach mesa-levels or play clean good - this one does both those very well. They can't possibly have messed around with the controls more than a few seconds. Although it *does* sound better with better tubes than the stock ones.

I did manage to get it to go a bit microphonic with high gains and mid, plus maxed treble with the 12AT7 in the preamp. Has not been a problem since I reverted to 12AX7's in both sockets. Rather odd, the AT7 having less gain. Then again, it does not look as solidly built.

All in all a great versatile preamp. Pity they discontinued it.

Built to last, no doubt about it. I would actually gig without a backup, but I would bring spare tubes ;) But in a box like this, preamp tubes will last as long as is needed I reckon. Weird things sometimes happen, though.

No dealings with Rocktron.

I play mostly droptuned metal, and the piranha does great. The cleans and crunch are very good too. I've been playing for three years, and I certainly don't have the experience with the gear many others have, but I do have ears, and an extensive amount of experience with audio and electronics, and not least I know what kind of sounds I like ;)

If it were stolen, I'd be very upset... and I'd certainly try to get a replacement.

The best "feature" beside the sound quality is the simplicity of dialing in sounds and storing them for future use. The XLR simulated outputs are nice too, but doubling them with simpler jacks for gear that takes singleended signals would be better.

I considered a Marshall JMP-1 and a Mesa Studio too, the former was considered to be a one-trick pony my many, and is not as easy to use. The latter is useless when presets are needed. The Piranha beats both for my needs.

At the price I paid, it's a solid 9.

Even though this is a midi rackmount preamp it is still super-easy to edit and find your tone given that the knobs and eight front panel buttons are right there in front of you. Unlike Mesa's Triaxis with its multiple arrows and other midi preamps where you have multiple buttons and edit switches, this thing is a breeze to use. Sure, its not as simple as a combo or head, but I give it a ten when comparing apples to apples.

Currently I use this with a Mesa 20/20 stereo power amp and a Rocktron Replifex. I purchased one of those little Crate Power Blocks so I can run both through headphones so I don't piss off the wife. I've also got a B-52 4 X 12 cab (an absolute steal at their price point) and Celestion Vintage 30 loaded ADA 2 X 12 cabs for running stereo.
The Piranha is extremely versatile. Great vintage and modern distortion tones can be had all the way to crystal clean. I can pretty much nail the Van Halen tone from the first album running it through my Rocktron Replifex to add the reverb, phasing, and flanging found on the first album. When I'm using the headphones, I use the Replifex's speaker simulator. (The Replifex is also an awesome piece of gear.)
Comparing this to my Rivera I'd say this unit has a more bit more grit to it, and more gain. The Rivera has somewhat of an audiophile quality smooth distortion to it. Not at all bad, just different. The Piranha doesn't quite cop the saturation of say a Dual Rectifier, but that's not the tone I'm after, given that I'm pretty sick of hearing it on the radio all the time. I like the vintage 80's and 90's Marshall tones. I've played through the DSL and TSL stuff and am pretty disappointed with them. Some sound OK, and others just plain horrible. The variety of quality from one piece to another, along with their price tag just keeps steering me away from even thinking about buying one.
Overall I have to give the Piranha a ten in terms of tone. I've played through Bogner's, Marshall's, Rivera's, Mesa's, Soldano's, Matchless, own both a Rivera M-60 head and an original '65 Fender Deluxe Reverb, and this piece is quality gear with the best of them at a bargain basement price.
If your after thin transister sounding tone like Tullio below, go buy the Peavey he thinks blows this away. More power to him. If you want an extremely versatile tube preamp, and are willing to spend a little extra time getting used to the mid frequency knobs, (which really expand the tone shaping capability of this unit) you can get some awesome tones from the Piranha. I still can't understand why they quit making this unit, as its probably one of the best products they ever had.

I bought the unit used, so it's been around awhile. No problems. I've taken the top off to change the tubes (NOS Chinese 12AX7's) and it looks extremely well built. Would I gig it without a backup? I wouldn't gig with anything without a backup, too many things can happen regardless of what your using. I saw a guy blow his "handwired military grade build" Matchless. Regardless of how much the thing costs, something can always happen to even the best gear.

I called Rocktron's tech guy. I didn't call about the Piranha, it was about a Chameleon I purchased off Ebay which the idiot seller packed like he was shipping a piece of wood and the LCD display went out on it due to it bouncing around in the UPS truck. Overall, I give them a five simply because he told me that I couldn't get the display from anyone else except them, which turned out to be false as I bought it straight from the manufacturer.

Overall, I give this unit a ten. I've played through alot of expensive gear over the twenty plus years I've been playing, and the Piranha definitely holds its own with the best of them at a bargain basement price. My Rivera pretty much sits in the closet now, as well as the Deluxe Reverb. I'm too stubborn to get rid of them, especially the Fender given its collectibility.
I like just about all kinds of rock and blues, and I can get any tone I want out of this thing. It definitely blows all of the "modelling" stuff out of the water in terms of tone.
If it was stolen, I'd probably wind up trying to pick up another, although they are getting pretty hard to come by now. I'm also pretty much a "gear head" constantly checking different stuff out, and I haven't found anything yet that would cause me to get rid of this preamp, so I'm sure I'd be pretty pissed if I had to go hunting down another one.

In contrast to the last review by dear, dear Tullio who "thanks god" sold his unit, this is a fine preamp. Both clean and drive sounds are pretty robust and about the last thing I'd describe the overdrive as sounding like would be a cheap fuzz box. I'd have to conclude that his preamp was not working properly. Or perhaps he's not working properly. Take your pick. In any event, you can easily get JCM 800 or 900 levels of crunch. I did find that I had to dial back both the Treble and Middle pots a bit but they have dials, after all, and so, this seems easy enough.

I believe the model I have was built in about 1998. I won't bore you with any of the details of operation of the unit, of which you've doubtlessly read time and again.

Very nicely built, with clean, clean outlay of circuitry and a toroidal transformer, for goodness sakes. You won't find that in the ADA MP-1, I would point out.

I contacted Rocktron about some component values on the tube board and they got back to me promptly the first go round. The second question I had for them was not answered, however, though my question turned out to be superfluous.

Really a great preamp but you have to be in the mood for MIDI switching of channels. Personally, I don't know why that should be so big a deal but, admittedly, it's not a simple range of two or three channels.

This is an AWESOME pile of junk. Fuzzy, buzzy, shitty sounding tube preamp. If you want a crappy distorsion that sounds like a dying cat, your choice is right. Distorsions may be thick but they are also really fuzzy, muddy and sloppy. It seems that you are playin' with an old fuzzy overdrive pedal -_-' I'm using 2 electro harmonix tubes so this overpriced piece of shit can't be so bad sounding because of tubes... Clean channel is nice but the volume is really low. Thanks god I sold it!

Midi programmable, continuous controller option, Fx loop, direct outputs with speaker simulation and two 12ax7 tubes. Really easy to use... just turn the knobs, choose if your patch is goin' to be clean or distorted (you can choose between modern distorsion and vintage distorsion) and here we go: let's start playing.

Very sturdy, reliable. I'll put a 9 because I don't wanna give a 10 to this piece of crap.

No idea.

This unit sucks. Don't buy it, after a while you'll desire to trash it. It's a waste of money. Go instead on a peavey tubefex (this one is REAL TUBE PREAMP, a nice rival of Mesa Boogie's products) or on ada (mp1 and mp2) if you don't want to pay more than 300 or 350$.

It's a great preamp. I use it in the return of a TSL100 Marshall head, with a Gmajor in line, and it kicks major butt !!! Cool clean tones ( very john petrucci on Images and words if you know how to tweak ), the classic distortion is really great and the modern is almost too heavy so I don't go all the way with the gain...Actually the classic mode crancked to max gain is all I need and more. THe cool thing is the parametric mids EQ, with this feature and if you know how to use the treble settings, you can dial any type of tone, very sharp or mellow and sustaining...anything is in there for the tweaking guitar player...sounds really between a marshall and a boogie if you look hard enough...

Old tube preamp by rocktron, but to me at least, the best they ever made. 3 channels, all tube, midi, loop w/level, XLR direct out.

It's probably 10 years old and works like a charm...'nuff said

A really cool unit, it's kind of forgotten now by most people, but it's in my rack and not going anywhere. If rocktron reissues it, I'm on the line of customers

This unit is very east to use. The knobs are sturdy, and have a definite feel as each parameter is edited. The light-up buttons tell you what's on, and there are two simple number displays.

There's a global setting button which allows you to adjust a parameter for all the patches, though the price is having to change them all back to different values. There are also separate input and output knobs, which is handy where you are simply plugging into a different output, or using a louder guitar.


The EQ is limited, but it gets it right where it does work - sensibly there is a mid frequency control as well as a cut/boost. These are the frequencies that make or break a guitar sound, and there is lots of room for adjustment.

Midi control works fine. You can really only change patches, but given you can store 99 of them, you should be able to set up all the individual parameters you want anyway.

You need three different screwdrivers to get into and replace the valves, but you shouldn't need to do this often.

There is a wealth of outputs and inputs.The effects loop has a midi-programmable button. meaning you can put an effects unit in the loop, and program it in.

With some new valves, this sounded excellent - you get an excellent marshally drive, that doesn't sound so good at extremely high gains, or have cleans with a lot of presence.

You can't quite get full modern metal, or classic fuzz, but the tone of the unit is very good - it won't do everything, but what it does, does well.

The clean channel gives the warmest,bluesiest distortion, while the "distort and even-more-distorted" settings provide a nice crisp, full sound.

As each valve is for a separate channel, you can opt for a different tube to give the clean channel more headroom.

It's a very quiet unit, and the hush noise gate (good as any other I've heard) is not often neccessary.

Finally, it's worth saying that whether it was into computer, or solid state and valve amps, the Piranha is consistent and sounds good.

This thing is built of very sturdy metal, and the rackmount wings a reinforced, so they won't bend or snap off. As said earlier, the knobs are great, smooth.

THe unit I have is a few years old, but it has none of the signs of age - bad input sockets, scratchy pots etc.

Rocktron answered both my questions quickly, telling me how to indentify the clean tube, for example. Considering this product is discontinued, and I bought second hand, they were excellent.

I play all sorts of music, and I think this is one of the best distortion units I've used. It sounds genuinely 'valve-y', and I really haven't found myself wanting for much.