Rocktron Prophesy II

just like any digital preamp....you have to tweak the presets to work in harmony with your cabs,poweramp,or mixer...all can have a sour effect if you don't put your own spice on it..does take time can't just plug in and play.

I really wanted a more practical rig,also I live in an apartment...I was getting sick of pedal,wires,cables hauling equiptment around..I sold a bunch of my stuff and donated some stuff also. I decided to start from scratch, I did alot of research. Ordered the prophcey along with a all access midi controller...plugged into a mosvalve poweramp running stereo into 2 seperate 2x12 carvin modified cabs...the sound is rich,warm,sustain for weeks, I can play at low volumes in my aparment and and get saturated tones..plug in at practice and get super loud with no unwanted noise. so many switching options with out tap dancing, I can go super clean channel to any thing else imaginable with a click of one button...(think dragon force crazy sound effects) or listen to the new megadeth albums Dave is the man!!! now I have a practical easy to carry rig that sounds perfect I can set it up in 10 minutes!!!

so far sooooogooood

never needed support so far. If I did, I'm actually close to the rockton corp. in battle creek.... how ironic!!

I play metal,jazz,80's hair,lot's of megadeth covers. I also play progressive at home..macalpine,friedman,petrucci,gilbert,satch,vai..
I can get all these tones pretty damn close through my current simple rig..at low volumes or cranked. the notes just flow like melted butter, makes playing so easy and inspirational. this is the most expressive tone I've ever accomplished. I've been playing 14 years...played through lots of gear over the times heads,combos,preamp,poweramps,pedals, got sick of searching for "the sound in my head" sick of buying rack effects and pedals...now I'm happy,not only do I have "my sound" I have almost every other sound too...obsessive tone search is stressful and time consuming..glad its overwith

Good sound. Manual is ok...DEEP editing parameters on the Prophesy II. It's not that bad once you play with it awhile.

you can find most any sound you want out of this thing..just tweak away for days and you'll find it. i'm running my prophesy into a vht 2/50/2 power amp...sounds great through my genz benz g-flex 2x12 cab.

good so far

i had a question and emailed them. they responded within 1 hour.

it's a little pricey for a preamp but so versatile..many sounds can be had from old school to modern metal, jazz, country, blues...whatever your style you can find it...i suggest a tube power amp.

Rocktron interfaces are fairly intuitive. Once you've had one, you can figure out any of them. I had to check the manual a few times for specifics, but with the presets I just selected some that were close and tweaked to my taste.

THe MIDI mapping is the easiest I've ever had with a MIDI preamp (ADA MP-1, Marshall JMP-1).

I have found my sound. Run this thing into a tube power amp and you're there. While the "Clean American" voice isn't the Fender-iest tone, it's clean and usable. It's the *ONLY* draw back in the preamp section. With the Hush activated, you can dial in crazy amounts of gain and remain quiet at performance levels. The Mega Drive and British Vintage (perfect brown sound) voices are my mainstays and they are warm, lush, and wonderful.

Most of my guitars have EMGs and they sound great with this set up... I play in an 80s metal cover band and this covers every sound with ease. I finally gigged out with it this weekend and it was a godsend. Best live tone I've ever had. The previous review claiming the tone is "thin & digital" is very confusing to me. Out of the box, this thing was amazing.

Rocktrons are very dependable. I gig without a real back up, but I do use a POD XT Live for switching so I could turn to that if need be.

Great manuals, but I've never needed support.

I could never steer anyone away from this preamp. Best one out there.

PROPHESY I:

What???s new? Glad you asked ??? I???ve had a Rocktron Prophesy for several years now that has been an OK unit that I???ve used occasionally to dial in certain things, but for the most part has sitting around in the rack in the 2d string lineup as an EFX processor exclusively and not preamp until I downloaded all the Gary Hoey and other presets and editor from the website last weekend based on the new ???Prophesy II??? they are selling.

I???ve tweaked this thing out and it is absolutely amazing and I???m just blown away!!! And being that I???m not a huge fan of Rocktron products, dude this thing has totally impressed me and not too much does in the audio world these days. It has moved up to 1st string in usage and is going on everything now thru my dual Marshall EL 34 50 50s along with my beloved JMP-1 layered in the dry center.

The operational term for this is: WOW!

Well that???s my news up here in NJ

~skygod~

Dual Marshall EL 34 50/50s into dual Stereo (G12-75M) 1960A Marshall 4x12 Cabs, or dual Avatar Custom 2x12 Eminence Red Coat Tonespotter Stereo Cabs, or all four depending on size of venue

I've had it for over 3 years in and out of the studio now w/o a glitch, but of course protected in a shock rack with other high value rack gear

I emailed them to inquire whether I needed an eprom upograde and was informed immediately by Cust Spt via email that all I had to do was download the editor and patchbay persets.

Note: A previous attempt to use the editor three years ago failed under Windows mellenium, but on a Dell E1505 laptop WINXP SP2 it works like a charm thru a Midimate 4x4

I am so very happy with this unit, and I cannot describe my joy. I knew there was hidden magic in this baby but as an active touring guitarist four months out of the year, and the remainder of the time running numerous mobile and fixed installation recording and mastering studios worldwide just did not have the time but held on to it for so long regardless and I am so glad I did! Slaute to the good folks who had and took the time to unveil the magic.

If you play high energy rock or heavy metal or tasteful rock a la Vai or Satriani or Van Halen or Eric Johnson or Gary Hoey or too many others to list here, please do yourself a favor and look into this gem. It is absolutely marvelous and the sounds inside your head are all here.

Be patient. Rocktron created a DSP based technology that is as complicated to program as Eventide products and it is very difficult to dial these patches, hoewever, Gary Hoey and Dave Mustane particilarly broke the Omega Code on this baby. Take it from there and capture your tone!

IMO this unit went from a 6 to a 10 rating in all categories with the patches alone that I used as a basis to formulate my studio and performance banks, keeping all the jazz presets that I moved up to the 60 and above block and a handful of others from the factory presets that I liked a lot and further tweaked.

The nice thing about the editor is that you can individually upload each preset to whatever bank/patch location you desire versus a bulk upload overwriting everything all at once. I strongly recommend that you backup the original patches into a [Factory 1.sys] file, and then down load all the Rocktron patchbay stuff from the website all archived as zip, unzip them into a folder, and load all these overwriting the factory presets and then save it as [Factory 2.sys].

After you listen to all of these and play them and tweak them for a while, come up with a plan on paper how you want to configure the unit, move everything around as you desire, then when satisfied and come back and add back in your factory prestes you decided to keep and then save all your work as [UserModified.sys]. You still have the other two SYS files you can go back to anytime and add something back in later.

Best regards to all -

~skygod~

Easy enough for what you can do. Stripping a preset down to basics, then setting up a good sound is really easy. Ofcourse, exploring all the possibilities in detail takes a lot more time. My only complaint would be, that you can't mix the FX loop return AFTER the cabsim: I use the loop returns to mix synthesizer output in the box, then everything out to stereo looper. This may mean carrying an extra mixer to the gig. But then again, you can't have your cake and eat it, can you?

I was looking for an all-in-one preamp that sounds good in the mixing board. In view of the difficulty in finding a place that would demo it, I bought it DEAF, just based on online reviews and experience with other boxes (thx people!). I'm active in the fusion/jazz/prog/acoustic league. Oh, and I??m *NOT* a metalhead :)

My qualifications for the Prophesy II:

- Great dynamics
- Responsive
- Full of CHARACTER
- Very effective components
- Flexible architecture
- Silent operation
- No useless features

Distortions are GOOD: they sound both warmer and more direct than all of the popular modelers.

Crunch/light drive is OKAY: this will always be the most difficult sound to get right. Not bad.

Cleans are TOTALLY AWESOME: the sound slaps you right back in the face. It has none of that flat, sterile digital character the cheap boxes exhibit. One reviewer has mentioned the nice articulation, which I agree with completely. Very nice colors, great dynamics. These can also be recognized in the distorted sounds.

I also use the Prophesy with a piezo equipped nylon strung guitar, preamp and cabsim disabled. The results are VERY NICE, with slight compression and subtle colors from the tube section, yet still very clear and dynamic. You cannot get this subtle effect with EQ's. It's a lovely combination and demonstrates the effectiveness of the analog stage of the Prophesy. Using the preamp and/or cabsim in the chain also produces some very interesting sounds (Ever tried Vintage British with nylon strings? It's BIG FUN! WEEEH I WANNA HAVE A FRETLESS JUST LIKE PAT METHENY!).

Effects: reverb, chorus, phaser GOOD. Rotary AWESOME. ADSR has some interesting possibilities. I don't care too much about the rest, but nice to have. Four locations for assignable FX is PLENTY: if you need MORE, pay for GUITAR LESSONS instead!

Ofcourse, the Prophesy is not perfect. However, it definitely should have a much higher rating soundwise than any Boss GT (OUCH! 40 amps, 30 distortions, all PAINFUL!) in here. So it gets a 10 for sound. Very expensive (and expansive) dedicated components will sound better for some things. So what?

The Prophesy II is relatively expensive in Europe, so I'll knock two points off just for that. I just happened to have saved the money: as long as it keeps working and gives me what I need, you won't hear any complaints.

The design of the Prophesy is almost 10 years old now, it doesn't have the 9,999 amp models, 9,999 insert FX, loads of digital ins and outs, ultra high sample rates (POD) and other gimmicks of the cheap processors (fast digital hardware is CHEAP nowadays, just think about that). But it really doesn't matter. It has a good analog pre stage and good converters, an adequate and flexible selection of ampsounds, FX and EQ's, so for the next ten years it will sound more real than a POD or a GT, no matter what their professed sampling rates may try to confer.

I found it pretty easy to use. Have had rack mount stuff in the past. Manual explains pretty well and is pretty straight forward.

Tried this unit with 3 different guitars, Les Paul Standard, Les Paul Custom, Ibanez 540R, ProphesyII plugged into Mesa 2:50 stereo power amp then into earcandy buzzbomb cabs, one loaded with red fangs the other loaded with govenors, 8ohms mono 16ohms stereo, all connected with monster cables from start to finish. Could not find one sound out of the box that didnt sound thin and digital. Tried changing the eq's and still sounded thin and fake. With 127 presets thought I could find at least one that sounded like something I could work with but alas was comepletly disapointed. Tried a vodoo valve before this and pretty much the same outcome. In my opinion my desk top tonelab sounds better and is more natural sounding and at 1/3 the price. Maybe I got a bad unit but it sounded a lot like the vodoo valve just cost more. This was a gift for Christmas but alass it was returned to Guitar Center in Rockford of which I seriously dont believe I will do business again thanks to the assistant managers reluctance to do the return and the whole process my wife was gracious enough to go trough to obtain it.

Didnt have it long enough to find out. It went back to Guitar Center.

I give them a 5 because before I got this I asked some questions via e-mail of which all were responded to within a 24 hour period and sometimes sooner.

I play just about anything I can besides country. I have been playing since 1969 off and on with about a 10 year break when I was young and dumb and running around the country working and partying. I have owned a fender twin, art sgx, ampeg, marshall tsl, crate, peavey, vox and mesa. Still in pursuit of a great tone and sound. Maybe not perfect but at least enjoyable. I am by no means a pro and after all the years still think I suck(my wife and kids think I'm great)but I know what I like and this was not even close. Found it to be quite dissapointing and comepletly steered me away from rocktron and also Guitar Center in Rockford.

Some people have had a hard time trying to program rocktron effects... I never tried though the unit itself... I have had mjor success using the midi program to make all the adjustments.. there are some really good sounds out of the box, but if you're creative you can make much better ones than what comes as presets.

Hands down the best preamp system I have used to date... I bought it for the effects to use with my Randall RM-4 tube preamp... now the Randall stays in the studio collecting dust.. I have gigged and recorded with the Prophesy II and I gotta tell ya.. I'm a gear snob and have always been in search of my "perfect" tone.. I have foun it! The only thing missing is why not a spring reverb in the effects section.. the halls and plates are great mind you... but if you're trying to recreate anything from the 50's or 60's you need the characteristics of the spring reverb.

I have only had mine for 3 weeks, but I've gigged with it 11 times and recorded with it for 12 hours.. dropped it 3 feet from the counter in the studio.. still kicking with no noticeable issues.

I actually haven't talked to support for any issues on my end... they actually contacted me after I submitted some presets for the "patchbay" section of their website.. They liked my new presets and I will be contributing about 15 of them with mp3 demos in the next few weeks.

I play everything from country to 80's to Rush and Dream Theater.. this unit nails all of them.. I had thought about the tube preamp and eventide proccessor route but I think it's just too much to spend.. The only updates I'd do for the Prophesy III is add spring reverb to the reverbs and possibly they could make the pitch shifter an intelligent shifter for those of us out there who can use them.

Very easy to get a good sound out of it. There are 127 presets. They cover the all types of music from trash metal to surf music and everything in between. It has a good manual that comes with it. It is laid out good and is easy to access to section you want from the table of contents. As of 11-06, the manual on line is for the Prophesy and not for the Prophesy II and there are some differences.

There is a patch bay section on rocktron's website to be able share rocktron and user settings with each other. There are a lot of settings to customize your tone. The down side with this it takes some time to learn how to use them. I had a Chameleon 2000 before this, I was some what familiar with what the settings do. Much easier than the Chameleon and the Vu Doo Valve to access the settings.

Once you master the settings, which there are a lot of, there is not a amp tone that you cannot get out of this! You are paying almost $1000 for it so it better get great sounds. I bought this after owning a Rocktron Chemeleon 2000 for the past 2 years and loved the sounds that I could get out of that. The effects are transparent and lush sounding. I am running this through E-MU 404 sound card into my computer and out of there digitally, through a fiber optic cable, into a Pioneer DTS, Dolby surround sound receiver. The speakers are high end stereo speakers and JBL 2500's for the rear ones. To be able to play your guitar in surround sound takes your sound to another level! The definition of the sound, for a modeler is excellent. It uses three separate processors to create the sound. I think it is the most advanced modeler on the market. It also has a picking attack circuit to create the dynamics of light and heavy picking. That is were tube amps shine and modelers in the past could not match. There is a 12ax7 tube in the preamp. I don't how much this make a difference. It is a little warmer than my Chameleon.

It has three different EQ stages. You can adjust the tone before the distortion stage, Parametric EQ after the distortion and EQ on the effects. The tone shaping possibilities are endless! There is so many things that it does you need to go to their website to see it all. This is the holy grail of modelers, IMO. I have a Mesa Boogie Mark II c tube amp and don't really play it anymore. I am sold on this.

It looks like it is built very good. It is a rack mount made if steel and not plastic. The jacks, knobs and buttons seem solid.

Based on my Chameleon 2000, it has been very relibable.

Don't know, I never had to use it.

I play jazz, blues, rock, 80's metal and dinner music. I have been playing for over 30 years. My guitars are a MIA Strat with dimarzio virtual 2's PU in the neck and middle, with a pearly gates in the bridge, a Fender showmaster SSS with Dimarzio virtuals 2's in all three positions and a 1976 Gibson Les Paul Custom with split coils in it.

It fits me perfect. To create these sounds on a tube amp you would pay much more. You would have to buy a good amp and about ten high end effects pedals. You would have issues with noise introduced from all the connections, plus the hassles of dragging everything around. A MIDI foot pedal puts everything at your feet. Zero lag between presets.

I do computer recording with Sonar 4. It has balance stereo XLR jacks to go straight into a mixer. It sounds very good with zero noise.

This preamp does create my perfect tone(s). There is really nothing else I could want from a preamp. There is nothing else that I can think of that you would need to make it complete. The weakest link will be what ever you use for a power map and speakers. But with the tone shaping possibilities even if you have average amp, you should be able to get a good sound from it. It works well through a good home stereo. If you used a good tube stereo power amp with a couple cabinets, you would have the ultimate setup! The 10 rating is not hype. I deserves it!

If it was stolen, I would lose my sound. It would be very difficult to find something else that could re create it. My preferred tone is well defined liquid distortion with a light airy feel to it, with delay and reverb and different MIDI settings foot switch settings that add flange, phase shift, Wah and light pitch shift on seperate foot switches. very jazzy, bluessy and marshallish.