Rocktron Rampage

Well, I have the blue one, where the knobs are protected from getting messed up by your feet or gigbag. Getting a good sound was no sweat. Dont have a manual, but I was good to go after about 3 minutes.

Using both Strats & 335s into SS & Tube amps. Not bad on noise at all, a bit more when you really crank the thing, at which time it's rockin mayhem anyway. I kind of like noise when I'm on the edge of feedback. Very strong distortion, great for wall-of-sound-and-emotion. If you're looking for an all-in-one distortion, this isn't it! This pedal is for over-the-top crunch through hang-on by your fingernails insanity. I'm rating it fairly highly because it fits it's name and does what they say.

Haven't had a problem. It just keeps going & going... No backup, it just keeps going & going...

Have no idea. I guess that customer support might take more out of me than just buying another of eBay.

Well worth the price. I really like classic rock, but we occasionally are asked to do some really great new stuff like Creed, etc. and this is my tool of choice; especially when pushed by one of my other distortions. My only complaint is that these are kind of tank-like (I also have an Austin Gold) & my rig is heavy enough already, but that's a minor quibble compared to the fun that comes out!

Yes, yes, I know... All we really need is a black box which gives us every bit of the TONE we are after. We don't want no stinkin' knobs, we hates all that effeminate twiddling. Just gives it to us: a box that kicks hiney with the exact TONE we wants. All we needs is a stomp switch, but it would be even better if the box knew when we wanted to switch it on or off; THEN we could really concentrate on what matters: TONE!

Perversely, this box has knobs, and even a switch. All of which have to be (gulp, perspire) manually operated in order to acheive any TONE other than that of your axe. And many of those adjustments are even (groan, squirm) interactive! ('Please, make him stop... Just because I've learned to shred at Mach 5 in 12 modes doesn't mean I'm ready for knobs!'). Puhleeeezzz!

I've not rated this category because of the obvious. The controls have been enumerated in reviews below.

Remember the scene where Wayne & Garth are in the Pacer listening to Bohemian Rhaphsody? This pedal kicks in right after the last "...for me...", and just where their heads start bangin'. Gluteus-kicking roar. Nothing subtle here, I've used it with my Parker, through my VHT UL, to push back the front few rows when I'm feeling crowded, but they always surge forward for more. I have the older blue model which seems to be stronger in the lows, more girth, than the new silver ones. I'd give it a 10, but then I'd have to fight with others over them on eBay.

This older Blue one is solid as a, well, rock. The knob protector is great because I don't worry about my adjustments being whacked. Haven't needed a backup. Haven't had any issues at all with reliability. I could use this to frame a house!

I've never tried to deal with any mass-production music company. I provide my own customer support: I have 2 more (good value on eBay), not necessarily for backup, but for posterity. I do not want to be without one!

I play country to Creed, Zamfir to Zepplin, you name it, I like almost everything except self/others-hating music. I like simple classical as well as wall-of-noise. This pedal fits well in the latter, enabling me to sound like myself, with authority. I've used the Rampage with, well, I love my VHT UL & 412s, but I have tons of other stuff. I have 2 Washburn 15w SS amps that I use in stereo for rehersal, & the Rampage lets them have fun as well.

Currently, I have around 40 to 50 pedals (I know... I need to pare down a bit but it's so hard to decide!!) in addition to several multi-effectors, so I've had much to compare to (I just love all the flavors). I guess it falls somewhere in between the Zinky TG on full boost & the MXR Zakk Wylde.

Does it help me make music? For me, that occurs usually long before I get to my guitars. It does keep me goofing around on my axe longer than normal however, and I always love the 'look at me' sound I get when playing live with this pedal.

One last thing: Looking at the reviews below is a bit weird. There are either 9s & 10s or 1s (I often wonder if the 1s are folks wanting to dampen enthusiasm so they can snag the reviewed unit from eBay themselves. Just a thought.), so I guess that some love it & some hate it, but no one is lukewarm. Place me on the love side, because it gets a unique sound and presence not quite available with other hi-gain type pedals, which differentiates me in the mix.

It was very easy to get good sound out of it, I set all the knobs except for the level knob straight up; I set the the level to match the level of my amp with the Rampage off. There's not much to the manual, but then there's not much to the pedal either, maybe they could have added some sample settings to get you started.

I am using a Line 6 Spider 112 and either an Ibanez RG421 or an Epi Les Paul Classic. I set the Spider on the Clean amp model, adusting as neccessary to get a good clean tone; I also use the amps delay and reverb. I have tried various settings on the Rampage and I am still playing with different settings; I have been playing the most with the Bass at 3 o'clock, Scoop at 9 o'clock, Treble at 2 o'clock, Level to match amp volume (meaning; when I go from clean to the Rampage, there isn't a big difference in volume; I found this to help cut down noise as well), I have playing around with the Sustain at various settings, but mostly around the 12 o'clock position.

It sounds great, Power Chords are good and chunky, Major and Minor Chords sound good as well. Single notes ring out very well, depending on how the Sustain is set, for a short time or a long time.

I am pretty sure you can depend on it. Use a power supply or make sure you refresh your battery when playing live.

Haven't needed support.

I play Classic Rock to Metal, it will work very well for my needs. If it were lost or stolen, I would get another. I really like how I can have a good sound for Rythm and a good sound for leads and soloing. I have a Toneworks AX1500G, I couldn't get what I get out of the Rampage. I tried a DOD Death Metal, I liked what I could get for Rythms, but it distorted leads to much. I really like the styles of Yngwie Malmstien, Steve Vai and Zakk Wylde; I hear those styles in the Rampage and it inspires me to bring them out.

Very good for the price, I'll be looking at Rocktron when I go looking for effect pedals.

It's pedal, even I could figure it out.

I play in this line (warning, very complicated):

Squier Holoflake HH LE -> Rocktron Rampage -> Ripper shitamp 20W

And my setup:

Tremble: 7,5
Bass: 8,75
Scoop: 7,5
Sustain: 10
Level: depends, around 2,5

On amp I have really small gain, tremble on 7,5; mids on 10 and bass on 7,5. Well... IT'S CUTE!!! Even on that shit amp the sound is great.
I'm playing grunge/punk/whatever else, I tell you what you should expect: sounds from very low, dark, to very high and psychodelic, and some fuzz sounds too, some tube, bright harmonics, great dist... Man it is NOT some metal zone, that gives only one sound. RAMPAGE IS CUTE effect. It is NOT NOISY AT ALL!

Man, you can have it for 50 years, jump on it with glans, eat it, smash it, and you will only feel a little tired! It is UNDESTRUCTABLE!

I guess it's ok! 9 because I'd had to pay...

It really suits me. If I'd lost it, I would buy new one anyway, and again, and again... It is great for ANY music style, but I would higher recommendate it form metal/punk/grunge/and so on players, IT IS NOT SUBTELE remember this!

Fairly easy to use---just a few knobs but that's irrelevant. Has a "scoop" knob but I think the manufacturer misspelled "poop".

This is the 2nd worst excuse for a distortion pedal I've ever heard in my 30 years of playing (the worst being the DOD "Death Metal"). I tried thing using a Squire FatStrat, Epiphone LP, Gibson LP and Hamer Explorer through a Marshall JCM 900 SL-X and I couldn't dial a decent sounding crunch to save my life. The pedal sounds thin with no guts whatsoever. It's a very buzzy, tin-toned distortion and turning the various tone knobs only resulted in going from one thin tone after another. Also very noisy! I can't believe the Rocktron engineer/designer let this pass a quality test---or even out of the door, for that matter.

Didn't have it long enough to find out but I felt the metal housing was cheap enough to eventually cause problems over time. I wouldn' want to drop it. Stomping on the switch felt very flimsy and the clicking noise carried through amp.

Returned to Musician's Friend and got a refund.

Simply an awful distortion pedal. I bought this untested through Musician's Friend after reading a review that absolutely praised this pedal like it was the wave of the future.

Distortion products I own (or previous owned) include: MXR distortion, BOSS metal-zone and SD-1, ROSS distortion, Digitech 2101 (rack), DOD-G7 (rack), DOD Death-metal, Marshall Jackhammer and Guv'nor. The only one I ever found to be worse than the Rampage was the DOD death metal. If you see an ad for this in a catalog, turn the page...

its a distortion peadl its so easy to use! evan a drummer could figure it out! lol

im using a jackson fussion standard professional series guitar into a morley steve vai bad horsie 2 into the rocktron rampage (the new silver one!) into a tech 21 double drive limmeted eddition (i use for viontage classic rock overdrive , i dont use it in conjustion with the rampage) then i go into a digitech rds 8000 delay or straight into either a rocktron sidewindr or gainiac amp on a clean setting..then into a rocktron intelifex and then into a rocktron rx20 wich i8s a stereo exciter and hush unit! then into a rtocktron velocity 120 then into a carvin vai legacy cab and a vintage carvin cab...both cabs are 4X12's and everything is in stereo starting at the intelifex!or the sidewinder pre if thats what im using!

the rampage is a bit noisy but not much especially for how much gain it puts out and i can quiet my signal with the rx20 .......
i put the bassat ten, scoopat 0, treblle at 10 level at about 3 and sustain at 10...i cna get some cool tones with the scoop at any position specialy at 5 or at 10....cool medal tones....

but with what i said before settings i get a super sweet tone a cool distortion that always sounds good specially for shred and speed metal.....ala jason becker, martyfriedman, megadeth, joe satriani, vai...etc.... add this with some nice delays and the dream chorus setting on the intelifex and you have a cool haevy tone.....

the weird thing is i totally scoop out the mids on the pedal but i have the mids up on the map and with the exciter on the rx20 i add some highmid bite!


but evan through just the rampage and a poweramp or a clean amp i have tried this peadl through...(marshall, peavey, crate etc....) it sounds amazing! id like to get a rocktron metal planet to cover the really heavy...deathmetal type tones also though!



o did i meantion i love tapping licks.... and this peadl sounds great when tapping it has a sweet tone nad still reamains clear so you can hear those amazing tapp licks!

i can deppend on this yeah! i would use it with out back up but isnce im not stupid i plan on buying a back up and a third for having two in my live setup for two different tones.

if you can try a whole bunch of these out cause some sound slightly better than others! ...you should do that whenever you buy nay gear actually!

i have talked to them....sometimes they are slow at getting back or dont answer emails but they can help when they can...i heard some of their people are better than others?

i play al sorts of music...jazz metal shred, rock , christian...

playing for about 2 years i think, but im a gear neard.! if this thing was lost or stolen i would buy it agian yes! i love its tone its reliability its solid construction...everything about it! they could do something about the sustain knob...i heard if u put a i meg poy in it can give you more range on tone..it has great tone laready though!

It was extremely difficult to get any kind of good distortion out of it. I put all the bass I could on my amp, guitar, and pedal, and it still sounded dry and annoyingly peircing to my ears. The manual was good. I think that they should give more examples of the different ways to make sounds different.

The sound quality was crap to dull. I was using an epiphone custom, with a fender half stack. I could not get good sound out of that pedal if my life depended on it. I could have spent half the money on a BOSS pedal, and gotten a better pedal then this. It was like the pedal did nothing. Just made bad noises, all feed back. They effects themself are weak. Really weak. The only sound I could get out of it was an all right Zeppelin sound. Otherwise it was NOT worth the money at all.

No I cannot depend on it, because I thought it was crap. I thought it was broken. No, I would never let my band sound as crappy as this pedal does.

I did try and talk to the Rocktron company, and they were very cool with everything. I orderd it through Musicans Friend however, they have crappy Customer Support. Shipping and Handling is a peice of crap.

I play an Alternative Melodic Rock. I think that what they say about the pedal is completely different on how it sounds. I have been playing guitar for eight years. I would never buy the Rampage Rocktron ever again. I don't suggest to anyone buying it either. I compared it to every Distortion I could find, and a DOD Grunge pedal ($30) kicked this Rampage pedal out the door. This pedal is a waist of time. I wish it had more distortion behind it. It gets in the way of me making GOOD music. Haha. I just don't feel it is a good pedal at all, some people WILL disagree, but overall, I rate it a one-two. Closer to a one though.

Easy to use - couple of knobs - turn'em and go!!

Well I had to do a mod to it to get the sound I actually wanted out of it. The Sustain pot was a little too touchy for my liking. I took it out and wired in a 250K pot in its place. It does not put out the intense gain that it did before (bacause of the 250K instead of a 500K) but it suites the use. I am currently playing blues and rock and this is perfect now that the pot has been swapped. Before it had way too much gain. Even for metal it was a annoying gain. Backing off the gain made a terrific tone difference.

like a rock!! Could hurt people with it.

Never had to deal with em

after doing the mod like above it made a huge difference in the sound. For this reason I rate this high. It works for what I need and sounds great. For all you blues guys I would say give it a shot but only if you were planning on switching out the pot on it. Otherwise you Slipknot etc (Heavy Metal) fans....this ones for you!!

(i have the newer white one) five knobs, treble, bass, sustain(gain), level and mid scoop. pretty easy to get a good sound, quite versatile can do all different flavors of distortion

i'm using this with a modded ibanez, a customized stack and a few gibson combo amps. and as far as 60 bucks goes, you can't get a better distortion, its really actually quite good, it can do hendrix to zakk wylde to guns & roses. its incredibly quite i can go off on a steve vai solo and it all comes through.

i could definetly trust this. its a big metal box, youre not gonna break this too easily. the controls and side jacks are plastic with metal rings, which is worrysome but i think it will last a long while

i wrote them a letter regarding a power supply for it (boss PSA-1 9 volt ) and they got back to me very quickly.

i play lots of different music and i really like to experiment with all kinds of pedals and effects. i seriously think that for the price IT IS THE BEST DISTORTION PEDAL YOU CAN BUY!!!

simple enough once you understand the controls new names
bass,scoop(mid cut),treble,level(volume),sustain(gain)

well its the best distortion ive heard very precussive,the controls are very precise takes a while to get a good sound but once you do its amazing!!!!!!!!!
i play megadeth,iron maiden.......(i listen to that and hair metal,no nu metal crap for me and i know you need to have mids in your sound!!!)

well the casing is excellent (i have the blue model) ive had this pedal for a few years now so the writing on the case is worn out but who cares.
i had to replace the jacks a few months ago but thats it.
i replaced the jacks because the contacts were getting noisey at gigs,they dont break,just got a little to dirty and couldnt be cleaned enough.

never needed 'em,i changed the jacks myself.

in short:excellent precussive distortion once you tame it!!!!!!