Rocktron Silver Dragon

The knobs have stupid names, but it is pretty easy to use.The tube is WAY harder to change then it should be, you have to take apart the whole cover, and the tube cover is too small to enen fit the tube through.

Good sounding pedal, the chinese tube is o.k. I changed it to a GT 12AX7M mullard re-issue.
This was a mistake because first, I play pretty high gain music, and second because it took forever to change the tube.The GT smoothed it out a bit but over compressed it so, I am going to switch to a 12AX7EH and see if it sounds better.

With chinese tube:9
With GT12AX7M:7

ALWAYS gig with a backup, especially tubes.

no.

I bought is 6 months ago before rocktron wised up and raised the price.Other than the dumb knob names and the tube taking forever to change it is a very good sounding pedal.

silver dragon sucks. it takes up a really large space and it doesn't sound good.
gain on channel 1 starts grainy and goes a little dirtier. there's neither warm clean boost nor high gain tube OD. it's just in the middle of somewhere. it is useful sometimes but not versatile.
channel 2 is super duper high gain in ay setting. oh no! it's just crappy noise past 11 o'clock. and the other knob??? a really slight eq curve that's all.

casing has sharp corners and it can damage your gear or yourself. and lets not forget the 13Volt adapter, it's just ridiculous.

I did change the tube to a gold-pin mesa 12AX7 and there was nothing different. it still was either impotent tube od or stupid high gain.
not suitable for metal or rock or blues.

silver dragon is good for NOTHING.

bad by-pass as well, poisons your guitars tone. much worse than Boss DD-6, I love that pedal but can't stand it's life sucking by-pass.

SILVER DRAGON IS JUST AN OVERSIZED AND OVER-RATED, STUPID SOUNDING PEDAL.

Hey it's a Stomp Box with great descriptions on what each control will do. The manual spelled it all out.

This thing sounds incredible. Once you kick in the tube, the tone has that warm, thick crunch that you would expect. It is nice to have a pedal that doesn't just try to sound like it has a tube, but actually has one and it sounds great!

No glitches yet. Came with an adaptor and was ready to go right out of the box and hasn't failed me yet - - either in practice or live.

I called Rocktron before I bought this product and get all the info I needed. The Rocktron Tech Support returned my call within minutes.

I use this pedal mostly for Metal, but have also used it on Blues gigs. It is pretty versatile. I have used more brands and types of distortion pedals and can't get over the tone I get out of this one. I have always loved Rocktron's distortion tones and can't believe the prices you can get that tone for now.

I have just had a quick glance and seen some unfavorable reviews. I think their Silver Dragons must be broken or the tube has gone!

There is nothing that competes with the clarity and feel of this pedal. This is a full on preamp, not a distortion pedal. In the FX loop it takes over and replaces your amps preamp. But works great with a nice clean channel too.

Channel 1 is blues, 70's rock. Unmistakable valve tone like you'd get from an all tube preamp. Channel 2 is gain/shred city. Even with the gain on 0 it is high gain.

The two tone knobs are very interactive. If you set both knobs very low (0-2) you get a typical narrow frequency solidstate pedal tone, higher and the treble becomes sparkly and ultra modern, higher values on the bass give a huge but defined bottom end that will shake your cab. Valves of 5 treb/5 bass give me an ultra modern Mesa tone. Anything past 5 on the tone controls is just unusable. Valves 3/3 a less extreme modern tone (think new Marshall with boost pedal). The sweet spot for both is between 3/4 no, higher. The controls are VERY sensitive.

Valve changes drastically change the pedal. Ecc81/Ecc82 change the gain characteristics a lot. Different Ecc83's have a lesser effect on the whole.

Ch1 with gain set on 0, and your guitar knob rolled down to about 5 (on a strat) gives the most realistic "on the verge of breakup" clean tone with valve compression you've ever heard from a pedal. Outstanding.

My only complaints are that the gain knob is too much on both channels, channel 1 with gain 0 is already in bluesy crunch territory. Channel 2 with gain 0 is already into heavy metal area. Gain 3+ on channel two is serious shred. I have never used more than Gain 4 on channel 2 for the most distorted Yngwie type playing.

I have experimented with the 2nd channels gain pot and by installing a lesser value pot gives more control over the gain but doesnt allow it to be reduced enough. Really, only by lowering the gain at input can we tame this beast. Substituting for a low gain ecc81/82 gives you more control but stops the pedal short of high gain.

Theres a natural compression that I love. No other pedal has given me this except Tonebone Hot British has the same feel but doesnt do the bluesy crunch that CH1 on the Silver Dragon does. Even on Ch2 the compression is there, at low volumes, in your hands your guitar *feels* like your amp is on a lot louder.

One last thing. The Assymetrical clipping knobs next to master Vol has a brightness effect. You can hear working if CH2 gain is set high. Unfortunately because the CH2 gain is so extreme and only useable in the lowest settings I never get to use this feature. When I installed an ECC81 (which allows the CH2 gain to be set near max and still be usable) you can very much hear the assymetrical clipping knob work as a presence lift.

Word of warning, changing the tube means dismantling the whole pedal. Not for the faint hearted; beware of the pots, they can easily be snapped when sliding the chassis in and out or when taking the valve out.

Also, I did put a broken tube in once (the tube wouldnt light up fully when tested in my amp) and the Rocktron got very messy and ugly sounding.

I have owned so much gear - Zoom Hyperlead, Trimetal, 5000. Keeley DS1 MT2 SD1. Tons of other kit. Marshall Drivemaster, Guvnor Mk1 etc.

You are not going to get to appreciate this pedal if you are running it through your run of the mill dull, frequency starved solidstate or worse a modelling amp. I use a Peavey Duel 6L6 valve amp with Celestion Hot100 speakers (hifi clarity). My amp is a clone of a Fender Twin and is the most clear, true sounding amp I've owned (against Laney TT series, LC, Marshall DSL50, Trace Elliot, rack gear etc.).

The pedal is very transparent for your amp. All those sparkly highs and solid defined bass will be retained (or boosted if you want). But remember, if your amp isnt producing them (eg. low end solidstate and especially modelling amps) you aint gonna hear the total frequencies this pedal puts out.

Feature packed: covers all ranges of gain and is even two channel.

Especially considering the ridiculously low price, this is king of all pedals. This is the benchmark at which I rate any distortion device against. You'd have to go the valve preamp rack route to beat it.

This is a follow up response. I had been a little scared by the reviews that stated the tube isn't even hooked up. They are WRONG. I did the suggested mod of putting in a 12AU7 -- and lo and behold -- virtually a new pedal altogether. It cleaned things up quite a bit, but most importantly reduced the noise level. I have to agree with the reviewers who have said the stock Chinese tube is no good. A thirty year old Conn tube did wonders.

Now it gets a good 70's British metal tone. Think Led Zepplin, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep ..... etc

This is an update to my review on 3/29.

Initially, I changed the stock tube to a Sovtek 12ax7. It was an improvement over the POS it came with, however I still had trouble in that the Awaken knob was virtually useless past the very lowest settings. It seemed to be fully distorted past 8 0'clock. I changed to a 12au7 and it improved greatly. I recomend a 12au7 or 12at7. It gives you more control over the awaken mode. It effects the slayer mode but only very little. I've seen others recomend other mods. If anyone has any further ideas please e-mail me at
rockwett@yahoo.com. I still love this pedal.

It's very easy to use, just use the manual stock settings to start with, then go from there. Just adjust it to whwre you like it.

I use this with a les Paul and a fender Power Tele thru a chandler tube echo into a crate vc3112 and a music man 112amp and it sounds awesome. Great tube sustain and feedback if you so desire. I no longer use the second channel on the crate for over drive, just the "silver Dragon" Huge amount of gain. I love the Slayer mode. I wish that you could have some
preset ability to store different gain settings.

Seems to be very well built. I have used it on 10 gigs no problem.
The power supply cord is a little short for me.

Hope I never need it.

Great value, if stolen I would replace it right away.

This thing is simple, Homer Simpson could set it up and Lisa would totally jam out on it. Adjust it to where you like it. very much like a gain tube amp.

People who are thinking this will augment a high gain tube amp will be disappointed. It works great on my Spider II, with the cleanest amp model tone setting. It is basically unusable on my Bravo 112 amp. You will want to run this through an amp, using it direct out into the mixer sounded very cheesy, it seems to be built to feed tone to an amp. It has a classic gain amp sound, not really Marshall, not really anything I can think of, a generic but good sounding tube tone. The Slayer mode is addicting, the tube only would be good for mellower stuff, blues, etc.

It seems moderately sturdy, reliability only time will tell, I just got this, so this is a first report. I normally wouldn't comment so soon, but this thing needs some exposure. The tube is connected, I looked inside, it is definitely connected, so the guy saying the tube isn't even hooked up would not be my first choice in technicians.

Hope I never need it, almost nobody supports anything nowadays.

It has a pretty fair sound for under $100.00 pedal. Great for giving solid state amps some tone finally, that seems to me what this thing is really for, giving solid state amps listenable sound. I use this through the Spider II into a mixer, then the DAW. I'm getting some decent tone with it, better than any of the other 8 or 10 amps/modelers collecting dust around here.

It is very easy to understand so in that sense it is easy to use but the flexibility will demand that you experiment. With the Roar control, a little goes a long way.

I use a variety of guitars: Strat loaded with vintage EMG's (with the raised poles and active EQ), Dean Vendetta 4.0, Epiphone Firebird VII, and Santana SE through a Crate VC5310. The Silver Dragon isn't noisy at all unless you turn the gain up all the way. Also, I've never heard the whistling sounds others have complained about. This pedal is very warm and rich sounding in the Awaken mode and solos are over the top when you kick in the Slayer mode. It sounds great with all my guitars but it absolutely gels with my Dean. I don't tamper with success, so I'm not gonna change tubes unless I have to. Other tubes possibly do sound better, but I won't know until this one craps out. I have no complaints with the factory supplied tube.

I've only used it on one gig to this date, so reliability is yet to be determined. It appears to be built rock-solid.

I've never dealt with Rocktron, but from what I've heard they are very responsive to their customers.

I play mostly classic rock and blues with some funk here and there. The Silver Dragon absolutely kicks ass in both Awaken and Slayer modes. It is very quiet, has true bypass and is a great contrast to my Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive. I've been playing 38 years and had a lot of gear but most of them didn't live up to their hype but this unit delivers in spades. I don't keep 'em very long at all if I'm not impressed fairly quickly and this thing caught me holding my breath during the first few minutes I had it hooked up. If it were lost or stolen, a new one would would be a high priority. I'm glad I got one before Rocktron gets wise and raises the price. It is easily worth twice what I paid for it.

Pretty darn straightforward. Shared EQ for Awaken and Slayer. Most of the knobs have a very limited range where they sound good which might be confusing at first... The symmetry control could have been left off completely, so that's kind of confusing. :) Changing the tube is a major pain. Having to use the odd ball 13V adaptor (this is certainly due to the tube circuit) is also also a pain.

Overall, par for the course, given the features....

One thing I don't think anyone has noted on this pedal is that it is True Bypass, which is very cool.

That said, I found this pedal to be a massive disappointment. Based on the reviews here, I was hoping for something that could cover medium crunch to serious high gain and do it via two stages (i.e. Give me a 3 channel amp using only my Tube Amp's Clean channel). Basically, a poor man's Tone Bone, V-Twin, GTO, type pedal.

Really, it is just very limited, tonally. The EQ controls only sound good through a very limited range of their sweep for starters. It's almost impossible to dial in something that sounds good outside a very limited range. There is way too much high end roll-off/filtering going on too. The direct out on this thing almost sounds like a cab emulator is enabled. That may be cool for a modeller but not in front of an amp that's driving a real cab. Unresponsive mud city.

And really the "Slayer" mode (which was critical for me) just does not do it for me. I honestly thought the pedal was broken the first time I tried it, because it is way more subtle than people have presented it here. It sounds like a tube screamer pushing the first overdrive (Awaken) circuit rather than an aggressive solid state distortion. Given the shared EQ and only slight boostage of the slayer mode it'd only be good for solo boosts, etc, rather than acting like an additional channel with kick ass gain. The intensity control for the Slayer mode is NOT a gain control for this stage as others have incorrectly noted here, also. Check the manual. Anyway, this pedal will not do modern high gain sounds without outboard gear. It really sounded like it would based on some of the glowing reviews here and the manual but that was nothing like my experience. It is basically muddy, ball-less, and gain starved as a metal pedal.

The upside is that it is NOT a harsh sounding pedal and it IS articulate. Some shredders might really like it for those two reasons.

In fact the ONLY scenario where I can imagine this pedal sounding "awesome" or "amazing" as dual channel medium to high gain preamp type effect is with a Solid State Practice amp's clean channel, since they tend to be so flat sounding and this pedal has so much high roll-off/filtering happening. It's almost like a built-in cab emulator, in fact I was pretty shocked when I listened to it straight to the board. This'd sound pretty kick ass at low volumes and with Solid State amps.

Here's my suspicion about the way this pedal was designed: The tube ckt is a simple voltage starved buffer (i.e. no real tube distortion, but that's okay, not a fatal flaw) being used to warm up a tubescreamer style overdrive circuit (this is almost certainly the case given the low light and heat output of the tube during operation and low voltage of the input transformer). The "slayer" mode is a second mild boost/gain stage with the symmetry control, etc, that chains into the other one.

Really, I'm not a tube snob... it'd be okay if the tube was being used as a buffer if the rest of the pedal sounded good. But it only has one decent sound that can be dialed in one way and the high gain mode is nowhere near distinct enough... and it is gain and tone starved for metal.

And, finally, as some have noted, it is somewhat noisy considering it's not outputting crushing gain. I'm not going to deduct points for this since I have noise supressors and many otherwise great pedals are noisy.

I did not come to these conclusions quickly. I really tried. I tried this with three different guitars, two different amps, and two different modellers (using 3 or 4 amp models a piece and numerous cabs) and this thing just disappointed on all of them. No balls, "blah" response, A tube change did show a minor improvement but could not over come what is clearly a weak design.

Looks absolutely solid externally... internally somewhat cheap (plastic PCB mounted jacks, for example), but that's understandable at this price point. I'd gig with it (if I liked the tone ;) ). I'd have a DS-1 or something on hand for backup though.

I don't ever expect to need it since I'm returning it. :)

First let me say, I tried soooo hard to like this pedal. I wanted to like it so much. I tried it with every other piece of gear I own to try to get it to sound good when used as anything but a nice crunchy overdrive. I like the way it looks. I like the construction. I liked the Price. I liked the name even. It just does not sound good enough to keep based on what I already have. If it were the only thing I could afford, I could make do with it. It does not outright suck and like I said, the Awaken mode has a 'sweet spot' that does sound very good.

But, overall, Rocktron really blew it with this product, IMHO. It's pretty obvious from the low gain overdrive/crunch tone this could have been a GREAT pedal but it's sort of 'blah' in implementation. The concept is GREAT and is only something that has been successfully implemented in REALLY expensive high end pedals to date. In the end it's just a really uninspiring piece of gear and I feel that all the time I spent trying to get it to sound good is just wasted.

In the end, I guess I just could not get excited about a one-sound-only $100 overdrive pedal that duplicates several pedals I already own with less range and requires its own 13V adaptor. So, I ended up taking advantage of Musician's Friend's return policy.

I have never returned a piece of gear in my life, but I ended up returning this.