Rocktron VooDu Valve On-Line

At first, this wicked little thing seemed to be a difficult to use, but after two weeks, you know all basic things. Only if you want some little characters to your sound, it takes for a while before you can do it. Editing presets is easy, just dial knobs and stuff.
The manual quite good, there's no bugs.

I'm playing my VooDu with Washburn BT-10 and a Fender Princeton Chorus(through FX loop). I'm going to buy Marshall 8080 power amp, it's cheap, and Marshall 2x12 cab running for stereo mode. With my Washburn I get variety of different sounds, especially distorted. I have some Mesa/Boogie and Soldano sounds in it, and they work good.
It's really quiet, because of the Hush system. Effects are good, but there's no personality(like some classic stomp boxes).
I play in three bands, a hard rock, a power metal and a thrash metal bands. Rocktron suites these styles really good. Killer distortions are the main thing of this machine, but you can some milky clean sounds from it too. Dimebag Darrell's Randall cruch is in this unit, also Marshall sounds are loaded.

I have had this machine now for a month, so I haven't tried this on a gig yet. But I think, that you don't need any backups with this. But I'm not sure, so...

No problemo.

Rocktron VooDu Valve is a killer unit for a guitarist, who insists killer distortion sounds. Only clean sounds could be a little better.
It got a fucking good solo sound, like in a "Top Gun" anthem, flying, melodic, you know, I like that kind of 80's sound. Santana sound is good too. When I bought this, there was some personal sounds ready.
Pantera, Malmsteen, Satriani, Vai etc.
If you're lookin' a good preamp with effects, this is your device. If you play country or surf music only, buy a Fender.

Well... I also had a Chameleon(almost the same)... so can't answer this one... But, It definately took some time to get used to Chameleon.

I'm using Gibson Classic with mostly Roland jazz chorus, and sometime Marshall amplifiers(sl-x). and always set vox wah (and boss tunner) with it...
It's sound GREAT~!! Definately differs from Chameleon sounds... (I've always thought that it had a same color of sound as Chameleon... but I was wrong)
It sounded much richer... and I fulfilled what I was in lack when performed with Chameleon. (also had a better sound in a studio)
it has a strong and richer sound... and I am satisfied with it!
But the phase shifter and pitch shifter are the things I'm not satisfied with... so I give it a 9... ^.^;

Can't answer this one, yet... but I use it with out a backup...

In Korea it's just impossible to get an upgrade or repair...
Please... Rocktron... consider the services overseas... like Korea.
We(Musicians) are suffering... and myself is having problem with the level numbers in my voodu valve on-line... and my midimate needs an upgrade... But nowhere to ask or get a repairment...

i'm using a jackson with dimarzio evolution pickups by steve vai and ibanez RG470 guitars. mesa boogie 5050 power amp and BBE sonic maximizer...awesome! unit is quiet on most settings, very quiet. amp is versatile. there are 250 presets i believe. i use only up to 5 at the most. who needs 250 anway? 1 killer metal rhythm, 1 lead that is saturated with reverb and chorus and delay, 1 lead with not many FX, 1 clean channel with FX for warmth and verb, 1 channel for bright soaring lead that is smoother for arpeggio stuff. amp has a lot of growl to it. if you find a preset you like you can tweak it, save it as another name and store into one of the other presets that you don't like as much. i have 5 killer distortions that are slightly different from one another and all based off the same distortion. i wrote over some of the clean presets i didn't like to store these new settings. i wrote over the ones that sounded like dire straights...yeah, like i'm gonna use those someday!!! if i wanted to get those presets back for some reason that is easy, you can reactivate them. i play mainly metal. some classical but mainly metal. NO ALTERNATIVE. this box would emulate alternative tone but so can a broken AM radio...sorry, i hate alternative. you can emulate pretty much whatever you want. the question is...how much time do you wanna spend programming?

the amp is versatile enough for me. i'm mainly into 80's rock and metal. has cool clean FX and good preamp section. i am powering it with a mesa boogie 5050 power amp and that helps A LOT!!! has headphone jack. there is a lot of tweaking with it to get great tone and i have been lazy. i'm tired of tweaking but you will do that with any rack gear. i used to own the rocktron chameleon and loved that also. the voodu is the same almost as the chameleon except the voodu has 1 12AX7 tube in it so the tones are a little warmer to me. stereo unit, headphones, XLR outs, 1/4" outs, input knob control and output knob control. 1 rack space. www.rocktron.com for more info and photo.

i would use it on a gig without a backup. never broke down. i bought 2...one for home and one for practice space. it's pretty good for recording direct to the mixing board but you will have to tweak it slightly to accomodate for that...tone, levels, etc. i prefer recording a mic'd amp though, however, the direct recording was impressive. same programming style as with the chameleon...i owned that one also.

they are very good. i asked them for a manual and they sent it right out to me.

i've been playing for 14 years now and have owned a lot of rack gear. to me, this is the best for the money without owning a separate rack for FX and preamp, etc. i would buy it again since i like them and are highly-programmable and sound good. i'm very very picky with my tone and i guess i'll never find exactly what i'm looking for but this is close. i heard the mesa boogie triaxis is awesome and is the best for tone and distortions. well, try it out first. it also lists for $1599.00 yeah whatever. then you need to invest more money to get an FX processor since the triaxis doesn't have one. i'm not knocking mesa, they are AWESOME! as i said, i use the 5050 mesa power amp and it kills! i'm just not made out of money. the rocktron does the job great! and i got it for $700 less and there are FX in it that sound great! you can get virtually ANY tone you want out of this thing but as with any unit, it takes time and patience cuz of all the programming.

This is the best thing about it, in my opinion. Controls are logically layed out and fairly intuitive. Digitech, take note. A better user interface than most. That said, I could not keep this unit because of the inability to separate the effects from the pre-amp.

No matter what I did, I could not get rid of the unwanted gain from the pre-amp. It colored all of the effects in ways that I did not always want. It is hard to get good,clean, tones out of the thing. It is fine if what you are looking for is cranked tone at room volume, or emulation of some rectified tube amps--but since I play surf-spy-lounge-sci-fi-spagetti-Gypsy belly dance guitar--it just simply SUCKS, big time. I took it back after a week, and got the Intellifx, which I took back, and got a Digitech 2120 VGS Artist. Now THAT, I like.

Seemed rugged enough

Who knows?

Classic rock, Marshall Stacks, heavy metal, distortion of death--this is for getting what Frank Zappa called really "stinkin" tones. But if you want sonic clarity with heavy reverb, a little tremelo, or mild flanging, ferget it, man.

Very easy, but you have to work harder to give the sound some character. Editing is also and manual is informative and easy to read.

Ibanez JPM, RG550, JB Player (something), HH 100w combo (sucks-going to buy rack-mounting amplifier).
If your guitar wiring is ok and no cables are broken you could hear a pin drop when not playing.
The effects are good. I don't have an expression pedal yet so I can't tell you about wah or whammy (I bet it won't replace my Cry Baby). I'm not quite happy with the pitch shifter and if you need long delays don't buy this one as you can get max 1 sec delay. Preamp is perfect and that is why I bought this one. When the basic sound is good I don't need much effects. Reverb, delay, chorus, flanger, phaser and rotary speaker effects sound natural. Speaker simulation is incredible (great for direct recording). EQ options are versatile and I've found EQing the best effect so far.
You can get almost any sound (except those 5 sec long delays) with this if you have some patiense. There is no external effects loop but I don't need one.

Sure you can, but remember to bring the included transformer (I forgot mine once and had to play the gig plugged straight in)!!!

The On-line version provides a possibility to dump/load presets via internet. However the patch bay at www.roctron.com wasn't very convincing. But it is a nice option if you want to backup your presets and you don't have to get online to load/dump the presets from/to your computer.

I've been playing for 10 years and nowadays I play mostly jazz and proggressive. I haven't tried other similar products but this was good value for money. If I found better for that price I would obviously buy it, wouldn't you too? What I love is that it is so easy to get pro sounds. If you want to get an original sound you have to work harder and there are of course some other things like playing style and guitar that have their share too. Presets are good for one guitarist bands but if you want to give space for second (or perhaps 3rd etc) guitar you need to twist the knobs a little bit.

Shock!
It's logical, it's simple, it's quick. The interface was obviously NOT designed by someone with a degree in engineering. Compared to the other stuff I've played with over the past 6 months, Rocktron wins the "made for normal humans" interface contest hands down. In fact, in comparison to Roland/Boss and Digitech stuff, it almost seemed too easy, and left me wondering if I'd missed something (I didn't miss anything, I'm just used to the Microsoft/General Motors Blind Retarded Monkey Interface Design school stuff).
Three, count 'em, three rotary knobs gives you access to all the little fiddly parameters that nobody really knows how to use, and it's all presented in such a logical friendly manner that you have to wonder why other people don't catch on and start ripping Rocktron off... Hmmmmm... Idea...
I particularly like the way Rocktron has rigged the speaker emulation parameters. It's all very simple and even includes a reactance control, which very effectively provides that nice 'thunk' sound that real speakers make (nb. in some parts of the world 'thunk' is called 'chunk'. Drummers have also been known to call this effect 'thup'). In fact it's so easy to simulate everything from an 8" closed box with dead-center micing (no they don't provide more finnicky options like what model of mic - get a life) to a 15" open-backed cab with the mic all the way off to the side - incidentally this setting provides great gobs of 'thunk'.
The *only* reason I wouldn't give the VooduValve a 10 in this category is that I find the LEDs hard to read. I am, however, over 30 and as my body is starting to decay, the simple solution might be glasses...

Let's start this section off by defining WHY I setteld on this particular unit over other Roland/Boss, Digitech, and Zoom boxes: I just want a killer preamp with cabinet modelling for direct recording. I add most pitch and time based effects in the mix. For _what_I_want_to_do, I've found paradise with the VooduValve.
For those of you who must have three-part harmonies and Digitech Whammy style pitch effects, look elsewahere, ditto anyone looking for a box with a 'acoustic guitar simulator' should also look for something else - perhaps a real acoustic guitar.
What the VooduValve does do is provide totally excellent, transparent and USEABLE guitar-optimized effects. The flanger doesn't kill your original sound, the chorus doesn't sound like somebody just stomped on a cheap chorus pedal, and the delays and reverbs are surprisingly warm.
I plugged an Ibanez RG with stock (not for long) V7 & V8 pickups into the VooduValve, and tried it with a solid state 10" combo amp, my old stereo system, and a set of decent closed-ear headphones. Playing the preset patches under each method consitently yielded the best tones I've heard from a box of this type, ever.
The HUSH noise reduction is wonderful! I _HATE_ noise reduction systems in general, but this one isn't half bad. At full-bore it does mess with your picking attack a bit, but it's not nearly as evil as the Digitech system. Amazingly, I turned the Hush off on a few of the super high gain patches and the amount of noise that leaked in was (in my opinion) acceptable. This is surprising when you consider that I had the box itself sandwiched between two computer monitors. They must have done a real fine job with the lead paint on the interior of the VooduValve, because even the GP-100 would have been buzzing like a, uh, thing that buzzes a lot.
The Play-By-Play:
The preamp can be ferocious, but it's not a Zoom 'I'm going to kill you' ferocity, it's musical. If you pick poorly you WILL hear it. If you accidentally roll off your guitars volume a little bit, it makes a difference. If your guitar has the worlds worst natural tone, well, it'll sound just as shitty after you plug it into the VooduValve. In short, it reacts like a real amplifier would. Cool. It's got an excellent low gain single-coil fake Fender Twin sound I've heard yet, nice and spongey warm with appropriate amounts of (you guessed it) thunk. It also does the super-saturated 'I wanna be Satriani' sound really nicely and yet again manages to preserve the original tone of the guitar.
Really, really impressed.
Chorus & Flange are really nice, not as juicy as the Boss stuff, but it can really add the perfect shimmer to clean tones and it _complements_ your tone, it doesn't stomp all over it.
The phaser is nice and warm. I hate phasers.
Because somebody is bound to wonder: The wah is very good. Not Crybaby great, but pretty damned good in comparison to other on-board wahs out there. For instance, The GT-5 and VGS2120 wahs tend to produce an astoundingly offensive (bad offensive, not good offensive) burgers-frying-on-a-grill high-end when you've got the wah fully up. The VooduValve doesn't do that. Still, I'm going to buy a seperate Crybaby next month.
Reverb and delay are also nice and warm, perfect for recording with a guitar - which is what this box is all about. So remember, for what I want to do, it's the ultimate machine. however, I don't feel the need to drown everything I play in a sea of effects!

Can't say, I've had it for 4 hours. If somebody cares to send me theirs I will drop that on the floor and give you a full report ;-) I do hear good things about Rocktron stuff, much like Roland gear it seems to be built to a much higher standard than other peoples (Digitech) junk.
I know it can be deceptive, but the knobs move with a reassuring solidity, and the physical box itself is very well constructed with no loose screws or metal shavings. Yes, I know, that means absolutely nothing.

Two weeks ago I surfed over to the Rocktron web site and noticed that they posted a Windows SysEx utility but no Mac utility. So I whipped off a note telling them where they could get such a utility for free, and I got a response in under 4 hours.
That was pretty damned impressive.
HOWEVER, two weeks later and they haven't updated the web page yet. The page still is written in such a way as to suggest that this feature will ONLY work if you have a Windows PC. Since this a) is totally incorrect, b) very cheap (free, actually) for them to fix, c) excludes the majority platform in the professional audio industry, and WORST OF ALL c) offends my militant self-righteous fanatical narrow-minded violently pro-Macintosh point of view, I can only give them a "5".

I love it. I was teetering on the verge of blowing a lot of money on the Roland VG-8 a few weeks ago, but when I heard this I changed my mind. Not to say that the VG-8 isn't incredible (it is, and it has an incredible price to match), but I think the VooduValve is the perfect little box for me.
The ONLY thing that would have made this package a "10" would have been the inclusion of a pedalboard with an expression pedal like the Digitech 2120 VGS (except one that actually works, unlike the one that came with the 2120...). It would drive up the price, but I still have to buy a seperate Rocktron MIDI Mate and they don't have any in stock at the local music store.
That's nitpicking, though. This is by far the best preamp/effects combo I've ever heard. For those of you keeping count, I've spent a couple of weeks each with a Zoom 8080, a Digitech 2120VGS and RP-20, a Roland GP-100, and Boss GT-5. It puts ALL of those units to shame, it's really that good.
You know, after a review this glowing SOMEBODY at Rocktron better send me a damned T-shirt eh?