Tube Works RT-922 Real Tube II

I find the unit super easy to use. It has 2 channels and a stack mode, your typical hi, mid lo adjustments. It has effect sends in the back but I haven't used them. Its a totally analog unit, no presets or midi hookups.

I purchased my Real Tube II in early 2008 used from E-Bay for about $200 U.S. It came equipped with 2 sovtek tubes that sounded horrible. They started compressing when I turned the drive up to 4 or 5. Everything was muddy. No low end definition.

I followed the reviews here and replaced the Sovteks with Groove Tubes. I'm blown away by the sounds I get out of this thing. I use both Strat and Les Paul style guitars into the RT-922 then into the MosValve Tube Works MV-962 into a Mesa Engineering 2x12. I've been able to get whatever sound I've wanted - both clean and distorted. I've **never** sounded so good.

Well no problems so far. I use it in my studio.

No idea

I've been playing a long time now and I've tried a whole mess of gear. For a couple hundred plus the 20 or so for replacement tubes makes this a great value.

If it were stolen I'd be on E-bay looking for another one.

I personally like that its super straight forward. I've used a Rocktron Chameleon for a loooooong time and i think I just got so used to solid state and being lazy and just using presets that I forgot about the punch and chunk you get from pushing tubes a bit and tweaking the knobs. I'm pretty tired of scrolling through menus and such.

What I like most is being able to edge back on my guitar's volume knob and play light and get a pretty clean tone, attack the strings and get a mean growl...then bring the volume up and kick ass. Its the dynamics I get with this unit that really makes me happy I bought it. I think it makes my playing more expressive.

Lots of options. Takes just a little effort to work out the stacking mode, but once you've got it, it's very easy and flexible to get a varitey of tones. Makes a tube power amp act like it has 3 channels (clean, gain, stacked gain (think thick).

Adjustable levels on the effects loops.

Very flexible for a single rack space unit made in its day.

I have (2) Real Tube II's. They are a little different with the foot switch setups for switching between Clean, Gain, and Stacked modes. One uses a single TRS 1/4" - where a standard 2 button Marshal footswitch will work. The other required (2)dual 1/4" and needed a footswitch like the Boss FS-6 (latching).

Both of my 922's Real Tube II's sound great, but do have a different character. They reflect the tubes that are put into them. EH12ax7's give that high gain sound with a lttle 'fizz' when pushed. EI 12ax7 Golds sound great with a lttle less fizz. New Tung-Sol 12ax7's (blue label box) have a more round sound and really thick. Tried the new Tung-Sol Golds - only tube that made it sound "off" - didn't like it.

I have had to work on both units, but given the age and use, pretty reliable.

Both units eventually had the opamps in the gain/stack mode section give up the ghost. Make sure if you need an opamp replaced, put in sockets, so next time you can easily change it and also have ability ability to try other opamps if you want.

When the 1st unit gain/stack mode went out, emailed tubeworks and they responded quickly. HAd to pay for the schematics, but they did provide them for a nominal fee. Given age of the unit and that I was repairing it myself - great support!

Nothing beats a Tube pre when wanting to warm up a signal. These have a great tone. Clean is warm and full, gain channel cuts through the mix, and stack mode gets pretty thick if you want it to.

Great preamp.

See other reviews. As a keyboard player, I had to come to an understanding of the frequencies of the tone controls. Bottom line: use your ears. It is easy to get good tone out of these. They're very adjustable, and many great tones can be achieved.

I'm running a synthesizer's stereo outputs into two RealTube II preamps, then into a Mackie1202-VLZ which outputs to a clean solid-state stereo power amp feeding two JBL 12" w/ horn cabinets. It makes the already-good Niacin B3 samples come alive, and the distortion is very musical and useful. Using the Drive channel with a good Wurlitzer sample will get a perfect Rod Stewart "Stay with me" sound, while the clean channel is indeed as clean as you want it to be. Mine are noisy, but they're both pretty old. I'm experimenting with tube brands presently, as $ permits.

I gig with them without backup. I've never had a problem.

Genz-Benz is very helpful; good people there.

I play in a blues/ R&B band presently, & have played around NM for over 30 years. I get a lot of compliments on my sound now, and I attribute much of that to the preamps. The only problem I have is with the dirty pots - I need to get some spray & clean them out. I'm very glad that I found these, and they will stay in my rig. I do find them noisy, and I run them through a pair of DBX 463 dowmward expanders to hush them when I'm not playing. I would definitely replace them if they were stolen.

It is simple to get good sounds out of it. I had a manual lost it. I rarely use the distortion, but it is good if you dial it in. You so have to be careful when stacking channnels. You can get three channel using stack mode. I never use this preamp is it was intended. I use another preamp the ADA MP-1, I run this preamp at line level like a rackmounted distortion box. The ADA MP-1 doesn't have a stereo fx loop. Before I got the ADA MP-1, I was using the Tubeworks on clean with a ARION Metal Master and Compressor. I sawed some drums sticks and used electrical tape to make both pedals switch on at the same time. I also used to have an Arion Eq. I got tired of this. I decided that I could run the ADA into the Realtube II on the clean channel as flat as possible and use the parallel effects loop on the Real tube II. I have the ADA MP-1 in a loop of the BOSS NS-2 tucked away in the rack. The out put of the BOSS NS-2 feeds the Realtube II . I got the MosVALVE with the Realtube II and I have two Peavey cabs.

I like the clean and the eq in the preamp of the clean channel. It complements my sound when I use the Solid State channel on the ADA Mp-1. The Solid State clean sound runs through the Real tube II on the clean channel. I started with a Digitech RP-1 with a BOSS PN-2 and a Dod phaser and a Morely compact wah back when I first built this rig. I gave the Rp-1 to my brother which he uses for vocals. I upgraded to Rocktron Replifex and Intellifex. I also added a BOSS SE-50. Those are on my effects loop in the Real tube II. I can get just about any sound I want. I have added a BOSS TU-2, Boss AC-2, Morely Bad Horsie and a Digitech Whammy 4. I have a very clear defined sound and you can hear details in my clean, distorted, rhythm and lead tones. The eq freq. chosen fo this preamp really make this RIG different. I have been able to use Rocktron's speaker simulators and the parametric eq in the Rockton. Combined with the real tube II eq as a master eq this allows me to produce a convincing full range sound through my 4x12. I don't use a direct box for acoustic.

Very reliable. The only trouble I had was when some dumbass guy at this club in Muskegon, MI. Connected my power to the wrong powere. It Blew my transformer in the preamp. See support for the rest of the stroy. I can go with out it because I have a nearly identical Rig with the exception of a Rocktron Mulitvalve instead of a Replifex. I don't use guitar amp with it. I run it into full range speakers. Using the Rocktron Speaker sims. I can easily patch into my other Rigs amp or go direct.

when the preamp disaster happened. I called the store Dillons Music. They contacted Tube Works and I shipped it to them. Tube works replaced the transformer for free and got it to me with in a week. This was in the early 90's.

It is a great preamp. I saw a guy using one that worked at Dillons, he inspired me to get one. I was impressed how loud his rig was and it had great clean tone. I wanted an ADA MP-1 for even more tonal flexibility. I have not ever felt the need to buy any other preamp. Many players are always changing RIGS like they change Girlfriends or underwear. I want consistant and I don't feel the need to jump on the next greatest thing. I'm glad I combined the two preamps and I feel my tone is well preserved using the tubeworks preamp because I have the effects in parallel. The Rocktron's are super clean and they layer the digital with the direct sigal. The MosValve also complements the preamps well. The Presence knobs go perfectly with the realtube II.

Very easy to use... Stack mode is a little more unpredictable.

Setup: guitar to rt-922 to digitech rp-100 to mixer. RP-100 used only for stereo effects and cabinet/mic modeling.

My favorite setup so far is to run in stack mode with only slight gain on drive channel. Crunch and distortion when you want it, but clean and smooth when you don't. Very nice.

Most of the reviews here are from pretty experienced guitar players... I'm an OK keyboard player, but basically a beginning guitar player. I've had a digitech rp100 for a while, but after playing with it for a while, I found that the distortion/compression was very static and had no life... So, I went looking for a tube pre-amp and bought the rt-922.

When I got it, it had been whacked pretty hard in shipping. Both tubes had been dislodged and one of them broken. Crap. I could play one channel, or the other, but not both, and could only switch by physically moving the remaining good tube from one socket to the other.

In the end, I robbed two vintage mullard 12ax7 tubes from an old piece of gear my dad had laying around. I think there's some truth to all the hype about vintage tubes. The old mullard tubes sound better than the one that was in the unit when I got it (I have no idea what that one was). Hard to explain, just fatter, and more harmonics. If you have one of these pre-amps, do yourself a favor and spend 30 bucks or so and get some vintage mullard 12ax7 tubes for it. You won't be sorry.

Seems pretty tough.. Took a REALLY hard knock during shipping and other than bent rack ears (easily bent back) and a busted tube (turned out to be a good thing in the end), there were no problems.

Pots are a little scratchy... need cleaning I guess.

N/A

I'm quite happy. As I explore the possibilities with this thing, I keep hearing sounds that I've heard before somewhere, if you know what I mean.

I wish it had a way to save presets so they could be easily recalled, but that's not really reasonable for a piece of gear like this one.

To echo what has been stated by others here, it's as easy as any guitar amp (save for those with only a Volume knob, Shellac-style). You have your basic two channel setup, Clean and Drive. The Clean channel sounds great, smooth and tube-y, but maintains crisp clear highs without any wooly, puffy tube characture like starved plate designs. The Drive channel is definitely '60s Marshall sounding, the Contour control allowing you to dial in a very specific distortion sound. The Contour is basically a one-knob tone control that determines how much low frequency content gets overdriven. Very, very nice feature.

Also, the effects loop is very versatile and allowed me to use the spring reverb tank built into my Peavey head, despite that I'm bypassing the Peavey's preamp, and still run a board full of pedals.

Must be heard to be believed. A variety of genre-specifics sounds can be had, and all sound amazing.

I play a Schecter Deluxe 006 w/Duncan JB pickups into the RT-922 then right into the power section of a Peavey MX-VTX with 4 6L6GC tubes (130 watts is nearly too much) powering an Avatar 2x12 cabinet with Celestion G12H80s. The result is a surprisingly versatile rig. I have several vintage MXR and VestaFire pedals in the effects loop, and an MXR Distortion II, which sounds amazing in front of the preamp as a combination boost/overdrive.

I play in several bands, one with a female vocalist (think PJ Harvey) and one a much harder indie-rock sound that I sing for (think Shiner and Drive Like Jehu). This preamp sounds great driving a string of delays and echoes, or straight up overdriven strumming. I particularly like how it reacts to the dynamics of your playing, so you can do a nice transition from playing soft and semi-clean to hard distortion.

When I first go it the tubes were nearly dead. Swapped them out for new Groove Tubes, and was floored by the sound. The JJ 12AX7s are superb as well. You can get em from www.triodeelectronics.com, along with a lot of great info about tubes brands/types in general.

Keep it in a sturdy rack box and it should go forever. After all, it is a rackmount unit, so it seems odd that people qualify their reliability ratings by saying you have to rack it. Of course you do.

The pots on mine needed cleaning. A little Tuner Cleaner from Radio Shack and there like new. Keep some handy, works great on any scratchy pots.

Very nice of the Genz Benz company to still offer any info about this, considering they have long been discontinued. I emailed support and they provided a schematic, which I always like to have for all my gear.

Find one on EvilBay. You won't regret it.

This preamp is very straightforward. If you're used to using any amp with conventional knobs you won't have any problem at all. The only part that may be new to someone is the way 'stack' mode works. When you are in stack mode you are running one channel into the other for ultimate gain. This sounds very Boogie-like. But a few controls take on functions different than labeled when in this mode. Be sure to check out the manual.

There are no presets to deal with. No programming. No memory locations. You get two channels plus stack mode. Each of the two channels has it's own completely independant gain staging and tone controls. Stack mode relies on the controls of both channels with pre and post tone controls.

The effects loop is easy to manage. And there are level controls for outs and ins. The effects loop does have a stereo or mono return. There are stereo outputs that carry the effects signal as returned. An added bonus for me were the dry outs. You get a mono line level and a mono instrument level dry output. That means no effects are added there. I used the guitar level dry out to feed my tuner. That way I didn't have a tuner inline with my signal anywhere. The line level dry out could be used if you wanted to have some parallel dry/effects signal routing.

I used my RealTube II with my Ibanez Universe guitars. I put my Digitech GSP-7 effects rack into the effects loop. The signal then went to my Carvin FET450 power amp and into a pair of speaker cabinets. I've used it with two 2x12 cabs for a while, then switched to two 2x10 cabs with aluminum cones, and then used a 4x8 on top of a 1x12 cab. All had very thick sound with exception of the aluminum cone 10's which tended to bring out the highs a little too much.

On it's own, the RTII was fairly quiet. Obviously some hum is to be expected from a tube unit but I wouldn't say it was any more than is characteristic of any other tube preamp. Though when I added the GSP7 to the fx loop it increased the noise level substantially. I chalk this up to gain increases in my fx patches and not any inherent flaw in the fx loop design itself.

The sound of this box is phenomenal. Channel 1 is set up like an old Fender or Marshall. At low drive settings it's very clean and fat with a very 'round' bottom. When you crank it up you get the kind of distortion those old amps that weren't made to have distortion got. So it's a very vintage type of overdrive. I mostly just used this channel as my clean setting though.

Channel 2 is the drive channel. It reminded me more of a late '60s Marshall. It's got a lot more drive than channel 1 and seems to have quite a 'push' in the midrange. Very cool if you're a fan of this type of sound.

Then there's stack mode. Stack mode runs channel 2 as a preamp for channel 1. Sonic mayhem results. This was the channel that made me buy this preamp. It's very Boogie-like. Crunch, aunch, sustain, metal, destruction and any other adjectives you can think up to describe the way a Dual Rectifier might sound. Of course, if you just want a Boogie sound and have the dough, a Boogie might be better. But at this price point you can't do that. The key here is that stack mode sounds very Boogie-like. Like, as in, similar characteristics. This isn't any kind of modeling preamp that claims to have the sound of Boogie. They just made a killer tube preamp that happens to be very reminiscent of that sound. It sounds to me like it has that rectifier sag that makes the 'metal' Boogies sound so cool.

Overall the reliability is great. I used this thing for eight years without a backup (I don't play out so much any more). I never had so much as a fuse blow in this thing. And I only changed tubes once just because I wanted to try a new sound. In almost every way reliability should be a '10'.

However, this unit uses those plastic sleeve 1/4" jacks. Not too much a problem for me as it lived in my rack, permanently connected to my other gear. But if you are patching and unpatching a lot this cold be a big issue. I hate plastic jacks. Especially on such a top rate unit.

Also, the front input of my unit died. It wasn't the jack. I tried putting a new jack on it and it didn't do the trick. Luckily the unit has a rear input as well. I just popped the hood, unscrewed the rear jack, and moved it over to the front. Fixed. But now I don't have a rear input at all. Lucky I don't use wireless I guess!

The '5' in this category is due solely to that input jack that died off.

I have never dealt with customer support.

My band during the time I used this product was primarily a metal band in the vein of Metallica and Testament. I used only the clean and stack modes of the preamp. The Marshall-y drive channel was a little to tame for that kind of intense music. But I'd say this preamp was a great match for that style.

very easy to use. manual is just a pamphlet. if you know knobs, you're in! has stereo ins and outs. clean, drive and stack channels with seperate eq's plus contour control to fine tune the cabinet sound

i'm playing a G&L Legacy and Ibanez Roadstar thru the 922 into a Carvin T100 stereo amp and into a stereo Laney 2x12 cabinet with 70 watt Celestions. This thing SINGS!! I used to use a Digitech RP6, which I tweaked for some awesome tone but nothing like this! I play in a reggae/rock band. It doesn't break up like a Boogie when your playing clean. It's crystal clear. The Drive channel has it's own EQ plus a contour control for PHAT solos. It also has a Stack feature which lets you drive the Drive channel thru the Clean channel for even more killer tones. It is a bit noisy when cranked but just turn down the volume on your guitar and turn up the amp and you'll have people begging you for the secret.

just got it. it sounds so good that i'm looking for another one just in case

I called to order the footswitch and the folks I spoke to were GREAT! Didn't have all the answers at first but took my number and called me back!Even sent a manual for free.

I've been playing for almost 30 yrs. and this is the best set up I've used. I play roots, rock, reggae, blues, jazz, fusion...it's ALL GOOD with this pre amp. I've played Marshalls, Fenders and Boogies and I've got the killer set up now! Crystal clear clean channel and beautiful and thick Drive channel. I don't even use the stack feature.

Ibanez RG570 with DiMarzio Super 3 and Fast Track 2 pickups straight into the RT-922. I've mounted this IN my Peavey 5150. I A/B between Preamps and switch my effects loop on and off to switch between sounds.
This sounds very boogie, like everyone says, but unlike many other high gain amps, you can control the tone between stages of gain, which as I said, is a bit confusing at first, but the sheer variety of tones is woth it.
It's a bit noisy in stack mode, but thare's alot of gain there, too.
It takes about 15 minutes to fully warm up, too. It sounds squishy and compressed before that. If you try this thing out, turn it on, try out another amp, then try this.
This thing is heavy, sounding, I mean. there are some real thick syrupy smooth sounds here, even without too much gain. This thing needs less and less gain to sound good as it warms up, I work for 4 minutes to dial in a good metal sound, and it's out of control and crappy in another 7. It really warms up and smooths out, palm mutes better.
Wierd.
It doesn't take nearly as long for my 5150 or VTM 120 to warm up.
They're ready to go in less than a minute. but then they run their tubes at maximum voltage.

Three channels, third is a combination of the other two.
It is all tube, 2 12ax7.
11 knobs.
The drive (Red) and Clean (green) channels are pretty straight forward, but once you click that Stack switch, look out, the tone controls for the drive channel affect the tone between gain stages, the master for the drive controls the gain for the second stage, and the interaction between gain, tone and secondary tone controls gets kind of confusing. Getting a good sound out of the Stack channel is easy, just get a good sound for each other channels, and hit the switch, but making changes to that tone is hard. You think turing one this knob will do this, but it does something completely different.
This has made me give up on the Red channel alone. The stack channel took some learnin' but I'm getting the hang of it.
The features are better covered in the posts on this in the effects section.
Wish the stack channel was independant of the drive channel.

Mine has a bunch of duct tape on it for some reason, the bottom of the case seems a bit flimsy. But mounted in the 5150, I feel confident it won't break.
Before mounting: 7
After:9

This is discontinued, and there is a new version of it. I bought it used, so I'd have Old Face at Eclipse music in West St. Paul fix it.

I love it, if it were lost or stolen, I'd hope to any god that the new ones sound as good as this.

11 knobs.
The drive (Red) and Clean (green) channels are pretty straight forward, but once you click that Stack switch, look out, the tone controls for the drive channel affect the tone between gain stages, the master for the drive controls the gain for the second stage, and the interaction between gain, tone and secondary tone controls gets kind of confusing. Getting a good sound out of the Stack channel is easy, just get a good sound for each other channels, and hit the switch, but making changes to that tone is hard. You think turing one this knob will do this, but it does something completely different.
This has made me give up on the Red channel alone. The stack channel took some learnin' but I'm getting the hang of it.

Ibanez RG570 with DiMarzio Super 3 and Fast Track 2 pickups straight into the RT-922. I've mounted this IN my Peavey 5150. I A/B between Preamps and switch my effects loop on and off to switch between sounds.
This sounds very boogie, like everyone says, but unlike many other high gain amps, you can control the tone between stages of gain, which as I said, is a bit confusing at first, but the sheer variety of tones is woth it.
It's a bit noisy in stack mode, but thare's alot of gain there, too.
It takes about 15 minutes to fully warm up, too. It sounds squishy and compressed before that. If you try this thing out, turn it on, try out another amp, then try this.
This thing is heavy, sounding, I mean. there are some real thick syrupy smooth sounds here, even without too much gain. This thing needs less and less gain to sound good as it warms up, I work for 4 minutes to dial in a good metal sound, and it's out of control and crappy in another 7. It really warms up and smooths out, palm mutes better.
Wierd.
It doesn't take nearly as long for my 5150 or VTM 120 to warm up.
They're ready to go in less than a minute. but then they run their tubes at maximum voltage.

Mine has a bung of duct tape on it for some reason, the bottom of the case seems a bit flimsy. But mounted in the 5150, I feel confident it won't break.
Before mounting: 7
After:9

This is discontinued, and there is a new version of it. I bought it used, so I'd have Old Face at Eclipse music in West St. Paul fix it.

I love it, if it were lost or stolen, I'd hope to any god that the new ones sound as good as this.