# Rocktron Chameleon... in 2018!



## BuckarooBanzai (Oct 31, 2018)

A few weeks ago I got a bug up my ass and began looking at old digital Rocktron preamps on Reverb/eBay. I have a soft spot in my heart for the obscenely-chuggy digital noises I used to get out of the multi-effects pedals that my friends and I had in high school and hoped that scoring a Prophesy or something would be a cheap way to relive being 15 years old again while still presenting the possibility of usable tones. I discovered the Rocktron Chameleon, which I remembered being sold on Musician's Friend forever ago, and found a Chameleon Online on Reverb. This particular model has a faceplate the same color as an SGI Indy, a RISC Unix workstation from the 90s that I think looks super-cool:







With nostalgia goggles in full effect I pounced on it and got it in the mail a week and a half later. I have to say... I'm thoroughly surprised that a digital preamp that came out 25 years ago sounds this good. In addition to nailing the noises that most digital preamps are good at (over-chorused scooped cleans, chuggy high-gain) it pulls of a great low/mid-gain crunch and dry clean sound. Before plugging it into my 4x12 I ran it through my studio monitors with the built-in cabinet simulation and it sounded wonderful, even with the stock presets. After tweaking for a few hours I can say confidently that if my AX8 was stolen I could take this thing to a cover gig, plug straight into the board and play a solid three sets with nobody complaining.

I'm sort of rambling at this point but I suppose the reason I made this thread was to express my amazement at how advanced digital preamps already were in the 90s and how this one flew hard under the radar. The only issue i have with it is that it doesn't clean up especially nicely when you turn the volume knob down, but otherwise this thing has way more than I'd ever expect out of a used $100 rack unit. Is there anybody else out there messing with old, "obsolete" digital gear?


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## MaxOfMetal (Oct 31, 2018)

Rocktron was something of the "Fractal of the 90's", way ahead of their time. Everyone thinks of Digitech, mainly because they looked like AxeFx units, but Rocktron really knew what they were doing. Grab a Piranha or a Prophecy, great preamps that no one cares about anymore.


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## Shask (Oct 31, 2018)

Yes, I have owned a few of those blue Chameleons a few times in my life. Pretty cool for what it is. I think if I looked again, I would probably grab the Voodoo Valve instead.

The best trick with those, is to turn on the speaker sim, even through an amp and cab.... turn it to full-range, and use the reactance control to dial in the low end chunk, like a resonance/depth knob on a tube amp.


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## BuckarooBanzai (Oct 31, 2018)

MaxOfMetal said:


> Rocktron was something of the "Fractal of the 90's", way ahead of their time. Everyone thinks of Digitech, mainly because they looked like AxeFx units, but Rocktron really knew what they were doing. Grab a Piranha or a Prophecy, great preamps that no one cares about anymore.



Will check the Piranha out, but the Prophesy units I've seen for sale are several hundred dollars... too rich for my blood for something that ultimately amounts to a minor diversion.

**EDIT: I just checked the Piranha out. I've been eyeing a Replifex since it has the same cab sim as the Chameleon and depending upon the used prices on the Piranha I might have a reason to buy one now xD



Shask said:


> Yes, I have owned a few of those blue Chameleons a few times in my life. Pretty cool for what it is. I think if I looked again, I would probably grab the Voodoo Valve instead.
> 
> The best trick with those, is to turn on the speaker sim, even through an amp and cab.... turn it to full-range, and use the reactance control to dial in the low end chunk, like a resonance/depth knob on a tube amp.



I shall definitely give that a shot... I was sort of wondering why they had the full-range option in the first place!


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## B.M.F. (Oct 31, 2018)

The Chameleon is a classic unit of which I owned one for years.
It comes with some really great clean sounds out of the box - check out #93 "Flying Pigs" (bang on Gilmour-type lead sound with rotary flange and delay included), #10 "Tin Pan Alley" (SRV tone which hotness and gain can be controlled by the input knob.)
#94 "Play It Jimi" with a single coil Strat or Tele is especially tasty.
As with any of these units, they sound best in stereo.
Here is a video of Steve Swanson from Six Feet Under showing what the Chameleon is capable of with high gain. Steve's rack with Chameleon is visible at 2:23.


I also liked the Rockton Pro Gap, the "Ultra" version is rare. V1 and V2 were solid state (ones I owned) but the Ultra was the first fully digital preamp Rocktron made.
V1 and V2 also had presets by Allan Holdsworth and Steve Lukather and got a very chuggy but snappy high gain searing sound. For some reason I liked v1 better. V2 had two choices to the EQ curve but didn't sound as good as v1 to me.
It takes time to learn the Rocktron EQ system of which the Prophesy is the ultimate in complexity but at least has knobs and a decent screen.

I do miss that era of guitar gear because there was no internet yet and people judged you by how good you play, not what gear you use.


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## Mwoit (Nov 1, 2018)

Looks like an Xbox prototype there. Nice.


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## BuckarooBanzai (Nov 1, 2018)

Mwoit said:


> Looks like an Xbox prototype there. Nice.



Anything but... Nintendo and Sony consoles of the mid-to-late-90s both used MIPS processors as that machine did, whereas the Xbox was essentially a consumer x86 PC stuffed into a console case. If memory serves those Indys were actually used as development machines for the N64. Sony also used a MIPS CPU in the PS2, the last time the architecture made a major home console appearance as far as I can remember.


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## Mwoit (Nov 1, 2018)

Mo Jiggity said:


> Anything but... Nintendo and Sony consoles of the mid-to-late-90s both used MIPS processors as that machine did, whereas the Xbox was essentially a consumer x86 PC stuffed into a console case. If memory serves those Indys were actually used as development machines for the N64. Sony also used a MIPS CPU in the PS2, the last time the architecture made a major home console appearance as far as I can remember.



I just meant the blue plastic housing the hardware, not the underlying architecture. Is the Rock Tron running mips?


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## Rawkmann (Nov 1, 2018)

I love Rocktron gear! Still own and use daily both a Chameleon and Prophesy for practice and recording. In fact, here's a cover I did just a couple weeks ago using the Prophesy if You want to get an idea of what it can do:

https://soundcloud.com/user-735286145/bark-at-the-moon-ozzy-cover

The Prophesy is definitely more advanced and sounds more organic than the Chameleon overall. If You keep an eye open on Guitar Center's used listings You might be able to snag one for pretty cheap.


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## Elric (Nov 1, 2018)

The problem with some of the early units wasn't that they couldn't sound good. It was that they were a bitch to dial. The pre and post EQs on those could get you to lots of way cool places but you had to understand how preamps worked or at least being willing to mess with it a bit. And no touch screens or hand holding UIs, here, kids. It's buttons and seven segment LEDs. Small LCD if you're lucky.

Cool thing is being a preamp, since you could always pair it with a tube power amp or real cab you weren't messing with emulations there so you had authentic sounds from the get go. Preamps need tubes far less than power amps by far IMHO; especially for heavy sounds.

Every once in a while I get an urge to buy one of those, too. I am always doing gear experiments for fun/inspiration. I remember thinking the Prophesy was absolutely insane when it first dropped.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 1, 2018)

I almost LOVED my Piranha... Just didn't seem to take overdrive pedals well. Not sure if it was a defective unit. But when you set the gain too high or boosted the front end, it sounded like the input would clip or something.


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## BuckarooBanzai (Nov 1, 2018)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I almost LOVED my Piranha... Just didn't seem to take overdrive pedals well. Not sure if it was a defective unit. But when you set the gain too high or boosted the front end, it sounded like the* input would clip or something.*



That wouldn't be the most surprising thing in the world... traditional tube amps had a tube input stage but the ADA MP-1 has a FET input buffer (if I remember correctly), hence why it has two gain parameters (one for each tube). Perhaps the Piranha has a similar topology. Unfortunately those units are easily north of $500 at the moment so I doubt I'll get one any time soon.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 1, 2018)

Mo Jiggity said:


> That wouldn't be the most surprising thing in the world... traditional tube amps had a tube input stage but the ADA MP-1 has a FET input buffer (if I remember correctly), hence why it has two gain parameters (one for each tube). Perhaps the Piranha has a similar topology. Unfortunately those units are easily north of $500 at the moment so I doubt I'll get one any time soon.



From the reading I've done, it's a hybrid kinda deal going on? The Piranha has 2 tubes, one for clean, and one for both dirty channels. With the dirt, there's a solid state gain stage that cascades into the tube gain stage, which gives it that tubey feel.

I had a Peavey Bandit that would also do the same thing with an OD. It sounded like something was clipping the input, making things sound super fuzzy.


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## Vince (Nov 1, 2018)

You're on the right forum with this thing. I had a Chameleon as my main live and recording rig for 12 years. Here an ancient thread on it, loaded with a ton of presets for you:

http://sevenstring.org/threads/vinces-rocktron-chameleon-settings.1596/

Rock on brother, it's a killer unit!


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## USMarine75 (Nov 2, 2018)

^This was the real king back in the day! I miss mine.

FWIW I have been looking at purchasing a Rocktron to complete my 80s/90s rack. The Widowmaker and Plexi both look really interesting. I had been looking at the Gainiac 2 and contacted Rocktron CS and they had this to say: "The WidowMaker is a little heavier darker tone in general to the Gainiac. Over the top gain and very modern metal tones with a good selection of clean tones as well."


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## Seabeast2000 (Nov 2, 2018)

No joke, they sold for $830 w/o the controller IIRC. 1993. ART withered to mic preamps or something, somehow.


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## Spinedriver (Nov 2, 2018)

USMarine75 said:


> ^This was the real king back in the day! I miss mine.
> 
> FWIW I have been looking at purchasing a Rocktron to complete my 80s/90s rack. The Widowmaker and Plexi both look really interesting. I had been looking at the Gainiac 2 and contacted Rocktron CS and they had this to say: "The WidowMaker is a little heavier darker tone in general to the Gainiac. Over the top gain and very modern metal tones with a good selection of clean tones as well."



I STILL have an SGX 2000 that I got at a pawn shop for $130 back in '98. It really does have some nice effects sounds on it but for some reason for all of the effects it does have, it doesn't have a phaser (which I found kinda odd). That being said, the od/distortion section sounded pretty bad, so I just used it in the loop of my amp. Never had the floorboard for it and the only one I ever saw for sale, the store that was selling it was asking way too much for it.


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## shred-o-holic (Nov 2, 2018)

What about the Progap? I used version I and II for years. They were wicked for shredding lol


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## shred-o-holic (Nov 2, 2018)

BlasphemyMadeFlesh said:


> I also liked the Rockton Pro Gap, the "Ultra" version is rare. V1 and V2 were solid state (ones I owned) but the Ultra was the first fully digital preamp Rocktron made.
> V1 and V2 also had presets by Allan Holdsworth and Steve Lukather and got a very chuggy but snappy high gain searing sound. For some reason I liked v1 better. V2 had two choices to the EQ curve but didn't sound as good as v1 to me.
> 
> I do miss that era of guitar gear because there was no internet yet and people judged you by how good you play, not what gear you use.



Ah yes you mention the mighty Progap. Thought about picking another up sometime lol for peanuts


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## BuckarooBanzai (Nov 2, 2018)

USMarine75 said:


> ^This was the real king back in the day! I miss mine.
> 
> FWIW I have been looking at purchasing a Rocktron to complete my 80s/90s rack. The Widowmaker and Plexi both look really interesting. I had been looking at the Gainiac 2 and contacted Rocktron CS and they had this to say: "The WidowMaker is a little heavier darker tone in general to the Gainiac. Over the top gain and very modern metal tones with a good selection of clean tones as well."



Duuuuuude I want one of those pretty bad too. A coworker of mine loaned me an SGE Mach II back in the day which is, from what I can gather, basically an earlier SGX 2000 minus the tube preamp section. I didn't know enough to realize that I should've been running it into a full-range system so I kind of discounted it at the time since it sounded weird running through the front-end of my Marshall combo. By the time this thread is done I'll have five 80s rack systems sitting in my basement :-D.

Currently on the lookout for a Mosvalve, Fender 2150 or other "tubey" sounding 80s/90s power amp BTW. If somebody has one that they want to offload let me know!


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## mnemonic (Nov 2, 2018)

When I was researching my ISP Theta preamp before I bought it, I did read that it’s apparently quite similar to the Pro GAP preamp, but ‘more’. IIRC it was designed by the same person/people.

I’ve never tried a Pro GAP so I can’t say if that’s accurate or not. 

Possible option for people who want that sound but with some newer tech.


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## BuckarooBanzai (Nov 2, 2018)

mnemonic said:


> When I was researching my ISP Theta preamp before I bought it, I did read that it’s apparently quite similar to the Pro GAP preamp, but ‘more’. IIRC it was designed by the same person/people.
> 
> I’ve never tried a Pro GAP so I can’t say if that’s accurate or not.
> 
> Possible option for people who want that sound but with some newer tech.



ISP supposedly took Rocktron's DSP people, so the people who designed the Theta DSP were also responsible for the Rocktron Prophesy, Voodu Valve, Chameleon, etc.It wouldn't surprise me if the same were true for their analog products.


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## Shask (Nov 2, 2018)

Mo Jiggity said:


> Duuuuuude I want one of those pretty bad too. A coworker of mine loaned me an SGE Mach II back in the day which is, from what I can gather, basically an earlier SGX 2000 minus the tube preamp section. I didn't know enough to realize that I should've been running it into a full-range system so I kind of discounted it at the time since it sounded weird running through the front-end of my Marshall combo. By the time this thread is done I'll have five 80s rack systems sitting in my basement :-D.
> 
> Currently on the lookout for a Mosvalve, Fender 2150 or other "tubey" sounding 80s/90s power amp BTW. If somebody has one that they want to offload let me know!


Speaking of cool 90's processors, look for a Peavey Tubefex. I had one of those around the same time I had my last Chameleon. It is like a Programmable Rockmaster Tube Preamp + a Profex II Effects processor. It was the first unit I ever had where you could put any effect in any order.


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## MaxOfMetal (Nov 2, 2018)

USMarine75 said:


> ^This was the real king back in the day! I miss mine.
> 
> FWIW I have been looking at purchasing a Rocktron to complete my 80s/90s rack. The Widowmaker and Plexi both look really interesting. I had been looking at the Gainiac 2 and contacted Rocktron CS and they had this to say: "The WidowMaker is a little heavier darker tone in general to the Gainiac. Over the top gain and very modern metal tones with a good selection of clean tones as well."



I'm probably the odd man out, but I always hated the ART processors. I owned a few because of how much folks praised them (and they were cheap as dirt post 00'), but just could never dial in anything good. The effects were OK, but everything else was pretty "meh".



Mo Jiggity said:


> ISP supposedly took Rocktron's DSP people, so the people who designed the Theta DSP were also responsible for the Rocktron Prophesy, Voodu Valve, Chameleon, etc.It wouldn't surprise me if the same were true for their analog products.



ISP is "original" Rocktron. When the Rocktron brand was sold the founder and his engineering team went and created ISP.


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## Spinedriver (Nov 2, 2018)

MaxOfMetal said:


> I'm probably the odd man out, but I always hated the ART processors. I owned a few because of how much folks praised them (and they were cheap as dirt post 00'), but just could never dial in anything good. The effects were OK, but everything else was pretty "meh".



Yeah, you're not far off. I could never really find a decent setting on any of the pre-amps that could work on their own (I would occasionally set it to 'clean-ish' and run a Boss Metal Zone into it and eq the hell out of it. Ended up sounding halfway decent tbh. The one thing I could never understand was why all of the incremental values for all of the effects were 3%. I plug it in every few years just for the hell of it to see if maybe an ir loader or something can get it to sound better.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 2, 2018)

mnemonic said:


> When I was researching my ISP Theta preamp before I bought it, I did read that it’s apparently quite similar to the Pro GAP preamp, but ‘more’. IIRC it was designed by the same person/people.
> 
> I’ve never tried a Pro GAP so I can’t say if that’s accurate or not.
> 
> Possible option for people who want that sound but with some newer tech.




I wanted a Theta Pre pedal, but now you got me considering the Pro Gap as well to see how much they compare


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## B.M.F. (Nov 2, 2018)

From experience I would go for the ISP Theta preamp every time for the following reasons:
- easier to dial in sounds (knobs vs cryptic LCD screen.)
Took me an hour to dial a sound from scratch on the Pro GAP vs Theta Preamp which took five minutes.
- Theta is more modern/better sounding
- Theta has better distortions, cleans and built in boost, none of the Rocktron preamps has a built in boost.
- not as noisy/less prone to issues (the Pro GAP rack units are pushing 40 years and some have LCD/corrupted memory issues)

Of course you can find Pro GAPs online all day long for cheap. Also check out the Chameleon 2000. This was a simplified version of the Chameleon from early 2000s using the same easy to use EQ section the Piranha has instead of old Chameleon/Voodoo Valve etc deep and complex pre and post EQs...


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## narad (Nov 2, 2018)

USMarine75 said:


>



Artwork apparently by the same guy that did my 1991 huffy bike (and possibly also my super soaker)


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## USMarine75 (Nov 3, 2018)

narad said:


> Artwork apparently by the same guy that did my 1991 huffy bike (and possibly also my super soaker)








I'm sure it barely stood out back then.


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## BuckarooBanzai (Nov 3, 2018)

narad said:


> Artwork apparently by the same guy that did my 1991 huffy bike (and possibly also my super soaker)



Reminds me a lot of these:


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## Blasphemer (Nov 4, 2018)

Well, fashion is cyclical, and we're making our way back to the 90s, now.

Behold, the future.


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## prlgmnr (Nov 5, 2018)

Blasphemer said:


> Well, fashion is cyclical, and we're making our way back to the 90s, now.
> 
> Behold, the future.


Still looks better than the Kemper.


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## USMarine75 (Nov 5, 2018)

prlgmnr said:


> Still looks better than the Kemper.



I absolutely LOVE how my Kemper toaster looks. Oh well... beauty is subjective.


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## Vince (Nov 5, 2018)

USMarine75 said:


> I absolutely LOVE how my Kemper toaster looks. Oh well... beauty is subjective.



Nothing compares to the look of a Mark series  But yeah the Kemper rack looks cool, the toaster though I'm going to have to disagree with you. But hey it's good you like it!


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## prlgmnr (Nov 7, 2018)

It isn't that I don't like how the Kemper looks, exactly, just that until it produces tea, earl grey, hot on command it seems like it's dressed for the wrong job.


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## DiezelMonster (Nov 7, 2018)

Oh man. Now I need to build a rig based on the chameleon! Haha

I had just about every preamp that rocktron has made in the past and miss this sort of tone! 

Cheers.


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## mnemonic (Nov 7, 2018)

Can anyone who has had multiple of the old Rocktron preamps speak about the similarities and differences between them?

The power is out here at work and I’m basically just sitting on my hands, so I’ve been googling stuff on my phone for fun, and came across this thread:

http://www.sevenstring.org/threads/the-rocktron-preamps-thread.57190/

Descriptions sound accurate?

I’ve also read the Pro Gap models were the same as the Chameleon but without effects?

In reading up on these units, I do really dig the way they’re set up. Pre and post parametric EQ’s, and their own distortion sound, rather than models of tube amps and FMV tonestacks. It feels like it’s where digital should go, rather than where it is, which is pretending to be analog. Maybe I’m just being romantic.


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## devastone (Nov 7, 2018)

The original ProGap (red and black) was analog with digital control, the ProGap Ultra (all black) was the digital version and probably had the same preamp algorithms as the original Chameleon.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Nov 7, 2018)

Do does this all basically make the ISP Theta DSP the modern-day Chameleon?


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## BuckarooBanzai (Nov 7, 2018)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Do does this all basically make the ISP Theta DSP the modern-day Chameleon?



That's my off-the-cuff, mostly-uninformed conclusion.

ProGap Ultra > Chameleon > Prophesy > Theta DSP (in terms of lineage, not quality)

That being said the Theta DSP is totally uncompetitive given its price, especially considering that you can get an AX8 or Helix for the same coin. IMO the sweet spot is the Chameleon, which is why I ended up purchasing it. If a Prophesy were $300 on the used market I might bite, but they seem to go for nearly double that so it's a no-go for me. The Pro Gap Ultra seems impossible to find so I can't comment.


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## devastone (Nov 9, 2018)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Do does this all basically make the ISP Theta DSP the modern-day Chameleon?



Something like that, IIRC, Buck Waller and, I think, his brother, started Rocktron and designed the original units starting with the HUSH, Buck broke off and started ISP and has designed the ISP products. I guess the Theta pedal is the updated analog ProGap. I have used both and they are great preamps.


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## MaxOfMetal (Nov 9, 2018)

devastone said:


> Something like that, IIRC, Buck Waller and, I think, his brother, started Rocktron and designed the original units starting with the HUSH, Buck broke off and started ISP and has designed the ISP products. I guess the Theta pedal is the updated analog ProGap. I have used both and they are great preamps.



Jon Waller went with James "Buck" Waller when he sold Rocktron. Buck is the CEO and Jon is the CTO.


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## Andromalia (Nov 9, 2018)

I have frequent urges to rebuild a 90es rack, but then I see the leftover room in my place. T_T


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## wakjob (Nov 9, 2018)

MaxOfMetal said:


> Jon Waller went with James "Buck" Waller when he sold Rocktron. Buck is the CEO and Jon is the CTO.



I had a weird Waller solid state amp a few years ago.
Any link between the two maybe?


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## MaxOfMetal (Nov 9, 2018)

wakjob said:


> I had a weird Waller solid state amp a few years ago.
> Any link between the two maybe?



I know when they formed ISP Buck was going to start an amp company, Waller Amps, so maybe that's it.


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## devastone (Nov 10, 2018)

Yes, basically the same company.


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