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Rocktron Piranha and it's tubes


O D

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I e-mailed Jim at Rocktron asking what role do the tubes play in the Piranhas signal path since i was curious about the actual "tubeness" of the preamp. He replied that the distortion is entirely tube generated, but the eq is solid state.

What exactly does this mean? I gotta say i'm a bit puzzled since i thought the Piranha only used the tubes to warm up the signal a bit, not as the actual source of distortion? Also, according to him, one tube is for clean, the other for distortion. Is it even possible to get that much gain from a single tube?

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Originally posted by O D

I e-mailed Jim at Rocktron asking what role do the tubes play in the Piranhas signal path since i was curious about the actual "tubeness" of the preamp. He replied that the distortion is entirely tube generated, but the eq is solid state.

What exactly does this mean? I gotta say i'm a bit puzzled since i thought the Piranha only used the tubes to warm up the signal a bit, not as the actual source of distortion? Also, according to him, one tube is for clean, the other for distortion. Is it even possible to get that much gain from a single tube?

 

Yeah my understanding was that unlike a lot of Rocktron's other/past stuff the Piranha was designed to be a "real" tube preamp (like an ADA MP-1 or Triaxis) in terms of how it's signal gets generated (i.e. the tubes are the tone/gain generators).

 

E-mail him again and ask if the tube's gain stages (each 12AX7 has two gain stages) cascade or are dedicated one to a channel. That's a common thing said about the Piranha that it's designed as one tube per channel (rather than having them cascade into each other for more gain stages as per most other preamps) but I have wondered whether it is actually true as I've never seen anything authoritative about how the gain is actually generated.

 

Of course, I agree with those who say that tone is all that matters in the end, but I'm a curious guy, too. ;)

 

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Most EQ's are solid state.

 

In fact, I don't think I have ever seen an amp that had an "all-tube" EQ section. Well I guess if you count amps with just volume, no EQ section, then it would be "all-tube" :)

 

Anyway basically the tone controls are solid state, which are fine, and the signal path is tube.

 

It sounds to me like it is like the ADA and such. Not like a lot of "tube" floor modelers and pre's these days with a starved plate design to "warm up" the sound.

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