Rocktron Blue Thunder from Guitar World's Bass Guitar Magazine by Emile Menasche

Everyone talks about the "good old days" of vintage technology, but were they so great compared to today? Consider the sheer variety and flexibility today's tech advances place at our disposal: we can paint with a full spectrum of sonic colors, from the warm browns of the great vintage tubes to the ice blue of ultramodern digital processors. The Rocktron Blue Thunder digital bass preamp is a good example of the benefits afforded by modern design. This one-rack-space digital device is no mere tube-amp wannabe. It boasts loads of quality sounds and effects, and has enough cool features to let you carve out truly unique sounds or anhance traditional tones. Although Rocktron has been building preamps for quite some time, the company is best known for its HUSH series of noise reduction devices, and I'm glad to see this powerful feature included in the Blue Thunder. The Blue Thunder is a mono-in, stereo-out, 24-bit digital preamp and effects device that can deliver a whopping 10 effects at once, including distortion, EQ, compression, delay, reverb, tremolo, phaser, chorus or flanger, speaker exciter and emulation, and, of course, HUSH noise reduction. Its 128 factory presets are divided into two groups: the first 64 are intended for use with an amp, the second 64 for D.I. and recording. It can be used as an outboard unit mated to another amp or preamp. You can change presets from the Blue thunder's front panel or via an optional MIDI footswitch, and various parameters-delay time or modulation speed, for example-can be controlled in real time with MIDI. The tap-tempo button lets you synchronize the delay and mod effects to the tempo of the track you're working on, and you can synchronize with MIDI. The Blue Thunder's distortion can be smooth or nasty, and the spatial effects sound excellent. Once you get the hand of the Blue Thunder's comprehensive editing interface, it's easy to roll your own sounds. The custom-designed SIMBiotic EQ offers four bands (two fully parametric) and there are dedicated knobs with which to set bass, middle and treble levels. An innovative hi-pass filter lets you set a frequency split; frequencies above the split point are allowed into the effects path, while the direct analog circuitry remains untouched. It's a great way to save your low end from sounding like a mud puddle. The Speaker Exciter has Sonic Clarity and Sonic Boom controls that add punch and rumble, which is especially cool at low volume settings and useful for direct recording. Finally, the Blue Thunder's comprehensive built-in mixer lets you mix all the effects-including distortion-with the dry, unaffected signal to your liking-a major plus. THE BOTTOM LINE Out of the box, the Blue Thunder seems best suited to the adventurous player, but with a little programming it reveals a wealth of conventional and unusual bass sounds. Its versatility-both in terms of sounds and signal routing-is just astounding, especially considering that it lists for under $500. All in all, this is a very sound value. Article edited for the Web