Rocktron Chameleon

The Rocktron Chameleon is a single space guitar pre-amp that was released in the mid to late 80’s during the heyday of the rack era. At the time it was often overlooked in favor of the ADA MP-1 or units by Digitech. However the Chameleon is an excellent guitar pre-amp that can still be purchased for a pretty good price on the secondary market. You can build pro quality guitar rack system around the Rocktron Chameleon for a fraction of what it would have cost 15 years ago.

The Chameleon was one of the first units to offer amp modeling with speaker emulation built in. The unit also featured built in guitar effects. In one of the early ads Rocktron would show a comparison of an output waveform of the Chameleon compared to the output waveform of a Marshall amp.

Although the Chameleon included speaker emulation most people ran the unit into a power amp which then was usually plugged into a 4×12 guitar cabinet.

The unit featured pre and post distortion EQ’s. The pre distortion EQ is especially critical for shaping the fundamental tone of the distortion. On board “Hush” noise reduction rounds out the features and eliminates excess noise caused by high gain.

There were 127 factory presets which were repeated with speaker emulation turned on. There was a knob on the front of the unit to cycle through the presets for instant gratification. Like many rack units of the time it took a little effort to scroll through the various parameters to customize the presets.

There are other versions of the Chameleon, The Chameleon On-line and the Chameleon 2000.

The Chameleon On-line is pretty much the same unit as the original except it comes loaded with user created presets trhat can be updated for the Rocktron web site. You will need to install the Rocktron sysex editor to load the presets onto your Chameleon

There was a later version of the unit called the Chameleon 2000. Many people feel it is a different unit rather than an upgrade to the original series. Some people like it better and some don’t. The 2000 unit simplified the EQ and some users feel this took away some flexibility. Some people consider the Chameleon 2000 a stripped down version of the Rocktron Prophesy.

Personally I would try to find a Chameleon On-line before the other versions. I think being able to share presets is a cool idea.

I bought this 1974 50W Marshall head for $350 in the late 80’s. I bought it thinking it was a 73, which was the last of the hand wired Marshalls. I later found out it was a 74 due to a date code of “F” on the serial number.

The problem with a master volume amp is that you really need to crank it to really get the tone it was built for. I bought a Rockman Power Soak so I could crank the amp with waking the neighbors. A the time the SR&D Power Soak was the only attenuator available. The Marshall Power brake may have been out but it was expensive.

The Marshall only had one tone in it but it it was perfect. My Marshall had plenty of grind to it but I liked to place my Ibanez TS10 tube screamer in front of it for lead tones.

I eventually sold the amp. It was way more amp than I needed and it was not that versatile for my particular needs.

This a a short clip of me and my 1964 Fender Princeton Reverb. I bought this amp in the late 80’s for $350 or so. At the time the vintage amp market was exploding and Deluxe Reverbs were really going up in price. This amp is very similar to the Deluxe Reverb only it has a 10 inch speaker. It’s almost in mint condition except for the fact that one of the previous owners decided to install tilt back legs on it. It is actually nice to have the tilt back legs but it wasn’t a factory option for this model.

The purpose of this video was to demo how much distortion this amp can push on 10. The video really doesn’t do it justice. It sounds great in person and is almost better with a tube screamer in front of it.

I buy and sell a lot of gear but when I bought this amp I swore I would never sell it. It’s pretty much the same story for my Les Paul, Strat and Tele.