Lichtlaerm Audio Ragnarok- high gain tube preamp done right
Just picked this one up today, and I’m very happy with it so far. I use preamps into my kma endgame as my “amps”, and I am extremely picky about which preamps are actually fit for that job. So far, the only ones I’ve truly been impressed with are the tone kings, peace hill fx, and htj works tube preamps. All of them work fantastically for clean tones/pedal platforms, but I don’t love the dirt/gain sound of any of them. I was extremely excited to try this one when I heard about it, and it hasn’t disappointed me. I swapped the stock tubes for a set of 12ax7s, fiddled with the internal eq a little, and have found an incredible sounding setup for high gain tones. It is the first preamp that I can use as my amp that I am happy with its gain alone, I don’t feel any need to run other pedals in front of it(although it sounds great with a rat in front). It can get extremely doomy, or tight and modern if you play around with the cut and bite controls. Lichtlaerm is quickly becoming one of my favorite pedal makers; they do high gain stuff so well