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I was surprised to see that Musician’s Friend is now offering Keeley modded TS9 (baked mod). I really find these TS9 mods quite interesting.  A few months ago I posted a entry showing gearmanndude’s shoot out between a few mods, but I also found another good one showing the Keely and Analog man.

Here is the official ‘mod’ description:

The Keeley Ibanez TS9 Baked Mod takes a traditional Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer Pedal and modifies it for incredible saturation, sustain, and wonderfully controllable feedback.

Robert Keeley uses the Texas Instruments RC4558P chip in this unit—the same used in early Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamers—along with a high-quality socket with gold inserts, metal film resistors, and metal film capacitors.

The range of the Drive control has been shifted as well; if a traditional TS9 goes from 0-10, the TS9 Baked Mod goes from 4-14. Additionally, one of the resistors that affects input impedance is raised a slight bit, allowing your pickups to breathe and reducing tone-sucking when off, and the input transistor is replaced with an MPSA18. The result is over-the-top overdrive that’s virtually noise-free.

Here is  the great video by Passenger95

You can pick up the Keeley Modded Ibanez TS9 Baked Mod Tube Screamer for $170.00 at Musician’s Friend.

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I’ve been talking about silicon and Germanium transistors on fuzzes for a bit. I’m feeling a little obsessed on the subject lately, and today, I’m still talking about it. Today though, I’m bringing up the Keeley Fuzz Head pedal. This little pedal is pretty sweet since you can switch between the silicon or Germanium transistors! This pedal only has two knobs (Fuzz and Head) which makes it nice and simple, which I’m always a fan of.

Here is the official description:

The Fuzz Head from Keeley is a unique lead boost that combines the best of fuzz and overdrive effects. Transparent, dynamic, and fully tweakable, with an NPN Germanium transistor at its heart but much more up its sleeve.

With external Fuzz and Head controls, you can easily call up a number of dynamic fuzz and overdrive effects. The unique Si/Ge switch allows you to control a secondary clipping stage by adding a pair of diodes (one Germanium, one silicon) into the circuit for smoother clipping, more saturation, and loads of sustain.

Pedal tweakers will love the internal gain control, which sets the overall range of the external Fuzz control, and the internal tone control or sharpening high-end or cutting it back. A small, flathead screwdriver is all that’s needed to fine tune your tone. Three swappable capacitors are also included with the Fuzz Head, so that if you must change the low-end response of the pedal, you can.

Of course, I found another great video by gearmandude on this pedal!

You can pick up the Keeley Fuzz Head for $209.00 at Musician’s Friend. Hold up! Looks like it’s also on sale (currently) at Fat Tone Guitars!

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So on Twitter and over various emails from the site, I’ve been asked what a good pedal is for boosting leads and cutting through the mix. I’ve personally struggled with this over the years, and I have to say the Ibanez Tubescreamer TS9 is really a fantastic pedal for this. This could be a major reason why you see this little green pedal on SO many pedal boards out there. The TS9 does somethings besides adding gain. There is a clear mid-bump there, which to me, is the primary reason why the leads stand out. The mids are very important to be heard! Along with the mid bump, and how you configure the settings, you can get some unbelievable sustain out of this pedal. It tightens up the low-end a bit for some additional punch with the mid bump.

I know there are plenty of musicians out there that use this as a ‘distortion’ pedal which is fine, but I only use my TS9 for leads. The Tubescream TS9 is also great with other overdrive pedals. I personally like to use other overdrives or fuzz pedals too ‘wool’ up the lead tone prior to the TS9. When I say ‘wool’, I’m saying to give it a fatter/wider/nastier signal before the TS9 and then the TS9 tightens that up a bit. I feel like it creates a thicker ‘bigger’ lead tone. Of course this depends on the lead or the song or the style of music I’m playing.

The Tubescreamer Ts9 has pretty substantial gain, so you get some sick overdrive. Depending on your amp settings (clean channel vs. gain channel), you can get some massive volume boost. Gain channels with the headroom already floored won’t have that drastic of a change, but the ‘perceived’ volume boost due to the frequency change (mid boost) is more than enough to stand out.

You can pickup a Ibanez Tube Screamer TS9 for around $99 at Musician’s Friend, but you can find some sweet deals on eBay.

There are different types of Tubescreamers (TS7, TS9, TS9DS and the TS808 just to name a few) and there are buckets of ‘mods’ that are out there.. as well as clones. Personally, I only use the ‘standard’ TS9, but while poking around I started to read and watch reviews about mods. I think some of these mods.. are pretty amazing.

I found this particular ‘shoot out’ on YouTube, which shows a Keeley Mod’d 808 (808 Mod), Analog Man Mod, Keeley Plus Mod, Factory Maxon OD-9. All of these modified pedals can be picked up at TunnelVision Music.

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