Effects Bay

Yesterday I posted Jerry Cantrell’s pedal set up, and noticed he had the Ibanez TS808HW limited hand wired edition tube screamer. I’ve seen this before, but realized I hadn’t talked about it on the site.

Ibanez thought they would do something special and create a hand wired (no circuit board) edition of the tube screamer using JRC4558D chips found in the original TS808. They also made the pedal with true bypass and different enclosure.

Here is the official description:

The Ibanez Tube Screamer, in its many versions and forms, can be found on pedal boards across the globe. Its warm overdrive is a sound many players, from advanced to beginner, can’t be without. The hand-wired deluxe TS808HW Tube Screamer offers even more capability and was built with the pro musician in mind.

Encased in a special, heavy-duty metal box, the TS808HW pedal is hand-wired with select JRC4558D IC chips (same as the revered and often-imitated TS808) and uses Japanese high-end MOGAMI OEC cable (AWG21). Equipped with true bypass, this Tube Screamer sends pure guitar excitement to your amplifier with no tonal loss whatsoever. This is, by far, the most evolved Tube Screamer pedal Ibanez has ever created.

I definitely like the Tube screamer. Used a Tube screamer TS9 for a long time. Very effective for bumping the leads up. I like the mid bump it gives, etc. I was surprised by the low amount of video reviews for this pedal.. and the ones available.. were not the greatest. ProGuitarShopDemos had the best.. by far.

I checked out ProGuitarShop.com, but it’s sold out. Musician’s Friend still has the Ibanez TS808HW in stock for $349.98

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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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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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I have to first start off saying that I’m a big fan of Fuller’s Fulltone pedals. They are well made, and he makes a wide range of quality effects. Today, I wanted to talk about the Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MosFET overdrive pedal. I have to say this is one of the best overdrives you can get. It’s similar to the Ibanez Tube Screamer TS9 but you get WAY more control and more meat to your tone. You definitely can dial in a TS9 sound if you’re wanting that, and you can get a very large amount of sustain without huge amount of gain or noise. To me, that is very important. The Ibanez Tube Screamer TS9 is a little brighter and thinner in the low mids than the Fulldrive 2, which is not a bad thing at all, just pointing out some differences.

The boost setting comes close to the the Maxon 808 with Big Muff in the line, giving you some serious punch and sustain for rhythm or leads. The pedal gives you clean boost or wild overdrive.

The pedal has volume, tone, overdrive and boost knobs along with footswitches for selecting vintage/compcut modes and MosFET/standard overdrive. Having the knob controlling boost is something very cool in my opinion.

The MosFET/standard mode adds more low end and roundness to your tone. Use the tone knob to control presence and smooth out upper harmonic frequencies. Vintage/compcut gives you the classic midrange bump.

The pedal was named “Best Stompbox of 2006″ by Guitar Player magazine, so you know musician’s are digging this unit.

You can currently pick this pedal up for $179.00 new at Musician’s Friend,  or you might find a better deal new/used on eBay via Pedal Nerd.

Below is a great demonstration video of the Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MosFET overdrive pedal. Shows various settings and played with different guitars.

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