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Early on in my guitar youth, I always had a chip on my shoulder about Stevie. Not sure why, because I never really listened to him, etc.  I was young and had a narrow opinion of music and styles. When I began to actually ‘study’ guitar a little bit and wanted to improve myself and learn, that is when my eyes and ears opened. I began to respect quality of play regardless of styles or genre of music. I started to *hear* tone and marvel at effortless play, that was truly inspirational. Stevie Ray Vaughan definitely captures that, but the point that blew me away was watching an episode of Austin City Limits with some old live footage. I was absolutely blown away by how he played. His aggression with the guitar, but how clean it was sounding. How effortless it appeared for him to lay down some serious licks. At that point… I said… “I get it now.. yeah, I get it”. He was amazing guitarist on multiple levels.

I was excited to see a pedal board of Stevie Ray Vaughan the other day. His set up is very basic, tube screamer, vox wah and a couple of Fender amps. The tone definitely goes beyond the Strat and the gear. His hands and gnarly thick strings help. But you need the soul. Over the years his pedal board changed in configuration, and I’ll include the description that talks about the set up. The full article and other shots of gear can be found here at Premiere Guitar.

Ibanez Tube Screamer: Stevie upgraded as new versions came out – TS-808, TS-9, TS-10 Classic. A fan reports that the chip in Stevie’s pedals was probably the RC4558 chip for clean boost.

Wah-wah: Vox wahs from the ’60s. Occasionally connected two together.

The usual setup in the later years was Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-10, Vox wah, vintage Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, and Tycobrache Octavia. For a brief time he used a Univibe. Roger Mayer Octavias were used prior to the Tycobraches. Cesar Diaz installed matching germanium transistors in the Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face body to increase transistor life.

Loop Selector – Stevie had several MXR loop selectors in the early ’80s, one of which is in the author’s collection.

The splitter box which later replaced the loop selectors was one input and six outputs to the amps. No preamp, but resistors to cut down the noise. With the Vibratone he used a Variac AC power regulator.

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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 wanted to talk about the BBE Green Screamer Vintage Overdrive. This is another tube screamer type of overdrive pedal. A few months ago, there were some good deals on this at Amazon, and now Musician’s Friend is offering a good deal. This BBE Green Screamer has a different look than the older pedal with a new graphic print on the pedal, but I don’t think there were any significant changes to the circuit.

Here is the official pedal description:

The BBE Green Screamer effect pedal is a vintage overdrive capable of producing a dynamic range of smooth and warm overdrive tones associated with vintage tube amps. The overdrive pedal features rugged construction that can take a beating, thanks to its heavy-duty die-cast chassis. Fat knurled knobs let you dial in your ultimate tone with your toes. The status LED light lets you see the pedal is engaged even on a dimly lit stage. A non-skid pad on the bottom reduces movement, so you don’t have to chase your pedal across the floor. True hardwire bypass switching ensures it has no effect on your tone when its disengaged. The BBE overdrive pedal’s easy access battery compartment is included so you don’t expose your circuitry every time you need to change the battery.

The BBE Green Screamer pedal delivers a creamy, tube-like, dynamically responsive overdrive that won’t mask the tone of your guitar and amp. This pedal has three main controls: Gain, Tone, and Level, and a true hardware bypass switch, and can be powered by a 9 V battery or AC adapter. Use a Green Screamer pedal as a stand-alone overdrive, adding overdrive to a single-channel amplifier. You can also use it as a solo booster also, not necessarily as a transparent solo booster, but a booster that has a midrange characteristic to boost solos or just to chunk up rhythms.

I found another great video by gearmanndude

You can pick up the BBE Green Screamer Vintage Overdrive pedal for $99.99 at Musician’s Friend. This item is currently shipping for FREE!

Remember, if you like reading about pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

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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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