Effects Bay

Checking out Musician’s Friend’s Price Cuts for Amps & Effects, I saw a good deal going on for the BBE Green Screamer.  I’ve seen deals on BBE pedals in the past, so it’s nice to see them happening again.

Currently the BBE Green Screamer (based on older Tubescreamer circuit) is available for $59.09 at Musician’s Friend. It’s normal MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) is $149.00. It was originally listed at $99.00 and it now on sale for $59.09. That’s 60% off of MSRP. Not bad at all.

Here is the official 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 9V 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 good review by rockongoodpeople (NextLevelGuitar.com):

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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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Lastnight’s band practice we had our general gear tear-down, which always leads to gear talk. The interesting topic lastnight was about true bypass vs. buffered bypass. Many of the pedals promote they offer true bypass, and there are various loopers/switches that indicate buffered.  I wanted to learn more about this, and specifically about cable impedance and how it can dull your tone with true bypass pedals in your line.

So this morning, I started searching for some sound clips or videos related to the subject, and I came across this great video by Visual Sound that clearly describes the differences.

As you can see and hear that the buffered bypass provided a brighter tone vs. the true bypass pedal. It totally makes sense that the amount of cables (guitar to pedal and pedal to amp) can add large amount of capacitance to the signal.

I wasn’t too familiar with the Visual Sound stuff, and noticed that it was a Route 808 pedal in that demo. Since I just recently wrote a post about the TS9 which included a TS808 in there, I wanted to learn more, and found another video by Visual Sound (same demo) but a shoot out between the following pedals (TS808 TS original, Klon Centaur, Keeley Mod’d TS9, Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MosFet, Visual Sound Route 808). I thought how they did the shoot out was great, played the same piece, each pedal configured to be generally the same tone settings and drive.

I was quite impressed with the video. You can pick up a Visual Sound Route 808 on Musician’s Friend for $99.95 (list price is $148.00.. so that’s a 32% savings over list).

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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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