Excellent review on you part, but let’s face it, the “tube screamer” circuit has been copied by pretty much everybody. Keep an eye out for wal-marts “great value” drive pedal. 😂
If you know how Amazonbasics work, they outsourced the production just like Kirkland does with Costco. Amazon ordered X number of pedals from Nux and had them stick their brand on it. Amazon can be evil but in this case they just had someone, the original maker in this case, make a batch with their name.
Tube screamers are supposed to fill in the scooped EQ of a single coil. The Ibanez does that with a fuller sound in the upper mids, the Amazon pedal doesn't. That simple.
Lots of rebrands. In mini pedals - Kokko, Amoon, Rowin, Donner, FSN, Aroma [yep - Aroma...] & other brands are also rebranded Nux. In standard size - Lots of crossover between Caline, Gokko & others
The world doesn't NEED it, but kids without money would love them. I know I would have. I started playing guitar when I was 8 years old and didnt get my first pedal till I was 19 cause money. Birthday gifts were getting my main guitar professionally set up on 2 different occasions. I was always focused on guitar, amp, strings, cables, picks, maintenance. The basic necessities for electric guitar. There was never enough cash to break out of that. I would have loved something at this price point, where I could have gotten a pedal or 2 for christmas and experimented.
i personally like the cheep pedal in every instance better. ive got this kmise peddle that is killer and it was 17$ i took my vintage ds1 off my d.board for.
To my ears, the Amazon Drive sounds a hair brighter but compressed. The Ibanez is a hair more mid-rangey but more open. They're not identical but perfectly okay for a "close enough" tone. If you're okay with "close enough", the Amazon sounds fine to me.
Both are simple operational amplifier circuits. Easy to reproduce. The pedals that are difficult to copy and are uniquely different utilize logic synthesis and digital signal processing in their pedals.
Ibanez has a fuller sound, the drive pedal is a little tinny sounding and dry. Still though the price difference is the factor and the cheap pedal can probably be tweaked for a better sound.
That Amazon pedal has one big thing over the Ibanez, you can see the positions of all three knobs. Also, with that Amazon tone, that big change in the last 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock position, that's not a 20 percent parts tolerance, it's something bigger that went wrong, like a 500k pot instead of 100k, or linear instead of audio taper. I can guess they ran out of the "correct" value pot and substituted what they could get rather than stop production.
Great video my friend. I don't know if you know how to solder or if you think it would be worth your time, but If you replace the tone pot in that Amazon pedal with a 2K linear pot, it will sweeten up the range of the tone control a bit and make it more usable. Just sayin' bro.
Copies of the same pedal set to noon will likely sound different due to variance in capacitors, resistors etc. nobody gets this right. The key is can the different pedals dial in the same sound, not do they sound the same at the identical settings! Seriously try it with two copies of the same pedal.
You'd think they would try NOT to emblazon 'cheap knockoff' onto the pedal with the 'Amazon Basics' logo. If you're a bedroom player, don't waste your money (unless you live in a house).If you live in an apartment buy a modeler. Your neighbours and wallet will thank you. I have introduced a few pedals into my HD500X..... pre, and in the effects loop, and they are really lacking. Go analog or digital depending on your situation...half measures don't count for shit imho.
Tone pot on a real tube screamer is a W taper. Meaning that the taper allows for even rotation across the whole pot. My guess is the Amazon one has a linear taper pot, which bumps all of frequency response in the last 10%. W taper is uncommon to find, and if you’re cutting corners to save money, who cares!?
Ibanez sounds more compressed. But the amazon basic is sounds usable. Would I use it at a gig? Hell no. You get what you pay for and cheap pedals cam break easily or cause unwanted pops when hitting the switch. Ok for basic home use or rehearsal but don't take it on the road.
What other guitar pedals cannot be used commercially? Why would anyone buy this if one cannot use in their pedalboard for live shows or sell their songs. For the same price, as far as I know, Behringer pedals do not have this severe limitation.
On the last thing u left the ibanez pot completely to the left... No shit it doesnt get as bright if ur just gunna leave the pot turned to the left. The ibanez has more bottom end. But not that last boost
You can't set pedals to noon and expect them to be the same even 2 Ibanez tube screamers will sound different at noon because no pot is mounted the same for every pedal.
Yeah they are mounted exactly the same directly to the board, probably by a very precise robotic assembler. It is the manufacturing inconsistency of the carbon tracks in the potentiometers that make the difference. Most pots are rated for plus or minus 20 percent of stated value. So any two 10k pots from the same batch can measure anywhere from 8k to 12k. A pretty radical difference.
The tone knob on my full sized re-issue TS9 boosts when on 10, also. Does this mean Amazon got it right? Or should we say NUX! Great review. Got me playing the 9 again on 10 !!
I'm not much of distortion player. The tube screamer is iconic, Ibanez that is. Amazon is a copy cat company as much as possible. If my kids wanted a cheap pedal. I would still by the Ibanez. Buy good stuff get better results
If its like some of the other NUX pedals you hold down the footswitch to get the other option/function. They've cloned a couple of JHS pedals too which aren't too bad .. good video 🤙
I have been telling these idiots this for years. All of those crazy pedals for outrageous are all the same basic components inside. Overdrives are just a couple of old geranium transistors and a switch and a couple pots w/caps. Box and switch. I have finally retired after being in music retail business for almost 50 years. Kumbaya.
Yeah, I feel like he didn't know what "Amazon Basics" meant coming in to this. It literally means, "The factory that manufactures these products, has agreed to put our name on them instead, betraying the original customer of the factory, by exploiting the rights granted to them, to manufacture the product."
I suppose the tone pot is wrong. They come in (at least) 2 different types: linear and log. The log will give a very strong change the further it is turned up, where the linear will have a linear response. Often they are marked A for log and B for linear. That said this video were complete waste of time.
For anyone who finds this interesting, looking at the board I can say the bottom one with the jacks attached looks like is just for "power filtering" (or lack there of) and the bypass signal for the footswitch, the second top board has the actual drive circuit on it. Im assuming this is so they can use the same bottom board for every pedal and only ever changing the 2nd circuit board to keep the cost down. the tone knob is fucked because they probably didnt use a W taper pot, which all good TS mods use to make that usable, or they used shitty components which drifted really bad. No, I won't mod it. Both pedals sounded, just terrible.
My realization after spending thousands and thousands of dollars flipping gear for years is if no one could tell the difference in a noisy bar (with bottles clanging etc) than it's probably not "THAT" important. Your ability to actually play will matter more.
Yeah, too many people chasing "tone" need to spend more time practicing. But then, if you're playing in that dive bar where nobody can hear the difference between a cheap pedal and the boutique pedal, will they care about your chops? Probably not. Nobody cares if you spent 6 years learning Cliffs of Dover, but they will dance for 20 minutes to the Takin' Care of Business riff.
@@TheMasonator777 exactly. I know people in the audience aren’t dissecting the nuances of my tone. But when it’s doing what I want it to, I play much better.
@@rogpoll9691 I take it as the highest compliment when I get a spontaneous positive comment on my sound from a non-musician. That’s the goal. It happens about once a year, but when it does I know something is right.
JHS did a good thorough video on this line of pedals. They serve a purpose, and sound great. 🤷🏻♂️ A $200 pedal guy isn't buying these, and not every kid has $1000 to build a pedal board. Don't set the knobs in the same place and expect them to sound the same. You can't even do that with 2 of the same pedal. Manufacturing tolerance, man! 😆
They absolutely serve a purpose. When I was a kid a behringer amp and Danelectro pedals allowed me to be able to have an amp and pedals lol. Now these things are even cheaper again. More people picking up instruments means more great music and a bigger market to sell instruments to, so more options for the rest of us
An "All controls at noon" comparison is always flawed due to the industry-standard 5% tolerance of components. The same is true for an "at max" comparison. For example, a 100k pot can be anywhere between 95k - 105K. Expand this variance to every component in the pedal and you can have widely different results even in pedals from the same production run. This is true for any analog audio circuit.
Drift is irrelevant here and those ones are probably 15% tolerance. A 5% pot may cost more than that pedal but those cheap 15% ones are probably 1% on value. Drift happens when shit gets worn and/or damaged. 5% components are like perfect on the button out of the box, like as good as 1% although don't hold up as long. Those pedals are 9v and 18v on circuit doubtfully but a possibility. They are using cheap ass capacitors on the amazon one for sure and knock off op amps. That is probably the difference in sound, circuit may be the same, probably is the same or similar enough.
Ha and then opens the MIND control and doorways for the Parasites and demons to come through and alter the cymatical frequencies to keep u under there spell so everything sounds good lol
@@thejovialpanda Don't know too much about guitars, but I'd say even 700 is "low" mid-range, at best. I know mountain bikes, and to me, $1500 bike is "mid-range"...might be same for guitars. 3000-6000 is higher end.
The Amazon was brighter, but that could easily be part tolerance. Depending on how you might use it to boost, what genre... the brighter might actually be better.
they have a pile of random pots and they sort them manually with DMM and human misery since life is cheap you don't have to pay much for the end product but then again it seems you rarely get a good product or a consistently good one. Good as in built well enough it actually works and doesn't destroy anything or eat itself when you fire it up.
More like the Tube Screamer tone potentiometer has a linear taper and the Amazon has a logarithmic taper. It underscores the ignorance of the reviewer.
Ibanez had noticeably more low end even on my phone speakers. But buy the ibanez one even if it sucks unless you want to have only a couple companies making and selling everything you can buy within the next couple decades. Look at what china does with prices: they make substandard gear by reverse engineering quality products, build them out of cheap materials with slave labor and sell ithem at a loss to destroy markets. Amazon does the exact same thing.
@@Ben86511 it doesn't what now it absolutely comes with a hump. it is a camel. the bass is cut and mids are boosted. it is a dromedary pedal, like every tubescreamer in existence.
Yes, I agree with you. I also prefer the Amazon drive. It's a cleaner, crisper sound. The Ibanez pedal is darker on top with more of a mid-range boost, which is less usable for me.
I love how I can tell he is actually testing it for the first time. He is genuinely confused with what he hears in the studio. This does mean I'd trust his ears on this video as well as the RU-vid audio I hear
The Ibanez pedal sounds slightly better than the Amazon one. Whether it's worth spending 3 times the price for slightly better is up to the buyer. 😂😂😂😂
My opinion exactly. Ibanez still sounds better, but is it 3 full times better? Idk. This is where it gets into how much one values signature tone. And incremental levels of quality for significant amounts of price. Personally I'm not playing with an AmazonBasics in my rig lmao I'd rather get an actual fucking branded overdrive lol i would even prefer Digitech to this
@@mathprodigy Seriously. I've wondered who buys these garbage $35 mini pedals made overseas but I guess they're out there. If it's what you can afford I don't know that but more often than not especially on a video like this we all put real time and resources into this and why use this bullshit lol
"Low priced/cost" and "cheap" somehow became interchangeable to mean the same thing the last 50 years. Cheap, to me means, low cost junk, that's me. I realize others are dfrnt and that's ok
I think that there's enough tolerance in electronics that you could take two of the same model tube screamers with knobs on the same position, and they'll sound a little different.
@@KaiDown that's why they make trim pots. The higher cost pedals all use them so they can set them up at the factory, during test usually. As your components age and derate in your unit, you also get to lengthen the life of your device by using the trim pots to keep the operation correctly working in the desired signal ranges.
@@KaiDown if you can get your other components close enough and cheap enough, there is a possibility it's actually cheaper in manufacturing to drop parts of sort/test for a slight parts cost increase if it removes a LOT of manual process which costs you TIME because, again, nobody cares about human life when $$ are involved.
This is insane, it's way more respectful of the amp's tone compared to the ibanez.. and that's basically what you're looking for in a tubescreamer.. and way less noise!
It would be interesting to reduce the treble on the Amazon basics pedal to match the mini tube screamer. It would then be little discernible differences in my opinion. The treble sweep full clockwise or counterclockwise makes for an interesting comparison but little difference to most people who would use the pedal for normal gigging situations. However good video review.
behringer copy is less noisy, is more quiet even than the ibanez, and that is because they use SMD components, SMD is proven to have better floor noise, despise guitarrist hate of smd components.
@@ot4kon Thanks for explaining! So you're saying most guitarists are traditionalists and don't like new things, even if they're actually better than old things. I'm not like that myself. For example, my future pedal boards will be built around digital multi-effects processors. I have no interest in putting together separate pedals to make a pedal board. BOSS, NUX, and other manufacturers have come so far with physical modeling that I see no compelling reason to go analog now. I can have the best of both the analog and digital worlds in one device, create different pedal boards and save them as presets, download other people's pedal boards as presets, etc. I'm a career mathematician and computer scientist, so I believe in these technologies since I understand how they work. Even if physical models not 100% as good as the real thing yet, it's only a matter of time before they are. Physical modeling is the future of effects, and the future is now. :)
There is an internal "mode" switch that allows the user to select whether the on/off switch functions as a "true bypass". Check out JHS's review - he explains how to use it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9o7g-74cip4.html
