Ive been playing 2-4 shows a month for the last year. I quickly gave up my precious half stacks and twins for a friedman IRX and a class D power amp pedal, and a 1x12 cab. I don’t even think of it as a pedal. My amp is at my feet now. Its not digital (unless I use the IR’s) and it sounds “real” at home I still use a 6505+ for distortion. And fender twin for cleans. But live, its friedman IRX doing both. The high voltage tube gain is my only acceptable path. If i played clean only:id of gone digital eventually. Friedman is worth every single penny
I have an old Mesa Boogie v twin and I don't care what anyone says. put a ts9 or mojo mojo in front of it and it's as good as any amp you can mane. It chugs even with my cheepie Squier tele.
I have a Mesa Bottle Rocket. Simpler, a bit crisper, very crisp (seemed to cut through a bit more cleanly than the V Twin, for me), solid on its own, and stacks fantastically with other drives, or into a medium gain amp channel. Although it’s just volume, drive, and two band EQ, I definitely prefer it over the Tube Driver and Ibanez circuits. I’m curious if the Mesa pedals follow a similar design with high power Op Amp and starved tubes.
Harlot v3 from kingsley, my all time favorite drive pedal. versatile, powerful and enough features to allow me to use any kind of guitar on a set and compensate accordingly, love it to death!
I have a lot of Tube drive pedal and the Harlot V3 is the best I ever bought. Really really great pedal. And most of my Kingsley (Maiden D and Page TS) pedals are the best I ever tried or owned.
Really for a tube like amp sound i honestly prefer the plexi drive. Not just because it's his video either. It actually sounds GREAT and if you run it in between the pre and post amp circuit it does REALLY GREAT.
For a short time, they made non-tube versions of the classic and the British. I use the classic and it’s pretty good.. there’s something special about a tube, though.
Man, I don’t know if it’s just that guitarists aren’t wise to it yet; but Sushibox are doing some UNBELIEVABLY great things with tubes in a pedal form factor
There were a lot of pedals in the 2000’s (and still?) that included a tube for marketing. The tube isn’t even running at proper tube voltages and they basically just light up…but they can call it a tube pedal.
Just hype garbage. Running a tube at 12 volts does nothing, it needs about 300 volts and about half an amp to run the heaters. Some companies even put an LED behind the tube to make it look like it was glowing. I'm glad that fad is over.
I used the Behringer with a tube screamer for 2 years and loved it. I only paid $15 for it on Amazon. Probably the most value I've ever gotten from a pedal. In fact, I had a couple of their pedals, most I didn't like except for their tube drive and their reverb. Effectrode is by far my favorite tube driven pedals nowadays.
The Hughes and Kettner Tube Factor was a cool pedal I used for a bit and still own. I swapped out the stock tube for a lower gain 12AU7 or 12AT7 and it sounded even better. It was equally great as both a boost to an already dirty sound or as a distorted rhythm tone on the clean channel.
12AY7 or its industrial 6072 counterpart is the sweet spot between those two and my favorite for replacing a 12AX7. AU is too low and AT is strange as the first gain stages. AU is better as a cathode follower and AT is better in the phase inverter spot on a PP or PPP amp. Each tube has its purpose, but I think the AY is vastly overlooked as a way to ideally knock some gain down from an AX.
I got the Behringer to mess around with some MOD ideas. The enclosure has lots of extra room. When I got it and played through it I was shaken at how good it sounded. The gate is really good to. I still have not done any mods as it is really good just the way it is. Think I paid $99. I thought that Radial sounded really good. I never tried one.
How about pedals like the Friedman IRX or AMT SS11b? I personally have been using an AMT SS11b for about 8 years and I feel it's a beast. It's a three channel preamps, with two tubes. The manual states they run at 300V using an tiny internal transformer. I personally really like the sound this thing makes, and can vouch for the dynamics vs a digital amp sim for example in the HX Stomp which I also own. I actually pair the two to get a tube pre in a small form factor. I've also compared using this pre in the loop of a tub amp vs a tube amp, but it's been so long ago I don't feel confident in sharing an opinion on that. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you can ever get a hold of one.
I don’t have the amt but I have the Friedman. It excels as the “amp” platform, not so great when used as a distortion pedal though, and that’s not a slam…. The voicing requirement are totally different for making something like the IRX vs a distortion pedal
I used to have a rack unit from Digitech called the GFX-1 Twin Tube that did great tube distortion. It had a built-in noise gate, 5-band graphic EQ and a really sweet compressor (among other effects). It did a great simulation of a cranked Marshall, really good tone. Try one of those if you can find one. They seem to be rare these days, but not expensive.
Why no tubes on the pedalboard? - pedals with tubes require a minimum of space, cannot be super small - they get hot, may damage the velcro or your pedalboard bag if you have to pack things quickly after the gig - often require an extra power supply, braking the convenient 9V-world with one central power supply for all pedals on the board - people fear that tubes may break, mechanically or electrically
I think the main reason why tube pedals have fallen out is because digital modelers have improved a lot. People who used tube pedals generally did that because they wanted a more organic overdrive sound, but they can achieve that with amp modelers now and have a ton more tone options available as well.
@@darwinsaye I agree digital overdrive pedal patches don't sound very good on my Zoom G5n, but I think the amp patches sound great. I use the amp patches as a replacement for my solid state overdrive pedals now, going straight into a real tube amp.
@@darwinsayeoverdrive/distortion is where digital is still lacking in my experience. I’m fine with all other digital effects, but when it comes to OD/distortion analog sounds/feels much better.
I don't think it has much to do with the sound. Tube pedals are more fragile and more expensive. In an era where we have less money and keep hearing that a boutique overdrive won't sound better than a used SD1 you can get for 15 bucks online, I'm not surprised these things get out of fashion.
It is , you have a good one there ( the BK butler tube driver ) yes..!! There are other versions that don’t sound anything like the version you have .. Eric Johnson uses that one and yes David gilmour but EJ really utilizes his tube driver It’s one of his signature tones we’ve all heard many times
The "Magician" Brian Wampler playing through a Behringer VT999 and saying that is real good. I never thought I'd live to see that. A lot of people must be hanging themselves. Cheers from Brazil. By the way. Happy Birthday man. Love your pedals.
@@eduardokazuo2900 never tried one but also never heard anyone complain about them either. What are they modelled on (which circuits did they rip off ?)
I have pedal I bought off Ebay from Aurhur Sounds store that's an exact circuit part for part and same voltage of an SLO preamp's lead channel. I absolutely love it and when I'm not recording direct in with it, I plug it into the return of the effects loop of either of my amps.
Big fan of the channel! I don't know why mesa v-twin never gets onto these tube pedal comparisons, I have 2 of them! Main rig is genz benz el diablo and mesa 2x12 half back metal grill slanted. I use v-twin wherever I would use an actual preamp. I do love the synergy stuff but don't own any, yet, and haven't directly compared.
I went through a phase where I owned a number of tube based over drives. I've pretty much moved away from them but the one pedal that is on my board that will be there forever is the Kingsley Page.
I have tried playing various pedals through solid state amps for years, then a neighbor let me play on his marshal jcm and it blew me away! I have since bought a mesa boogie mark v 25, and absolutely love the fat and crunch modes on channel 1. On the 25, the mid control turns into a boost past noon. So I have that pretty high and back the gain off. I have treble up high and bass low on the first eq. play it soft and it's clean with a little grit, dig into it and it roars. It has a huge range and super responsive to how I'm playing. And the crunch mode is awesome too. That behringer tube monster sounds the closest and my favorite of these!
@@SH-pq5zq. I’ve been plugging my pedals into my interface and using Genome just for power amp modeling and cab IR. I like it because I can reach over and turn the knobs on the pedal and I don’t get lost in endless virtual amp tweaking.
I really can’t hear the difference. I spent the last two days playing through a Plexi Drive Deluxe. It’s a very different animal from the Pinnacle Deluxe but both get that 80s metal sound that I like. I also use an XTS Atomic Overdrive which is perfect for such a thing. The Friedman BE-OD Deluxe also sounds great. The LPD Eighty7 is stunning too. All of them get a tube sound that I really like without any tubes needed. Of course I was running them through the clean channel of a Peavey ValveKing 20.
Tube Monster is a great one. I was surprised when I got one a played around with it. Radial stuff is all good as well. I have Tonebone and the Tri-Mode. Still break them out frim time to time.
Of course, what's missing from the vast majority of tube-based drive pedals, regardless of the plate voltage they use, is the impact of the power stage. Not ONLY the use of these power tubes vs those ones, but the output transformer itself, and the negative feedback from the speaker side of the OT that is used for the "Presence" control. Steve Daniels generously sent me an Eleca clone of the BK Butler unit sometime ago. OK, but didn't exactly turn my crank. I suspect probably the only tube "pedal" that really nails a tube amp tone is the Garnet Herzog, which is really an entire Fender Champ comparable, modded to be used as a drive unit to feed another amp.
@@david25876 Of course, the speaker (and cab) will always shape the sound, whether coming from a pedal or amp, since we don't really have many other ways of hearing the result.
Thanks, now I have to pull out my old Blue Tube original single channel rack unit. Match it up with my '96 Mesa Dual-Rec Trem-O-Verb. Like I need another toy to play with....LOL! Great Vid! Loved that Tonebone tone. Those double stops you were hitting sound sooooo Ratt. As in the band, not the pedal.
I have original Chandler rack Mount Tube Driver and rack mount Blue Tube units. Plus the black Real Tube Overdrive pedal. For years I used them but actually have found as much if not more satisfaction in specialized pedals like your Wampler Plexi-Drive Deluxe and Plextortion, Pinnacle, Tweed ‘57, Black ‘65, etc., because of giving me these sought after amp tones. After seeing this video I will be pulling some of these out of mothballs to use with the MOSFET amps I have like the Orange Crush 35 RT, Peavey red stripe Bandit and Roland late 90’s 60 watt Blues Cube. As it was I hadn’t played though my tube amps that much because of the MOSFET amps and AIAB pedals but have played through my Marshall Class 5, Studio 15.
My Tonebone Hot Plexi sounds pretty good especially through the Marshall, but always so noisy and doesn't play well with others. My go to distortion/OD pedals are a TC Spark, and Dracaryus!
I’ve had quite a few OD/distortion pedals with tubes. All of them running at proper high voltage. Some sounded great, others just ok. Bottom line is, I’ve had plenty of dirt pedals without tubes that sound just as good, or better. Believe it or not, the Boss OD-3 remains one of my favorites. What I’ve learned is that tubes in a pedal doesn’t necessarily make it sound/feel any more amp-like than a good solid state pedal.
Really love your videos Brian always informative and always enjoyable. And I just love all the more in depth videos being an electronics engineer every show with a schematic gives me the chills 😉 And the fact that I really enjoy your playing makes it all so much better!
I use a Mesa V-Twin, and the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube, as my tube pedals. Love them both. Just the “Dirt in my chain” - (other effects left out for ease of explanation, my board is huge) Fuzz Face ->JHS NOTAKLON ->TS9 modded with JRC4558D chip -> Keeley modded Blues driver -> Mesa V-Twin -> Seymour Duncan Twin tube -> ZVex Fuzz factory -> Radial twin city switcher -> Mesa Boogie Heartbreaker & Hughes & Kettner Triamp MKII. Mr. Wampler, I would love to hear your thoughts on my dirt choices… am I missing anything? Thinking of adding maybe a (Wampler SLOstorion? Or Diezel VH4? For even highe gain madness) had an MXR Fullbore metal, but could not come to terms with its tone, as a crazy high gain pedal) Thank you for your amazing videos and content and all your pedals/amps etcetera!
Well from this batch I would choose the Berhinger for it's absolute un-beatable price/sound ratio. I realy like my Wampler Dracarys too, it kicked the 5150 overdrive of my board. A bit of promo of a Wampler product, why not, it's an amazing hi-gain pedal.
Brian…why not u try out Vox Valvenergy series? I have the Valvenergy Cutting Edge which sort of Rectifier sound. It is amazing tube pedal but it uses the NuTube instead of the typical preamp tubes. The series has another 3 version, namely a Marshall, the AC30 & i can’t remember the 4th version. Another awesome gain pedal with preamp tube that is awesome is the AMT SS11A or SS11B. I use to have the SS11A but i had to sell it off a few years ago due to me needing some cash. Nowadays, i use Strymon Riverside for all of my mid to low gain drives (the Riverside is also MIDIed to the Boss MS3, so i can save & recall up to 300 presets sounds of the Riverside!)… while for hi gain, i use the Vox Valvenergy Cutting Edge. In front of both pedals, i have Blackstar Dept 10 Boost, which i use at certain time to get even more tone variations. The Blackstar Dept 10 Boost is placed in loop #1 of my Boss MS3, multi effects/loop switcher. While the Vox Valvenergy Cutting Edge is in loop #2 & in loop #3, is my Strymon Riverside which goes into a NuX Amp Academy (for my amp in a box, main tone....which is a Fender Twin or Friedman HBE). Via MIDI switching, the Strymon Riverside will be in bypass mode or in any of the Riverside's various presets' drive sound. From the Riverside, it goes/passes the signal into the NuX Amp Academy. All wet effects by Boss MS3. My pedalboard setup are two sets of independently switchable to either Mono or Stereo. One set of output goes to the Neunaber Iconoclast speaker sim pedal & the 2nd set goes to one guitar amp's (for mono) effects or 2 guitar amps' FX Return (if stereo).
I picked up an Ibanez tube king (tk999us) a couple years ago, and I’ve played it through my 90’s soldano, my hardwired ac30 and my fender concert, and it sounds great on each of them, with some tweaking.
The whole tube vs opamp + clipping diodes (vs BJT vs FET?) debate is a lot like the "tonewood" debate… In the end, it matters a little, yes, but not nearly as much as the sound of the speaker cabinet! The speaker cabinet, and if recorded: how it's recorded, is by far the main determinant of overall sound. Another factor that is way more important than "tube vs opamp" is filtering (i.e. EQing) both before and after the distorting stages. Like e.g., cutting lows before the distorting stages has a major influence. And so on.
I love my VT999. The pots are very smooth. I put my VT999 in front of my Silvertone 1482 tube amp. I then put my tube amp in front of my Pod-Go (using load box' line-out). I route the AMP out of the Pod-Go to my Orange Crush 12. I route the cab-sim out of my Orange Crush through a Zoom MS70-CDR back into the Pod-Go through the stereo effects-loop. It is awesome. I made a gear vid of the above (along with lengthy description).
As for my VT999, I use a full 1-AMP dedicated power supply driving a Genalex Gold Lion 12AX7. The VT999, out of the box, uses a 230 mA power supply driving a Bugera 12AX7 (those do pair well, actually), but when you pump up the power to drive a darker pre-amp tube, it's pretty magical.
@@czarofzonk1360 Try a 12V power supply in place of the 9V and a 12AU7. Long plate 12AU7/ECC82 respond really well. The gain control still allows for utter filth, but the control is now useable over a much wider range. 12V won't hurt anything, providing you ensure the correct polarity. The main reason for using it is the valve heaters. If you meter the voltage applied, you'll notice they're a little 'starved' with the 9V.
ADA made a tube pedal version of the ADA MP-1 preamp a few years ago called the MP-1 Channel. I would’ve loved one of those but I don’t think they make them anymore. One thing that kind of puts me off these pedals is the size of them. They’re so big compared to a normal stomp box and wouldn’t fit on my board.
Better tone? Tube Amps. No question. Tube pedals can be cool in FRONT of tube amps, but they aren’t even close to comparing. Most run a much lower voltage with much lower headroom and lots of solid state gobbledygook.
I'm so tired of digital modelling etc.... digital sounds digital to me, I want old school.... i even got an old H&K Tube Factor and it sounds blimming great... fat and lovely....
i have a vintage tube monster, great pedal.noise gate is nice. its just too big all of these tube based pedals are large and people want to fit a ton of stuff on the pedal board.
The Tube Drive by Effectrode is the only tube pedal I think really gets it, most of the rest are just chasing up that 80's crunch tree of pure bs. A close second / third are the Maxon RTD and RTO. Ideally, a Wampler tube pedal would include the ability to quickly swap out tubes because one brand or era can make a massive change, even in the same position. A 1950s Mullard will NOT sound the same as a Sylvania from 1975, or Phillips from 1980, or EHX from 2024. Continuing on the theme of a Wampler tube pedal... It should also be able to do low gain Keith Richards as well as the Ramble On thing. A shame would be if it were just another high gain wankfest throw away pedal. Let the kids jerk with something else.
Id like to see s tube pedal with an actual use. I had a vox semi multi pedal, and it had a tube, and it kiterally did nothing. I took it right out and there was no difference. But if it required it and used it, itd be cool. Would be cool, actually, if it was built to use different tubes, almost like changing capacitors. So you change tubes, you get a different effect. Im sure its been tried, and ppl are gunna ruin it with their stupidity about things they know nothing of, but hey a fun pedal os a fun pedal. If you ever make something, send it by 😊 i only give honesty
That VT999 housing could fit another pedal inside it, practically empty. I've had those things a plenty. Behringer, Mesa V-twin and bottlerocket, Koch, ENGL, AMT, SIB, EHX, and other more obscure pedals. The only one I still use is a DIY Valvecaster fitted with 5751-tube, It fattens/compresses nicely with vocals, haha. -But alas, the chewyness of most of those wasn't to my liking.
Thanks for another great video comparing products and their technical perspective. You rock, Brian ! I love VT999 and I can get great diversity using 12AX7, 12AY7 and 12AU7
Favs of the video - Radial end Butler: clear and open sound; The others: muffled and a bit boring. Currently trying Jfet based preamps called "Legend amps" from AMT. I have the S1 "Soldano" and a E1 "Engl Fireball" preamp.
Got the BK a couple months ago. He’s great to work with and the pedal is awesome! 12AU7 and a bias. He’ll tell you the bias does something magical around 2:30, and he is correct. I’ve been playing the pedal at 2:30 MST everyday and it sounds great! 😂
I use the Friedman irx as my preamp, stacked with some pedals, a fuzz, or boss dd200,ms 3 for switching, then into hxstomp for effects, out stereo into my mesa 2:90 power amp w a 4x12, 1960a cab in stereo mode, or into a pair of combos, depending on the venue size. larger venues, I may use two 1960 cabs each mono left and right signals ,powered from the mesa. so, all tubes
1-I used the original H&K TubeMan for the entire 90s and early 2000s. It earned attention after every gig. Had to buy 2 because the 1st died on me twice. The second wasn’t half of the 1st one. I don’t like their 2nd version at all. AT ALL. 2-In your side by side here, the Tone Bone killed it. The Butler Tube Driver was a close second. 3-I bought a Tumnus Deluxe as soon as you made them. Haven’t used a tube pedal since. 😳 That TD does everything. My non-tube backup before was the Nobels. I found it unusable compared to my TubeMan. Now that Tumnus Deluxe…everybody asks how I make the tones. I just tell them to ask Brian Wampler.
I've owned the Dean Markley Overlord, a Nady TD-1 and TO-2, the Nady version of the Tonebone, the Mesa V-Twin, the Duncan featured here, I've built high and low voltage pedals. I can safely say that for me, at least, low voltage is total crap. I absolutely hate the sound of low voltage pedals (hate that Duncan pedal too). I liked the TD-1 (Shawn Lane's pedal) and the TO-2 pretty well (I slightly modified both), but I replaced them with a pedal that doesn't get enough attention: the Vox Straight Six. That pedal is quite good, but the youtube videos on it are almost all terrible.
WAMPLER WOLTAGE !!! I think a single tube boost would be ok, if you could make it so it provided Quieter per db of gain. that's all I would want out of one.....well, EQed quiet boost gain and a little pre-compression .... that's it....but not where I would want my signal to break up....a boost could be AC powered, being the last thing on the board.
Glad I got my Tube Monster when they were $70. It's a phenomenal pedal for the studio (waaaay too big for a gigging pedalboard I think). The EQ is extremely expressive and can completely change the character of your signal. BUT DAMN that Tonebone sounded amazing.
There are a lot of great solid state drive pedals that I would be happy owning as a main drive pedal for the rest of my life. However, after getting a Kingsley "Harlot V3", I am off of solid state drive pedals altogether, and have settled on the last "main" drive pedal of my life (have a germanium Tone Bender clone too). The high voltage Kingsley pedals have also have solved the impedance matching issue where it plays perfectly well with others. Their other pedal that sounds like a plexi ("Constable") is not a plexi clone, it is an actual Plexi in a pedal. When you open them up you see that they are all actual pre-amps with the corresponding elements, just like your tube amp. All at bedroom volumes or stage volumes. I fall asleep at night hearing that Harlot tone in my head. From edge of break up, to searing . . . unbelievable.
I liked the last two personally. I’m currently using a Dominion Fuzz, MXR Custom Shop Timmy and an EP Booster to enhance the gain of my amps. JTM45 and Peavey Classic 30.
I had a tonebone Hot British (red one) back around that same time as well. sold it at some point. Currently, for me it's the Friedman IR-D and IR-X. Not really a front of the amp use, more FX return use with existing amp. Full voltage on the tubes, actual preamps. Again, more of a different use case.
I've played a few tube-based ODs and the one I kept and go back to occasionally is the Maxon ROD880, which was their Ibanez Tube King from what I understand. The jacks are backwards, which I will never remember when plugging into it, has that built-in noise gate you mentioned, and though there's a higher gain version, the ROD881, the 880 nails that Lightning/Puppets rhythm tone at higher gain. While we're on the topic of these things, because this comes after a lengthy discussion with a guitar tech friend who's just started his own pedal business - is there any advantage to using tubes in this type of circuit in the way you describe, where they're voltage starved and act almost like op-amps? Do they actually impart their own kind of sound to a circuit or it is just a fancy way of doing what op-amps do so you can say "hey, it's got tubes in it"?
I can hear a difference between all of these and the amp. But the distortion aspect itself is super similar. I think using EQ or just tone controls, you could do your distortion sound you like with any of them where an audience couldn’t tell the difference. That said, I’m not playing them. There’s a lot to the feel of gain response. I think that was part of the selling point in these in “the day.” But now I think it’s kind of nullified by the resurgence of tube amps on one side, and the shift to various degrees of modeling amps on the other. You don’t really see simple solid state amps much anymore, even in the practice amp space. For gain, I run some fuzz (currently a Catalinbread Knight School), a RAT (technically a Greer Amps Gorilla Warfare), and the Benson Preamp into an old Univox Fender Reverb Deluxe clone. The big box reissue RAT was my first pedal and I still love it. I got the Greer just to be more pedalboard friendly and to buy from a smaller company. It has so many sounds in it, and stacking with the Benson adds more and better tone control. It sounds great into an old solid state to me, but hitting the tube amp feels better. That may be sag or just completely psychosomatic. I’m OK if it’s a placebo effect. Haggtronix has the Rat Bastard, which sticks a boost in front of the RAT topology pushing it into nasty extra OpAmp clipping. I used to do that with 2 pedals. But that 2-in-1 is a pretty good deal since it costs the same as a LM308 RAT-style pedal or a modern ProCo RAT + a boost. It’s brilliant and obvious at the same time, so I think that makes it elegant. No, I don’t think the LM308 is magical, but if I was a small builder I’d use it just to be able to sell to people that do. I’ve never entered the high gain amp market. I’m a bedroom player and will flip tones pretty drastically between clean, sparkly modulated, and various degrees of brutality in a sitting. I can’t crank an amp between neighbors and old man paranoia with my tinnitus. So I can’t really judge that experience.
Love the tubes.. it also found out that it seems many are just used as glowing lights while an IC tends to do the heavy lifting That said, I love the older chandler and tube works stuff, the Mid-2000s EHX, and Mesa pedals. Keep it up Brian! Said it on FB, but still stinkin tickled to see you going strong 20+ years after those early Harmony Central EFX forum days!
I'm obsessed with valve drives/preamps at the moment. I'm currently running Victory V4 preamps - a Kraken and a Copper and they're awsome. Would also love to see your thoughts on the Friedman IR-X & IR-D. There's also some interesting stuff from Tubesteader.
Someone needs to make a olschool style tube power amp head with an EQ and a four stage bright switch for modlers and pre-amp pedals, I use a vintage peavey monitor head now running into my jcm 800 bass 4x12 bottom cab with V 30's with a koch superlead tube pre-amp pedal with super low noise now, Isold my jcm 800 head.
Not a big fan of valve-driven pedals. They work well for others maybe but not for me. I find pedals like the Keeley Super Phat Mod, JHS Moonshine, and Wampler Pantheon Deluxe do the low-medium gain thing best for me. Stacked with a TS or Klone in front and something higher-gain behind I have my bases covered.
Brian, check out the Akai Shred-O-Matic D1 pedal (uses a tube also). It would be great if you'd make something wiith multiple Tube sounds to select from, but without a giant footprint. Would NU TUBE technology be the way to go?
The Radial and Behringer are the best sounding to me but the tubes being used make such a difference. I bought a Behringer VT999 for pennies 15+ years ago from a guy who said it was a terrible pedal. He had an old unbranded Chinese 12AU7 tube in it and it sounded like a wet fart. I switched the tube for a new Sovtek 12AX7 and the pedal came alive. Tight mids and no top end fizz. I quickly bought a stock of Sovteks and still use that pedal today, albeit on rare occasions. I wonder if demand for tube overdrive pedals has suffered due to the huge improvements in amp modelling technology, as well as some excellent solid state overdrive pedals. I became a bit of a preamp tube geek so I now collect NOS preamp tubes and capture them in my Quad Cortex. The preamp tubes don't work well with every QC amp as some of the models don't need an extra preamp - either physical or modelled. Adding an extra tube stage makes the tube sound over-expanded, almost caricatured, but some of the clean amp models really start to sing with a captured preamp tube. If I'm honest though, I'm not sure I could tell the difference in a blindfold test between a clean tone boosted with the expensive tube models and the left side of my Kasleder Toxic Twins pedal.
Brian, check out the AMT Electronics Mattias IA Eklundh Freak Guitar pedal. No longer made but this thing has two 12AX7 and sounds fantastic. I have the entire collection of original AMT Electronics that were Siberian-made clones of Sansamp pedals that weren’t available on their local market.
Currently enjoying the Vox Straight 6 Overdrive. It's the only tube pedal I've tried, and has been a lot of fun. However when I went to the jam recently, we just turned on the Tate FX BMB Overdrive, which is a hot rodded Rat, and didn't really need anything else. Have really enjoyed the Bigfoot Engineering Thunder Pup, but that is I guess more of a boost? It needs something to hit, can't say I really understand it, but can produce amazing tones with the right thing after it
Am I the only one who thought the Synergy preamp was the worst of the bunch? I’m not a Mesa Boogie fan at all, but it just sounded kinda flat and flubby. The Radial was my favorite, but all the pedals sounded really good, even the Berhinger! I had a SD Twin Tube Classic and sold it....but I’d like to find another one!
Here’s one for the suggestion box (if it’s possible). In the days of low volume playing, using the volume knob can often not be practical. If the amp is. On -10- 11, then than that’s an option. In my case, when I go to play clean…I almost always just tweak the gain knob (on a one channel amp). Is it possible to make a pedal that adjusts the gain of an amp, like a volume pedal adjusts the volume, or would that take a fairly heavy mod of some sort?
AMT SS-11 is a great little tube pre in a pedal form with 2x 12ax7, also the Blackstar Dept10 pedals - all of these use tubes with high voltage internally, so they properly work like they would in an amplifier. Check those out, awesome stuff.
