Let’s Talk Tube Screamers

*Image courtesy GearNuts. This is the current Ibanez TS-808*

Hey folks. It’s time to talk about the Tube Screamer. This may be the most copied pedal in the world with everyone and their cat producing their own Tube Screamer type pedal, some attempting to copy one exactly, and many looking to make a copy that offers more or better, whatever that means.

What Is the Tube Screamer

The Tube Screamer as originally visualized is a light overdrive pedal, designed to push the front end of a clean amp into preamp breakup. It’s actually a fairly simple concept. However when a maker says that they have their own Tube Screamer offering, I have to ask, which Tube Screamer are you talking about.

The Tube Screamer came from Ibanez but at first was built for Ibanez by Maxon in the Maxon factory. The very first commercial Tube Screamer, called the 808 had two chips, but in short order and with no notification, the design was collapsed to a single chip and the pedal was still called the 808. Purists will tell you that this is the only real Tube Screamer and that only the old ones sound correct. I will come back to this questionable claim in a bit, but you pick the pedals that you use because you like them. Whether that like is objective or subjective is entirely up to you. The 808 used the 3558 chip, some from Japan and some from Texas Instruments.

The next iteration of the Tube Screamer is known as the TS9 and is found under the Ibanez brand and you can find used units under the Maxon brand. Contrary to some thoughts, these pedals are identical except for the name on the box. You are not getting anything different by paying more for the Ibanez label or the Maxon label depending on where you stand. The TS9 has minor changes from the 808 and some folks consider them brighter and less creamy. While there are TS9s built using the 4558 chip, there are also TS9s built using op-amps and there is no indication on the case

Then came the TS10, built on the framework of the TS9 but in a different chassis with more changes than from the TS808 to the TS9. Construction changed and the output jacks float on the board instead of being attached to the case, so there are more reports of the units failing over time. They mostly used a 4558 chip from Taiwan.

In addition to these best known options there was the TS5 (plastic case) and the TS7, (aluminum case and “hot” mod) and with less expensive components. There is also the 2 footswitch TS808DX which includes a 20dB boost as well as the TS808HW (hand wired) and in 2018 Ibanex brought out the Tube Screamer with an internal fake tube called Nu-Tube.

There is also a mini unit to fit on small pedalboards with one large knob and two tiny ones where you need long spaghetti fingers to manipulate while playing.

Oh and let’s not forget the colours! You can still find bright red 40th Anniversary versions in retail and in the used market you can pay through the nose for the shiny gold version that would complement your pimp chain wonderfully. Same guts, same sound, but an opportunity to pay more

Despite comments to the contrary, all units using a 4558 chip are using either direct JRC4558 (Japan Radio Company) or licensed versions of the chip. A chip is a chip. No one is better than any other one, no matter what you may hear or read.

The real challenge here is that unless you do side by side comparisons with everything else the same, it’s near impossible to tell them apart. On Anderton’s TV they recently did this kind of comparison and while the owner of Pedal Pawn could blindly identify four out of four, Lee Anderton said he could not really tell the difference. For me, watching YouTube with the audio coming out of HiFi speakers, I could hear minor differences, but so minor that I cannot describe them and if I wasn’t hearing them side by side, I would not know one way or the other.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

SRV used a number of different guitars and amps in his all too brief career, but is widely regarded as always using a Tube Screamer. Evidence suggests he did not stick with a single model, he used what was available, so there are 808s, TS9s etc on recordings. The popularity of SRV was a major driver for sales of the Tube Screamer but he is certainly not the only respected musician to use a Tube Screamer. A partial list includes Eric Johnson, Gary Moore, The Edge, Joe Bonamassa, Kirk Hammett, John Mayer and Buddy Guy. Plainly the little green box is everywhere.

Mods

The Tube Screamer also was used as the baseline for modded effects. One of the best known mods is the AnalogMan mod, and JHS also did a modded version amongst a lot of other independents including the famous Robert Keeley.

Combo Units

If you don’t have a Tube Screamer and don’t have the time or wherewithal to play through a bunch of them, and hunt down the used versions, you can look to the JHS Bonsai. JHS says that the Bonsai does not emulate the Tube Screamers, instead it gives a rotary switch that changes the internal circuits to try to match the original. I bought a Bonsai and could not hear any difference between it and the Ibanex units that I had access to. The Bonsai offers the Boss DS-1, the 808, the TS9, the TS10, the JHS mod, the Robert Keeley mod, MSL (the metal mod) and Exar OD-1. I did return it because I was getting option paralysis and really could not hear much of a difference except in the modded versions and I just didn’t like the sound. The Tube Screamer is meant to be a light overdrive and the mods were more distortion than overdrive to me.

The Hype and the Sound

The Tube Screamer is a simple device. It uses the 4558 chip to push the front end (the preamp section) of the guitar amp. It’s also quite noisy when turned up. so think about a noise gate of some kind, or a mute switch for between songs. It does not slice, dice or make Julienne fries. The Tube Screamer is known for the midrange push that it delivers. It works very well with low output pickups such as those found in early Stratocasters, but still works with the hotter winds such as the Texas Specials in the SRV Signature Stratocaster. If you are seeing the commonality of single coils, you are on the money. In my opinion, the Tube Screamer works best with single coils and I do not care for the sound of one using humbuckers. I will say it’s ok with P90s, but really not my thing. I have had my TS9 for over 20 years and it spends more time off the board than on it. I put it on my demo board with the REVV D20 to prepare for this article and to be blunt, haven’t missed it. Just because I am not a Tube Screamer fan, does not mean that one will not work for you. You may love it to death and that’s awesome.

I do find that if you use a Tube Screamer, you will want it early in your pedal chain and you definitely want it in front of the preamp and not in the effects loop as having it push only the power section won’t do much of anything for you.

There are all kinds of charts showing the setup for the SRV sound, basically gain at 10 o’clock, tone at noon and level at 2 o’clock which is a good starting point if you are playing loud. If you are playing at home, you will want to raise the gain and drop the level to try to come close to unity gain when not using it. With my US Ultra Strat neck pickup, I’m at noon, noon and 10 o’clock for practice levels. Your mileage will vary with your instrument, your amp and whatever else that you have going on.

Sample Tones

*Fender Artist Signature SRV Stratocaster*

For these short samples I used the following kit. While I cannot play any SRV with any level of competence, I wanted to try for something like the SRV tone. I used a Fender Signature SRV Stratocaster with the pickup switch in position 4 (neck/centre) with the tone rolled off to about 6. I am plugged into a board that goes into the REVV D20. The only pedal that gets used is the Ibanez TS9. The REVV D20 includes Two Notes awesome Torpedo, so I set the amp and cabinet sim to be a Fender Super Reverb in Pentode mode. Mic A is a U47 type condenser and mic B is a Shure SM57. The Torpedo Remote had a tiny bit of plate reverb turned on in Ambient mode. The SRV Strat is the first generation signature and that iteration of the Texas Specials pickups are noisy, so I turned on the noise gate in Torpedo Remote and used the Learn function to have it calculate the best position for the gate threshold to be. The guitar is tune to E flat as SRV did. As a sidenote, if you have never tried tuning down half a step to E flat, give it a go, it’s different enough to open your mind. The signal went direct from the REVV D20 via the DI output to the Apollo Solo. No Apollo or UA plugins were used. This signal was recorded in Presonus Studio One v6. No plugins or processing was done to the signal in Studio One. The first recording is the guitar with no Tube Screamer and the second is with the Tube Screamer active with Gain at noon, Tone at noon and Level just below 10 o’clock.

As I noted earlier, I set the Tube Screamer up for light overdrive and used the popular published SRV settings as a starting point and altered them to suit my environment.

Where To Go From Here

We know that there are already a ton of variants of the Tube Screamer in the marketplace and because one cannot patent a circuit, many of them are pure copies of the original, although often built with low grade components. A brand new TS9 sells for under $155 CAD with the unpopular TS9DX for about $168CAD. A brand new TS808 is about $252 CAD which is nuts since it has the same guts as the TS9. The buyer is paying extra for the look of old and nothing more.

One can also look at the higher end variants that actually cost more than an Ibanez unit, that in theory do what a Tube Screamer does and perhaps better. One of the complaints about the original Tube Screamer is that when you roll off the guitar volume pot, the sound gets thin and weedy. I can confirm that this is happening with the TS9 that I own. Origin Systems from the UK recently released their Halycon unit, which they say is a Tube Screamer but with a special adaptive circuit designed specifically to compensate for what happens when the volume control is rolled off. As a big fan of Origin’s compressors and drive pedals, I would like to try one out to see if I find it more useful that the TS9 to the point where it would stay on a board, and if it sounds ok with humbuckers.

Wrapping Things Up

I hear folks say that your pedal board is not complete without a Tube Screamer. This is very much a personal decision as I have been quite content without one for many years. In the “green overdrive” world, I have been very happy with the Nobels ODR-1 and the green side of the Browne Protein. I find them more pleasing to my ear over the TS9 that I own. That said, any player who is seeking a light overdrive, especially if your guitar uses single coil pickups should try out a Tube Screamer. The Ibanez units are proven and any guitar shop of consequence will carry at least one type of Tube Screamer, although I would expect many options. You can of course buy online, but then you don’t get to try it before you buy it, which I always recommend if that is possible for you. You can of course look for used units on Reverb, but be cautious because I see used Tube Screamers with asking prices higher than the price of a brand new unit sometimes with comments that the “vintage” units sound better. Chips are chips so no need to pay extra for nothing.

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