# The best tube screamer?



## Ostia Man (Dec 11, 2007)

wich one is your favorite? there so many of them 808 ts9, maxon etc, etc..
I have only used the ts9, and its preaty cool.


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## Leon (Dec 11, 2007)

between the Maxon OD808, the Boss Super Overdrive, and the Digitech Bad Monkey, i like the Maxon the best infront of my Nomad. however, the Super Overdrive sounded the best infront of my Sovtek, and the Bad Monkey sounded the best infront of my old Marshall VS100. it really depends on your amp.


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## Jason (Dec 11, 2007)

Bloody murder?


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## Edroz (Dec 11, 2007)

at the moment the Ibanez TS9DX is my fave. it's hard to really say what tube screamer is the best, since they all seem to react differently with different amps.


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## FoxZero (Dec 11, 2007)

Bloody Murder!


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## thadood (Dec 11, 2007)

Another vote for Bloody Murder. I don't even have to play it to know how much it rocks. I know it has to be better than the one I built =P


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## LordOVchaoS (Dec 11, 2007)

Big production pedal: Maxon OD808
Modded pedal: SD-1
Other (boutique, etc...): Need I say what I think the best one is?


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## Ostia Man (Dec 11, 2007)

where do you get a Bloody Murder?
cant find anything.


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## Zepp88 (Dec 11, 2007)

From JoBo.


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## budda (Dec 11, 2007)

see that dude lordovchaos? he builds 'em 

Bodenhamer Electronics

i have a TS7ovChaos, and it does the trick for me fine and dandy.


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## JBroll (Dec 12, 2007)

I wrote a little article for the Andy Sneap forum that might tell you a bit more about these bastards...

Tube Screamer FAQ Version 1 - Ultimate Metal Forum

Jeff


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## Ishan (Dec 12, 2007)

Another vote for the Bloody Murder, hands down the best TS9 of the planet. Enough said.


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## zimbloth (Dec 12, 2007)

Ibanez TS808 thus far. I'll be getting a chaos modded TS7 from you-know-who soon so I suspect that will become my new favorite.


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## mnemonic (Dec 12, 2007)

woooooooooo


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## John_Strychnine (Dec 12, 2007)

It's not a tube screamer but you all shoudl try the TC Electronics Integrated Preamp.

It's hands down the best boost out there imo.


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## Drew (Dec 12, 2007)

I haven't played enough TS clones to say it's the "best," exactly, but I can't imagine anyone being dissapointed with my Chaos mod TS9 from Bodenhamer...


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## VforVendetta00 (Dec 12, 2007)

JBroll said:


> I wrote a little article for the Andy Sneap forum that might tell you a bit more about these bastards...
> 
> Tube Screamer FAQ Version 1 - Ultimate Metal Forum
> 
> Jeff




fuckin zombie jesus, there "might" be some useful info on there, but i couldn't get past the barrage of garbage you managed to include with it, fuckin a i think i got a headache, thanks a lot, try writing it again without trying to be funny and retarded, thanks.


that being said, the Bloody Murder is definitely one of the best screamers i've tried, its top notch and a steal at the price, i'd put it up against a BB preamp anyday and i thought that was the best, maybe it still has an edge cause it has a bass and treble control, but its also almost twice the price. Mr. LordOvChaos has created a monster!


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## Jeff (Dec 12, 2007)

JBroll said:


> I wrote a little article for the Andy Sneap forum that might tell you a bit more about these bastards...
> 
> Tube Screamer FAQ Version 1 - Ultimate Metal Forum
> 
> Jeff



There's an Andy Sneap forum, and people visit it? 

I guess that implies that people actually like Andy Sneap, and/or his production style.


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## Drew (Dec 12, 2007)

VforVendetta00 said:


> fuckin zombie jesus, there "might" be some useful info on there, but i couldn't get past the barrage of garbage you managed to include with it, fuckin a i think i got a headache, thanks a lot, try writing it again without trying to be funny and retarded, thanks.



I thought it was awesome.


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## Axel (Dec 12, 2007)

Drew said:


> I thought it was awesome.



 I liked it too, I was actually reading that just before visiting this site, good job JBroll. Of course VforVendetta and I are known for not agreeing on things


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## Jeff (Dec 12, 2007)

VforVendetta00 said:


> fuckin zombie jesus, there "might" be some useful info on there, but i couldn't get past the barrage of garbage you managed to include with it, fuckin a i think i got a headache, thanks a lot, try writing it again without trying to be funny and retarded, thanks.



I'm sure he'll go right ahead and re-write it for people that lack a sense of humor, such as yourself.


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## VforVendetta00 (Dec 12, 2007)

Axel said:


> I liked it too, I was actually reading that just before visiting this site, good job JBroll. Of course VforVendetta and I are known for not agreeing on things



hahahaha, u're just saying that to disagree with me u emo bastard!


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## Groff (Dec 12, 2007)

There are no Tube Screamers, only Bloody Murder.


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## JBroll (Dec 12, 2007)

Jeff said:


> There's an Andy Sneap forum, and people visit it?
> 
> I guess that implies that people actually like Andy Sneap, and/or his production style.



You're also running into Colin Richardson and James Murphy, among many others...

Jeff


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## LordOVchaoS (Dec 12, 2007)

Believe it or not these aren't bad at all!


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## budda (Dec 13, 2007)

arent they an 808 clone? which would explain why they would sound quite decent.

joe, question: how big a difference is there between a modded OD808 and my TS7oC in 808 mode? thankee!


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## JBroll (Dec 13, 2007)

Lots of things are 808 or 9 clones. The TS7 is a 9 clone, for example. Hell, you could build a TS808 for about ten bucks in parts.

Personally, I'd say that the best TS would be a few variations on the 'normal' TS - OPA2134 instead of that awful 4558 (yes, it's the 'original', 'authentic', 'Real McCoy'... can it, it's a cheap transistor that was all around Japanese radios and it was cheap and available, it was hardly picked for sounding good), expanded drive knob, a few diode selections, and set up inside the guitar on a DPDT with Drive and Tone as internal trimpots and volume wired as the guitar's overall output volume. Mmm...

EDIT: Holy fucking shit... just saw this.



VforVendetta00 said:


> fuckin zombie jesus, there "might" be some useful info on there, but i couldn't get past the barrage of garbage you managed to include with it, fuckin a i think i got a headache, thanks a lot, try writing it again without trying to be funny and retarded, thanks.



Okay... now I'd like to know where you get off thinking this kind of post is in any way productive. Do you really see any good coming from this? 

You do, for the record, have the distinction of being the first person EVER to complain about my writing style in any sort of context like this, so congratulations if that makes you feel special, but is there any way I'm going to win in this situation? I spent days pulling this thing together for one specific reason - explaining to guitarists how a circuit works. 

Guitarists. 

And electronics. 

Let's put aside the clear signs of masochism in trying to teach a guitarist *anything* useful, and get to how you would have done it. Am I supposed to be completely dry and boring? I doubt your type would have been receptive to that - *yawn*, tl;dr, or, even worse, 'intellectual wanker, write something that isn't so boring' - and I doubt it would have been anywhere near as useful if nobody had gotten around to reading it. So either way I'm fucked, right? Doesn't sound like you'd be the type to read an EE dissertation on clipping circuits.

What's more, I'm not sure how one goes about being 'retarded' in such a post - for fuck's sake, I was dismantling electronics for musicians... have you ever tried to show an orangutan how to make baked Alaska? Try that sometime and you'll figure out why people don't do that too often. 

Yes, my sense of humor is a bit eccentric, and certainly a bit stream-of-consciousness, but it hardly takes away from the actual substance of the article - "might be some useful information" my fucking pasty-white ass, go ahead and show me how to figure out where the peak response of a Tube Screamer is. I want to see this. Let's also see you explain how a pair of diodes in a feedback loop cause clipping. 

"Might be some useful information"... I'm sorry I couldn't shove a Ph.D. in a pill, take it to your home, and place it on the back of your tongue while washing it down with a glass of Dom Perignon, I'm afraid I'm only capable of putting things in layman's terms over the internet without so much as a diagram for assistance (while working for an audience that not only enjoys the way I write but has fought every attempt I've made at making things more straightforward and less JBrollesque), please accept my sincerest apologies for convincing you to spend ten minutes reading something that'll give you a better understanding of the thread's subject.

Are the analogies normal, stock, run-of-the-mill 'electricity is like water flowing through a pipe' repetitions of everyone else's horseshit? No, should they be? Jesus, if someone saying something that you haven't heard before in a way that isn't 'fuckin a it does this lol' gives you a headache, I'll be the first to put in for the 'buy V some serious fucking Tylenol' fund. 

Seriously... several days' worth of spare time in putting this together, not to mention the months before this spent fielding questions about everything imaginable pertaining to this stuff and years of taking shit apart to learn how it works...

FOR.

FUCKING.

FREE.

And you're complaining?

Thank you for making the internet a less helpful place. People like you are why people who know what the fuck they're talking about give up trying to help others and move on. Remind me to warn anyone else who wants to give away anything helpful and informative to 'write it again without trying to be funny and retarded' just to make sure they don't displease you. 

Jeff


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## Ishan (Dec 13, 2007)

I had the Behringer TO800 for a few weeks (bought it for a friend) and I was VERY impressed by its tone. Very close to a real TS9, no excessive noise (a first for a behringer pedal), very usable at home (plastic case). My BM smokes it but it costs 4 times the price of the Behringer haha 
All in all the TO800 is as good as an Ibanez TS9 (highly overpriced IMO) minus the metal case.


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## JBroll (Dec 13, 2007)

An Ibanez TS7 is $40, has the same circuit as a TS9, and is built better than most things I've come across.

Jeff


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## Desecrated (Dec 13, 2007)

Ishan said:


> I had the Behringer TO800 for a few weeks (bought it for a friend) and I was VERY impressed by its tone. Very close to a real TS9, no excessive noise (a first for a behringer pedal), very usable at home (plastic case). My BM smokes it but it costs 4 times the price of the Behringer haha
> All in all the TO800 is as good as an Ibanez TS9 (highly overpriced IMO) minus the metal case.



If I set up a blind test with the behringer and the BM being played in a mix with drums and a second guitar, would you be able to pick out BM or do you only hear the difference when playing solo ?


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## TomAwesome (Dec 13, 2007)

I haven't played through enough overdrive pedals to have any really valid opinion, but I'm quite enjoying my Bloody Murder.



mnemonic said:


> woooooooooo



See? It's so damn metal it doesn't even need a freakin' amp! Just plug in the guitar and go!


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## Ishan (Dec 13, 2007)

The BM doesn't sound like your standard TS9, compared to the TO800 (as I could compare them both on my rig) the BM gots far more balls, is tighter, far more volume (BIG clean boost) and the tone pot reaction is totaly different(the BM tone at 0 correspond to the TO800 at 3 or 4. The BM is VERY bright).
They are both OD, both TS9/808 based, but they are totaly different  I'd say the BM is totaly geared toward highgain amp boosting more than the traditional blues OD, even if it can be used like that with the tone on 0-3.


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## Jeff (Dec 13, 2007)

JBroll said:


> You're also running into Colin Richardson and James Murphy, among many others...
> 
> Jeff



That's cool then. 

I am just not a fan of what Andy Sneap has done. The "no dynamics" thing bothers me.


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## JBroll (Dec 13, 2007)

I'd find it hard to say even that... not only is he not the mastering engineer on all of the albums he produces, he has noted on a number of occasions that his mixes (like the new Megadeth) have significantly more headroom than a lot of the more popular stuff.

I find it hard to bash his work, especially given The Gathering, but I still have to say that James Murphy is probably my favorite right now... 

Jeff


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## VforVendetta00 (Dec 14, 2007)

JBroll said:


> Lots of things are 808 or 9 clones. The TS7 is a 9 clone, for example. Hell, you could build a TS808 for about ten bucks in parts.
> 
> Personally, I'd say that the best TS would be a few variations on the 'normal' TS - OPA2134 instead of that awful 4558 (yes, it's the 'original', 'authentic', 'Real McCoy'... can it, it's a cheap transistor that was all around Japanese radios and it was cheap and available, it was hardly picked for sounding good), expanded drive knob, a few diode selections, and set up inside the guitar on a DPDT with Drive and Tone as internal trimpots and volume wired as the guitar's overall output volume. Mmm...
> 
> ...



hahahaha.......well sorry to have offended you but i guess i don't expect people to assume i'm a fuckin retard that 3rd grade analogies and poor humor are needed for me to understand the subject matter. well, i know to ignore your "articles". well, or i would if i cared to remember your screenname after i submit this reply........


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## JBroll (Dec 14, 2007)

No, seriously. I've never heard anything about my analogies insulting the intelligence of any readers, they just happen to be more interesting and intuitive than explaining things from a strict electrical engineering standpoint. In any case... try teaching this stuff to anyone sometime and tell me what works best for you, because I've been doing this shit for literally as long as I've been in school so it's not like I don't know what I'm fucking doing.

I don't care if you ignore my posts... it's your loss. I'd just like to see you do better if you think my work is such total shit.

Jeff


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## noodles (Dec 14, 2007)

Hi. Mod doing mod stuff. Mind cutting this shit out, and getting back to the topic at hand?


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## Ishan (Dec 14, 2007)

on topic :





It rules, buy it!

And mine rules even more


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## eaeolian (Dec 14, 2007)

JBroll said:


> I'd find it hard to say even that... not only is he not the mastering engineer on all of the albums he produces, he has noted on a number of occasions that his mixes (like the new Megadeth) have significantly more headroom than a lot of the more popular stuff.
> 
> I find it hard to bash his work, especially given The Gathering, but I still have to say that James Murphy is probably my favorite right now...



<off topic>

I like a lot of Andy's earlier work. His stuff lately strikes me that he's relying too much on "sounding like Andy Sneap". It works for him, but I wouldn't want my mix to sound like what he did with the last Into Eternity, for example.

<on topic>

Best bang for buck is a TS7, IMO. Best sounding? JoeOvChaos' mods, of course.


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## Bound (Dec 14, 2007)

Maxon OD9 for the w1n


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## ibznorange (Dec 14, 2007)

havent played a bloody murder, but im a big fan of the voodoolabs sparkledrive


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## Ostia Man (Dec 15, 2007)

I also have the zakk wylde OD from MXR, and i did an A/B test with the ts9.
the ts9 gives more of a midrange boost than the MXR ZW.
the MXR ZW was a little bit flat on the eq, not a bad thing in my opinion.
When used as a boost on the red chanel(3) of a recto both od's where very similar, but the mxr is a bit noisy.


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## Jongpil Yun (Dec 15, 2007)

I see Desecrated is a man after my own heart, always asking about double blind tests 

I'm not totally for sure, but I can tell you that I can definitely tell the difference between a TS and the BM when turned off. The BM will be much quieter and pollute the signal chain less.


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## Ostia Man (Dec 15, 2007)

well, the true bypass thing is not that important to me because I think i could just get me a bypass loop pedal. that way i can engage the OD and a noise gate at the same time, and still have the benefits of true bypass.
I could be mistaken...

Am I?


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## JBroll (Dec 15, 2007)

No. The buffer shouldn't even have much of an effect on the signal, unless there's something wrong all it's intended to do is make sure the guitar isn't loaded by long cables or other such nonsense.

Build an A/B box for maybe five bucks, with maybe two minutes of effort (assuming it takes one minute for your soldering iron to hear), and you're good to go.

Jeff


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## ibznorange (Dec 15, 2007)

lol goddamn true bypass. some pedals need it. most dont


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## Desecrated (Dec 15, 2007)

Jongpil Yun said:


> I see Desecrated is a man after my own heart, always asking about double blind tests
> 
> I'm not totally for sure, but I can tell you that I can definitely tell the difference between a TS and the BM when turned off. The BM will be much quieter and pollute the signal chain less.



I bet I can fix that with a noisegate and a compressor.


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## Jongpil Yun (Dec 15, 2007)

Desecrated said:


> I bet I can fix that with a noisegate and a compressor.



Maybe, but I don't have either.


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## Desecrated (Dec 15, 2007)

Jongpil Yun said:


> Maybe, but I don't have either.



Get the behringer stomp boxes, I think they cost something like 10-15 dollars  (the noisegate is actually killer)


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