a tubescreamer is always greener on the other side of the stage.... read on

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/24169-state-of-the-stomp-overdriven-to-tears

Interesting article.

Wish he would have elaborated here though:

I can count on one hand the number of drives that were truly exceptional in terms of design

welp, almost every overdrive falls into the categories he listed, I think he just assumed most musicians know more about electrical engineering and sound engineering than they actually do, so elt me see if I can toss some info at ya to clear thigns up Michael.... and even the Klon and Clons fall into a subcategory of diodes to ground... an exceptional design is the Fulltone OCD and the discontinued Voodoo Lab overdrive it borrowed from, these drives use hard clipping back to abck diodes (or in the case of the OCD a pair of mosfets wired as diodes with an extra germanium diode for Boss style asymetrical clipping) sandwiched between 2 op-amp stages of a dual IC, but the revolutionary idea that makes these pedals more dynamic than a DOD overdrive 250 is that the diodes don't shunt the clipping signal tog round, they are wired to the bias potential of the 1st op-amp stage subtly changing the clipping threshold based on how hard you drive the opamp. You can actually do this to any diodes-to-ground OD/distprtion with a little knowhow. An OD250/distortion+, rat, ds1 etc.... but voodoo lab came up with the diea and fulltone tuned and perfected it (the voodoo lab OD didn't sound that great). As usual, Mike Fuller does nothing new, but he's always willing to tinker with someone else's circuit until its a killer.... then there's the red llama camp of CMOS inverter logic chip-based gain bangers, pretty unique stuff in a lot of ways. Design was pioneered by Craig Anderton as his 'tube sound fuzz' roject and has been expanded upon in the EHX hot tubes, Ibanez mostortion, red llama, mule, CB hyperpak and SCOD.... I could go on. Then there's the brown sound I a box that takes a fuzz face style transistor cascade to new levels of interesting intricacy, but I have a feeling the author classes those as amp in a box pedals. Still, the BSIAB2 was quite revolutionary and was a blueprint for all the CB foundation drives, the cmat brownie, JHS Charlie brown and even in a really general way the ZVex box of rock, metal and distortron! very original when the BSIAB and BSIAB2 hit the DIY scene when I was a kid. Now the ideas are commonplace but it was an epic thing. Revolutionary like the tubescreamer and boss SD1

you will also find that the MI audio tube zone is a pretty unqiue design, not quite an amp in a box or a BSIAB2 variation.... a similar idea was used by George Tripps on the way huge fat sandwich... lots of cascading stages of fets and opa,ps producing tube-like clipping along with some diode implementation to give you a really unique sounding distortion with lots of cumulative overtones from different parts from a complex circuit. Like a pre-stacked OD/distortion....

did that help?

Very much. Thanks.

I better try to collect them all just to make sure...

or you can just turn your amp up and if its too loud you're too old, err, I mean to say that if its too loud get something smaller like a 5E3 or an AC15 ;-)

you get any new stuff lately, Michael? Your board has been pretty consistent since I joined about this time last year....

Nothing! It sucks. All my money (and then some) seems to go to my wife/kids.

I have had my eye on a TS808, TS9, OCD, or Big Muff for a long time now.

I'm also debating waiting until I can upgrade my amp. I want to look at an Tiny Terror and AC15, since those are more in line with what I play now that I'm old (Less punk and more blues with age). :)

Advice?

everyone needs to own a stock ts9 for a couple years... the 808 is so negligibly different, just go ts9, plus if you stick with the solid state amp awhile the TS9 circuit was better optimized to sound good with solid state amps because they were so popular when the 9 series came out. Where a tubescreamer really shines though is slamming a fender guitar into a blackface fender amp.... if you want a british flavored tube amp I think the boss sd1 or its cousin the mxr badass OD are a little better voiced to work with fender pickupsinto marshall and vox. I am not a huge fan of the TS family of designs with humbuckers usually. There are a lot of guys who like to use them in front of Marshalls to tighten things up heavy riffage, but I am not a huge fan of this approach and when I've done it I still prefer the SD1 or even a lowly proco Rat set really low. The 80s shred guys favored the sd1 and rat and I don't blame them, those pedals do well with marshalls and the rat handles hot humbuckers like a champ which is amazing from such a simple design. But hey, basic can be best.

The Klon and OCD style pedals sound better to me with gibsons and super strats than the soft clipping ts9 style stuff and have more dynamic response than a rat or other brickwall clipper like a distortion+.... although my preference is to just let the amp speak for itself as much as possible. The ebst purchase I've mad ein a while has been the discontinued TC electronics Nova Drive. Blending the TS9 and Rat based drive and distortion in parallel with a little clean blend and some wild EQ and drive settings can create a more complex and lively sound to push an amp than any of the boutique stuff. There's some room for improvement still and I may try modding mine a little to make both OD and distortion more dynamic at higher gain settings, but the parallel routing and ability to save a hundred MIDI controllable presets is well worth the price of admission.... plus you basically get a voodoo lab sparkle drive, modded ts9 and a hot rodded Rat in one box. I totally recommend a nova drive as an alternative to a TS9 and a Rat....

there's nothing more punk than a tiny terror in that wattage/price range.... its all in how you work it, I mean, we are talking about minimal controls andoptions and that's as punk as it comes, and these are amps that don't require a lot of coaxing to distort

for my buck though I would look a rung or 2 up at an ac15HW1 if I eneded a combo or at a ceriatone 18 watt, 20 watt, spitfire or (my favorite modern 2 el84 design) the crème brulee (which is basically a matchless nighthawk with 3 bright switch flavors built on a turret board instead of point to point with floating parts)... the marshall 2xel84 amps are a little nastier sounding with an edgier distortion (think 50 watt JMP meets vox) while the vox and matchless style amps (including the tiny terror) have a more gradual and subtle breakup and a smoother, brian may distortion character. Both the marshall/Watkins circuit and the vox based circuits can do everything from british invasion to blues (the marshalls are very british sounding in a Cream sense while a vox can be shockingly American sounding if you know your shit) to classic arena rock and in the case or the marshalls some pretty gnarly marshally punk sounds without any pedals (but you will be playing at stage volume to get copious amounts of the good saturation).

If Austin has a store that carries high end marshall and vox and maybe some boutique amps with ef86 preamps like matchless, bad cat, dr z etc then you should go try them all. Do the reissues (an 18 watt combo and a 20 watt head) then try the new ac15ch, a tiny terror, an ac15hw1 and finally hit up the boutique stuff like maybe a badcat cub head or blackcat 15r and then a dr Z like the m12, maz18, Carmen Ghia....

then just for sake of argument try a fender pro junior, tweed deluxe RI, Eric Clapton tweed tremolux, supro dual tone RI, black magic and maybe a Princeton reverb RI to get a feel for the American 15 to 20 watt circuits at various price points.

I would stay away from vintage if I had a limited budget and no electronics skills... they don't make 'em like they used to on the whole, but the old stuff ain't that much better that you want to risk having your new old amp in the shop for a few months the 1st year getting old solder re-run and filter caps replaced. There are good enough versions of almost everything worth owning at all price points now. ALMOST... pretty much only blackface fender is still plug n play vintage right out of the gate, and even then not always. Everything else will likely need service or cost top dollar because its been serviced recently.

but yeah, there's my .02 on 12 to 20 watt tube amps.... I've owned and used a lot of them: Princeton reverb, 18 watt clone, 20 watt RI head, 90s ac15tb, tiny terror, ac15hw1, 5C3 wide panel deluxe, Gibson ga14 (a 5E3 tweed deluxe by another name), magnatone varisty, vintage supro dual tone 24 etc

all similar (except the Princeton, which is the tightest and punchiest mofo in this wattage range) and yet the feel and the way they cut the mix when overdriving can be very different.... some of it is speaker selection but a lot of it is little details in the circuits....