Solid Pedal

Boost a the sound, very clean adds some extra balls yo your sound. Pair it with a ProCo RAT and yiu get a killer tone!!!

The ubiquitous Tubescreamer in its most common form!

Who hasn't owned a TS9 Tubescreamer? I had an Maxon-made original issue TS9 before I got sick of tubescreamers. It sounded like a tubescreamer should.

The TS9 is a bit gainier than the 808 that preceeded it, but a little less gainy than a TS10 or the reissue TS9. If you really listen while staring at your gain knob settings you can barely notice the difference! From what I can tell the TS808 and TS9 were copied from Boss's OD1 only with a high-cut tone control added and the diodes switched to symmetrical clipping (because Boss supposedly had the asymetrical clipping idea pantented at the time). There are a few other component differences that give this pedal slightly stronger bass and a mid-hump that favors the lower, rather than upper mids. The clipping and mid-range bias really suit Fender single coil pickups and Blackface fender amps, but a TS9 sounds cool through a marshall or a vox as well (though I prefer the Boss SD1 for this application usually).

Here's a little tech for those of you who are curious. The revolutionary idea in this whole family of overdrives was putting the clipping diodes in the feedback loop of the dual op-amp softening the clipping substantially compared with the diodes-to-ground approach fro the DOD OD250 camp that preceeded it.

I could say more about this classic pedal, but we all know about it. Its a tone in and of itself and if you play a Strat through a Blackface Fender amp you are basically required to own one or a boutique derivitave. These days I am more of a Boss SD1 kinda guy, but they are almost the same pedal as a TS9. When I played a Fender Princeton Reverb or Showman all the time the TS9 was my go-to dirty boost for leads. If you haven't tried one of these you should. Its a classic like a Telecaster; sure you can improve on it from an intellectual standpoint, but its been doing the job in its own way for so long that tampering with the formula is really creating a whole new tone and defeats the idea of having something classic. Really, you need to appreciate a stock TS9 in a loud, electric blues band situation before you knock it -- it thicken single coils even with the gain at 1, can produce a good amount of its own distortion into a clean amp, has a wollop of output to hit the 1st tube in your amp and helps single notes cut the mix instead of getting lost. 'Nuff said.

Not for everyone

The Tube Screamer is iconic and polarizing. Having owned one, I don't understand the amount of hate it receives, especially for things like being non-transparent or having a mid frequency peak—tons of overdrive/distortion pedals including the SD-1, RAT, and Klon also have mid humps. That being said, there are a couple of features that I don't like.

(1) This pedal is a soft clipping overdrive, where the clipping diodes are inside an op amp feedback loop rather than on the output of the circut. This means the clipped output signal contains part of the clean input signal. Some like this because it preserves the original dynamics of the guitar, supposedly improving the clarity and responsiveness of the pedal. Others dislike this because you can almost always hear the clean signal underneath the overdriven sound. I don't dislike soft clippers generally, but I do think the blend of signals is particularly unsubtle in the Tube Screamer.

(2) I find the tone control to be poorly designed, borderline unusable. It's comprised of a passive low pass filter which bleeds out high frequencies, followed by an active tone circuit that either reinforces that low pass filter or compensates for the loss by amplifying treble (sort of an active presence control). In my opinion, this design makes the pedal sound either flabby and inarticulate on the counterclockwise side, or thin and shrill on the clockwise side, with not much usable middle ground.

These are fairly nitpicky criticisms, and it took me quite a bit of research to figure out what exactly it was I didn't love about this pedal that every guitarist is supposed to revere. It's not for me and my sound, but it's the secret sauce for a lot of people so don't let me stop you.

Great Pedal, Great tone, versatile.

Definitely a great pedal, with a great reputation, bit pricey, but it's worth it. What I really like about it is it's versatility, so if you're an all round player like me, this is the pedal for you. You can dial in a nice blues tone, vintage hard rock tone, modern rock, fuzz, and use it as a great boost for any kind of metal or solos. The tone knob seems to be different from other pedals, the neutral point is all the way down, and not on 12 o' clock, and as you turn it up, the high end goes up.

Great pedal

An amazing distortion/overdrive pedal. Great for a good heavy metal tone. Even if you don't want an overdrive pedal, you can turn the drive all the way down and instead use it as a compressor, volume booster, bass booster, treble booster, etc.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

No

No matter the amp, no matter the setting, no matter the guitar, a TS9 is not for me. I'm not fond of TS808s either. The tone is either entirely dark, or bright enough to make ears bleed. The most tolerable tone I've gotten from one of these was with the drive at 8 O'Clock, and Tone at 5 O'Clock. I'd take a Soul Food over this, but for now I'll stick to a Crate CR-1 for a good drive tone. Some people love these, and that's great for them, but not for me. Who wants to trade?

From Gear Setup

It's a classic for a reason

There are few stomp boxes and pedals on the legendary level as the Ibanez Tube Screamer. There are different styles and options but this is the Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer. Although this is a reissue of the original, it's exactly the same, and I'm talking components, color, housing, everything. The TS9 has 3 knobs including Drive, Tone, and Level. It's the perfect overdrive for coloring your tone and giving you some extra punch for your leads or just jamming on rhythm.

When the pedal was designed, they used a subtle clipping circuit to create the pedal's sound. The input and output signal of the clipping circuit were mixed and helps to preserve the original sound and to avoid the muddiness. It also makes your guitar to be more responsive and you'll rock out with much more clarity in your tone.

Awesome!

This is a BEAST! Works for basically everything! I used to have a really boring and thin tone but this pushed that tone enough so it becomes the creamy tone that I've always wanted. This is my go-to pedal when I'm jamming with my band! 10/10 Would recommend!

Preferred Settings + Usage:

Safe bet? Get the TS-9!

It will be quite hard to write something new and shocking about TS-9, because it's been here for 30+ years and did its time on countless pedalboards & recordings. Anyways - I'll give it a shot. TS-9 is a safe bet. If you want pedal that sounds great as a standalone unit and serves even better as a little extra boost for already cranked amp then you should not look any further than this green buddy. Three knobs make it extremely easy to dial into your tone. Build as a tank, ready to go and last on any gig. It isn't true bypass... but who cares? It's TS-9!

A Hidden Gem

This TS9 is a touch brighter with a touch more edge than my TS808 pedal. I picked up the TS9 on ebay, thinking i was going to modify it with some resistor and cap changes, and would also replace the op amp chip with one used in TS808 pedals. I did a lot of research and had pictures of the circuit boards for every TS9 version released. When I popped open the pedal I was suprised to discover that the circuit board was different than all versions I had found, plus it had one of the excellent op amp chips used in TS808s, which were supposedly not put in TS9 models. I immediately closed the pedal up and left it just the way it came.