Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer

Just like the DS-1, I got this pedal because it seems like the most popular overdrive pedal. Now, having experience with the pedal, I can say that I really like the sound. In my opinion it gives the perfect tone and crunch to the sound I want. My settings are just like how all the old guys did it. I have the drive rolled back, and a boosted level. It's great!

my fav pedal, Great pedal for anything, best for pushing amps and amazing for blues, all my fav artist use them they r awesome

The only and almighty ts9, I play it with the drive control all way down to get that sweet bluesy sound, or all way up to do rock! Very useful to get "that" sound with and hybrid amp.

I use it more as a boost than my main overdrive, but sounds really nice either way. Turn the drive up and you get a really thick distortion, keep the drive low and you get a simple well-rounded gain boost. Not leaving my pedalboard anytime soon.

There's a reason many famous guitarists use this pedal. The sound is really amazing. I would describe it as an overdrive pedal, rather than a distortion pedal. I can get nice, subtle overdrive out of it, and then crank up the drive to get some great heavy overdrive perfect for lead. I'm pretty sure I'll never replace it, however I have thought often of adding another to it, so that I have both my favorite settings ready to go during live performances.

Legendary pedal, use it as my main overdrive sound

title says it all. its great for that blues and rock.

A steady distortion pedal with just enough settings to be used on a variety of song types.

A lot of people use it as their main pedal, personally, I use it to boost/give me a warmer sound. It's great. Drive it through the boogie and you get a good metal tone.

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.