Tubescreamer Mods……Are They for Real?

When I first started to get into ‘tone’ and the whole ’sounding good versus playing every note you possibly can (or sometimes not, but think you can) within any given measure’ thing that I talk about so often here, I had no money. Well, in actuality, I was 19, complaining about the 100 dollar a month rent my parents made me pay them. Then you grow up, move out, start a life, get married, and you’re like…’Oh, that’s what it means to have no money.’ Which is also the reason for no children…ever. My gear is my children. I know, that sounds really heartless and un-American, but in actuality……no, it’s pretty heartless. 

Anyway, at 19 years old, under the delusion that I had no money, but really wanting to get better tone and good gear, I ran across the whole idea of tubescreamer mods. See, the real difference between then and now was not money. It was that then, I was blown away by the fact that people could spend more than $50 on a pedal. Now I see anything under $300 as a screaming deal. That’s the difference. So, back then, the boutique stuff was unacceptable at at least over $100, and the vintage stuff, such as the TS-808 from the ’70’s and ’80’s that I had heard so much about, was absolutely unacceptable at $500+. And, at least for now, (hehe), it still is. I’ll drop some money on some stuff, but not $500 on ‘do-one-thing’ overdrive pedals. 

(I’ve seen these little things sold for upwards of $1,000. Ya. I really hope I never get to the level where I’m cool with that. I’m sure it sounds great, and it’s vintage-cool, but it only does one thing. Now, if they had put, like, a purple or white led in there…)

So, needless to say, the mod thing really hooked me. That I could buy a $20 pedal, and then a $5 mod kit, and sound exactly like the $500 pedal? And then, on top of all that, to have the inherent ‘cool’ factor of, ‘Oh, you paid how much for that? Ya…I mod my own.’ So blasted cool. So, I bought my first ever pedal (uh, besides the DOD ‘Grunge’ that I got my freshman year in high school), an Ibanez TS7 tubescreamer from the used bin (way cooler and more gear-junky-hip to get stuff from the used bin) at Guitar Center in Ontario for $20. And then I bought a mod kit on e-bay for $4.95, consisting of a NOS (supposedly) Texas Instruments RC4558 chip (the original 808 chip), two carbon comp resistors, and a photo-copied sheet of instructions on where to place the three components. I was so stoked. 

And I asked my dad, who is way more technically-minded and skilled than I am, to show me how to solder and de-solder and all that stuff. I think he pretty much did the whole thing. But I was in heaven. I didn’t even bother to try testing my new modded one against a stock one, or to record the pedal before and after I modded it (or, uh, my Dad modded it). There was no need. I mean, the internet said the mods made it sound better. The internet! What more proof do you need than that? And then, of course, I started reading up more on mods, and found that Robert Keeley started his pedal business doing tubescreamer mods, and that he showed that his pedals were modded by replacing the stock led’s with sweet blue and white ones, so I decided that the ‘Verkade mods’ would be with green led’s, and I went and bought one, soldered it in, turned on the pedal, and waited to see the gloriousness that was my ‘I mod my own pedals’ led. And…uh…the led has never worked since. I even put the original led back in. Nothing. Yep. I am cool.

(Almost as cool as this. Almost. I’m not sure this level of cool has ever been reached. And am I really, really stretching it to tie in this picture to what I was talking about? The answer is yes. But the answer is always yes to ‘Chuck Norris action jeans’. Okay, come on. Go easy on me…I haven’t eaten in 9 days. And if you missed the last post, no, that’s not because I’m all crazy-awesome spiritual and on a fast. Basically, I’m on a lemonade cleanse because I heard Brad Pitt does it. Wow, that sounds sad.)

But I got so into it…I even modded friends’ pedals, and thought about starting my own business. If nothing else, at least it honed my solder skills. At one time, I had four modded tubescreamers on my board. And then one day, I’m modding two tubescreamers for some friends, and my dad comes into the garage. And, as logic and reason usually go with being technically-minded, my father has always had much more of a grip on reality than his ‘dreamer-I’m-going-to-go-to-Hollywood-and-be-trying-out-a-guitar-in-a-boutique-shop-when-Daniel-Lanois-will-walk-in-and-marvels-at-my-3-note-melodic-genius-and-calls-Bono-and-Bono-says-ya-we’ve-been-getting-sick-of-Edge-and-I-play-Edge-rip-off-riffs-in-front-of-80,000-people-and-then-Jimi-Hendrix-walks-in-becase-he-wasn’t-really-dead-just-ashamed-at-the-lack-of-talent-in-music-these-days-and-starts-to-cry-at-the-majesty-of-my-anti-solo’ son. And my dad says, ‘Hey, what if you mod the first one, and then you can try the modded one against the stock one, and see if these mods actually do anything to the tone?’

And of course, I’m like, ‘Oh come on, Dad. Of course they sound better! I read this one thing on the internet…’ and so forth. But of course, my dad insists on using stupid ‘logic arguments’ like, ‘How do you know?’ and ‘Uh…the internet said?’, so I concede. And we get out a guitar and an amp, hook up the un-modded tubescreamer and the modded one, and actually (novel idea, I know) listen. And I’m hearing all kinds of differences. Like, the modded one is more ‘transparent’, and ‘breathes more’, and is ‘warmer’, and has more ‘note definition’. Then my dad asks me to close my eyes. And suddenly there is no difference. And I’m freaking out. Spitting out all the excuses that the ‘room is too small’, the ‘concrete on the garage floor is messing with the acoustics’, ‘we need to be at a higher volume to hear the nuances’, ‘I have ear fatigue right now’, etc. 

But the lesson stuck with me, even though I probably (I don’t really remember) ran upstairs, called my friend Mike Huffman who had gotten me into tone, told him he was right, and proceeded to buy every boutique overdrive from him that he wasn’t using. Either that or that was when he said that I had passed the final test and was finally ready to be introduced to the magical secrets that were ‘The Gearpage’. (Ya, that was back in the day when it was almost like a secret society, and you only mentioned its existence to certain people.) But either way, I got into boutique pedals, liked them better than the one modded tubescreamer I kept, and kind of forgot about them. And then just recently, five or so years later, I started to wonder again about the mods…now that I have gotten into the habit of actually listening to the sounds I play and not the sounds the internet tells me.

So I decided to do this objectively, and in two parts.

Part 1: Professional Tubescreamer Mods

The Players

–Stock Ibanez TS9 (first run reissue, pre-2002)
–Analogman-modded Ibanez TS9 (TS-808 mod, plus silver mod)
–Keeley-modded Ibanez TS9 (TS-808 mod, plus baked mod, plus true bypass mod)

Possible Biases

Just look at the led on the Keeley. If that doesn’t bias you towards it, then you have no soul.

The Professional-Modded Tubescreamer Test:

 

Part 2: Home-Modded Tubescreamers

The Players

–Stock Ibanez TS7
–Home-modded Ibanez TS7 (by me) with RC4558 chip and two carbon comp resistors (and…um…an led that no longer works and a ‘Verkade TS-808 mod nameplate that I paid thirty dollars to have made back when I thought I was special)

Possible Biases

The modded one is my first pedal, and the one my father showed me how to mod on, so it does hold some sentimental value (hence, the reason I still have it).

The Home-Modded Tubescreamer Test:

 

 
The Conclusions

1) The mods are definitely for real. The Analogman took the TS9 stock sound and raised the level of response to picking, warmed it up a bit, and seemed to broaden its range. It seemed to fill up the tonal spectrum better, and just sounded exactly like a tubescreamer should. Nice, warm and clear, singing overdrive tones…great for leads. And the Keeley took it and just went to another place and level, giving a beautiful, clean, glassy mid to high gain overdrive sound. Really liked them both.

2) I am not Analogman Mike or Robert Keeley. So save up a little extra money and get a professional mod rather than buying a DIY kit on e-bay. The difference between the stock TS9 and the professional mods had way more of a difference than the stock TS7 and the DIY TS7 mod. Was there even a difference? lol

3) If you’re looking for an authentic, really warm, saturated, and cutting through vintage tubescreamer sound, I’d go with the Analogman mod. If you’re looking for something totally different, almost more in the glassy distortion, OCD-type range, I’d go with the Keeley. Both sounded great, but the Analogman sounded more like a really good tubescreamer, and the Keeley sounded more like a really good ’something else.’

And above all else, um…learn from my not-so-awesomeness and use your ears. 

Splendid.
Karl.