Preamp pedals with tubes in them

[Mincer]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

I know I hated the V Twin when it came out. It was compressed to hell, and essentially had one buzzy, super-distorted sound. Blech.

[SirJackdeFuzz II]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

Give this one a go . . .

[devastone]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

That's not a preamp, but neither is the Tube Driver, the Hot Tubes, the English Muff'n, or at least 1/2 the pedals brought up in this thread.

[Nsatke81]

Preamp pedals with tubes in them

I have a rocktron silver dragon that I love and still use. It is seriously high gain. It has a 12ax7 and is a little noisy but sounds massive.

[Empty Pockets]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

https://www.hilbishdesign.com/product/sol-invictus-preorder

I just ordered one of these and now I'm sitting here thinking of ordering a second one. It's the Sunn Beta preamp in a pedal, aka the best solid state amp ever.

[Lewguitar]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

In an attempt to get Eric Johnson's violin tone I bought a Butler Real Tube. It did not get me that sound.

Turns out Eric uses a Butler TUBE DRIVER...not a Real Tube. And he combines it with an old Fuzz Face.

The Hermida Dover Drive, however, does get that sound. I love that pedal. So does Eric. But it doesn't use a tube.

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX-b07pSO2A

[devastone]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

The Tube Driver is a starved tube distortion pedal, it really doesn't need a tube.

[Securb]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

I have a Chandler Tube Driver that just happened to be in the music store when I bought my first JC 120. They sounded so good together I was convinced I had to have a tube in my signal chain to get a good tone and bought them both. I now know better and can get a great tone with a SS amp and a regular analog stomp, but o baby does that Chandler still sounds great no matter what it is plugged into.

[devastone]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

Never said they sounded bad, the Radial pedals used a starved tube also, but probably could have been done with JFETs too, like the Dover Drive and Radial's tubeless pedals have proven.

But, those are distortion/OD pedals, not preamps.

[Securb]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

I had the rack version not sure how different it is from the stomp but I used it as a preamp for years

[devastone]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

I'm more familiar with the Real Tube rack preamps that were proper preamps, I'm not sure how the rack Tube Drivers differed from the pedals, they did have more knobs.

[Securb]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

More knobs is always better, right? It is a cool unit. The good thing is it makes everything sound like a Marshall. The bad thing is it makes everything sound like a Marshall.

[Larioso]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

...Damage Control Demonizer.

I have the Womanizer one, and where I found out about the interesting parts of parametric EQ.
So parametric work as pre shaping before first tube stage, then also bass+treble as post eq after that.
Decent compressor circuit with a knob, and drive and overall level.
You have 2 levels to engage regarding gain, you cannot set how much more in second though, just a fixed boost through yet another tube stage.

With this pedal I also discovered how a good wah works with tubes, giving nice harmonics. The wah itself is like a parametric eq pretty much, that you vary frequency with pedal.

After getting Womanizer 15 years ago I totally went for tube amps as well, and a bunch of parametric eq pedals in front. Many nice things appear in finding the sweet spot of a parametric eq with a tube amp.

So learned many things from having a tube preamp available.

[Erlend_G]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

I had a "Behringer Tube Monster", that was dirt cheap. That ran a 12ax7 inside.

I put into it, a NOS Phillips 5751- that was twice the price of the pedal... and it sounded AWESOME :o.

....

Also, I've heard of a preamp pedal called a "Blackbird", that is- "if im right"- a copy of a Fender preamp, in a stompbox size enclosure-. With three ECC83 tubes...

It's about 400 dollars, but sounds amazing! On the sound clips I've heard.

If I were not a poor man, I'd get one today; and put it in front of my already tube-driven amp .

[Gold star]

Re: Preamp pedals with tubes in them

Particularly for heavy tones pedals with tubes usually leave something to be desired. When you run tubes at low voltages they tend to be a bit fuzzy and compressed. If that's your jam then your gold but for tight precise heavy tones they can be lacking. I'm sure out there is tube pedal that blows my socks off but I haven't run into it yet. My favorite of those I tried was the Mesa Vtwin. It lived in my guitar case, it sounded good enough that if I had amp problems I could run it direct to the PA and be ok.

I looked at those...Vox made a few over 10 years ago..For that tube to work at all you would need a power supply cord all the time. more cables more clutter. Batteries will need replacing more often than you think as once it goes ffpm 9 V to 6 or 5 Volt then it loses all value. If you plug a tube pedal into a SS amp it wont change anything...