Tag: pedals

Pedal Deals: Tube Works Blue Tube

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I am starting a new series of videos and blog posts that I am calling “Pedal Deals” for now. The basic premise is to highlight some pedals that people might not know about, or have dismissed based on their price, but are actually great sounding or inspiring. As I have been getting into higher end gear over the last couple years, I am guilty as much as anyone as dismissing some of the old staples as too “pedestrian”. So let’s take a look back through some old favorites and try out some new pedals that are either at a deep discount or simply budget minded from the beginning.

The first pedal I wanted to highlight is the old series of pedals by Tube Works. These pedals are designed by B. K. Butler of Tube Driver fame (used probably most famously by Eric Johnson) and use a 12ax7 running at good voltages to generate the overdrive tones. The Blue Tube is a low to medium gain pedal, good for pushing an amp that’s already overdriving, or adding organic tube overdrive in front of a clean amp.

One popular mod is to replace the original foot switch with a high quality true bypass switch. The originals were somewhat prone to failure with heavy use, and the mod is very inexpensive especially if you can solder at even a basic level. Another much less common mod, is a power conversion. The original pedals have a permanent 110v power cable attached. This is a much more difficult mod but can make the pedal work much better on modern pedalboards.

Tube Works Blue Tube - Tube Overdrive Pedal

One interesting feature on these pedals are the knobs. They are what I can best refer to as “clicky” knobs. As you turn them they have notches you can feel giving you more exact settings and making it easier to reproduce them. Not sure how robust they are, but I haven’t seen any fail on the pedals I’ve had in the past.

The Blue Tube and other old style Tube Works pedals can be consistently had for under $150 USD (at time of writing), and if you keep an eye out and are patient, can be found for around $100. At this price they are competing with inexpensive solid state overdrive pedals and are definitely a good deal that could give you some interesting texture and tones outside of what’s normally available.

One last thought is something I still have to try, but I wonder how well these tube based overdrive pedals would work in front of a cheap solid state amp? As these pedals do sag and compress as a tube should, they may be able to add some of the feel and life of a tube amp to a solid state practice amp. I will test this out when I get a chance to borrow a practice amp.

Support the channel and buy your own Blue Tube on Reverb.

Bliss Factory

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As many of you know, I have found a new fatuation in Chass Bliss pedals and all their configurability and quirkiness. Also if you’ve known me for even longer than you may know that one pedal I’ve always come back to is the ZVEX Fuzz Factory 7, my all time favorite fuzz. When I found out that they were doing a collab for the Reverb Pedal Movie, I jumped on the chance to snag one.

Of course this being the time of Covid where everyone is home and online, as well as Chase Bliss pedals going for ridiculous markups after undoubtably selling out, I was too late. In the first hour of sale all one thousand pedals were gone with no plans to make more. So back to the board with a plan to watch the flips pop up, and to try and get one for as little as possible, which would still turn out to be nearly double the original price.

But this post isn’t about the troubles of limited runs and the scalpers that markup the pedal the next day, it’s about this fantastic pedal. And it is FANTASTIC. One of the reasons I keep coming back to the Fuzz Factory 7 over the years is that it has fantastic cleanup, and there are a ton of different tones in there. From classic Fuzz Face, to thick molten modern fuzz, octave rich spitty tones and gated video game effects, all are possible. With Joel’s magic done to the Bliss Factory, the biggest part for me was the ability to save all those sounds to presets.

The added resonant high pass is a nice addition, giving some flexibility to tone, whether mellowing it out with reduced high ends, or adding some peak resonant frequencies to give a cocked wah feel. The Aux foot switch let’s you do things like make the high pass in one state and have it rolled off in the other allowing you to sit back in the mix even with a thick tone.

Chase Bliss / ZVEX – Bliss Factory

Lastly in true Fuzz Factory style, the noises that happen when this pedal self oscillates can be used for all sorts of crazy creations. Add this to pedals like the Thermae, Mood and Blooper and you have music potential with no guitar needed. That said, for me this is a fantastic fuzz pedal first, with all those noises coming in as an occasional fun thing to play with. The cleanup on the guitar volume knob is up there with the best of any fuzz and is truly an overlooked feature of this amazing pedal.

If you’d like to support the blog and the channel then please use our links when purchasing through Reverb and pickup your own Fuzz Factory variant today.

Chase Bliss Pedals – Reverb

Chase Bliss Blooper – Can it do normal looping?

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From the creative minds of Chase Bliss Audio and Knobs, comes the “Bottomless Looper”, a creative fully featured looping pedal that can even be customized. But how well does it work as a standard looper, and does it’s extra features provide the normal person with enough value to justify the high cost?

As a standard looper, the Blooper has really just one hurdle to get your head around. The length of the loop doesn’t change even though it may seem like it temporarily. Confusing to describe, confusing the first time you do it, not too hard to work around once you know what’s going on. For example, when you slow the playback, it will play the full loop at half speed and an octave down. However if you then try to “record” that effect permanently into the loop it will only record to the length of the original loop, giving you only half of the slower loop. Like I said, confusing to explain, not too bad once you play with it.

So now how about that Repeats knob? Well when you put the pedal in “Add” mode, it takes any filter and re-applies it per repeat. So a slowdown gets even slower each time, a warp gets more warpy each time around, and the volume drops based on the repeats knob. Turning this creative, character-ful looper, into an awesome, customizable delay. Reverse delay, character delay, high-pass filter, dropper; all kinds of things are possible here.

At about $500 new, this is the most expensive looper that I know of for sale, making my previous looper (Pigtronix Infiniti Looper) look down right affordable. As is the case with pretty much all Chase Bliss pedals, it may look overpriced on the surface, but when you start looking at it as a whole it starts to make sense. Midi controlled, super flexible looper, incredible character delay and future upgradability via usb updates, this pedal gives you ton’s of options in a very small package.

Once again Chase Bliss Audio has taken a simple concept and expanded it to be a creative tool that you can get lost in for hours at a time. This is why I have embraced them wholly and built a board pretty much exclusively from their pedals.

Support the channel and buy you own Blooper on Reverb.

Preamp Mk II Automatone VS The World

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The Preamp Mk II Automatone is a gimicky, over hyped and overpriced overdrive pedal. At least that is what I thought at first when it was first announced and I saw those automated sliders flicking between presets. In a world where pedal prices keep jumping up to new levels, Chase Bliss leads the way in high priced gear, but after spending time and completely loving their Thermae, I understand why.

The Preamp Mk II answers with gusto the main critique I have will all pedals that employ favorites or presets, that when you switch to said preset you have no idea where the knobs are set. Sure some makers have come up with work arounds such as Stymon’s where turning the knobs will blink the light when you read how it is set for the preset, but they have all felt like cumbersome hacks. Chase Bliss and it’s fancy auto-faders have solved the problem, the sliders move themselves to the preset settings when switching. It seems like a gimmick, but man does it work.

Then came the demos by people who’s opinions I hold with regard, the final straw being That Pedal Show‘s episode where they put the Preamp Mk II up against some of the heavy hitters of the overdrive world and even Mick’s Fuzz Face. See their episode here. So I decided to give it a shot and ordered one direct from Chase Bliss (which said it had a 1-2 week backorder, but shipped out the next day) and shoot it out again my newly wired pedalboard.

At first I wasn’t impressed by the sliders, they felt too light and not quite as sturdy as I’d like for a $750 pedal, especially compared to the beautiful knobs that are on other chase bliss pedals. However after some use I realized that they have to be extremely light in order for the motors in the sliders to last forever. It’s sort of like picking up a guitar with super light wood, at first you it feels like a toy, but after a while you realize that it’s lightness is part of what makes it great.

Actually dialing in tones, especially if trying to match another pedal, it takes time a experimentation. When trying to match the high gain sound of my Hudson Broadcast, there was a top end that I found hard to match. In the end I had to turn down the treble and boost the upper mids in a specific frequency range to get it there. Sometimes you get the right high end by cutting lower mids in either the pre or post mid eq setting. It seems simple, but the controls are so powerful that shaping your tone can be more complex than expected.

In the end, I managed to match my King of Tone (at 18v), Hudson Broadcast 24v, Dumbloid Overdrive BTM Boost and even my Fuzz Factory 7 to an extent. While at first it seems like an overpriced bit of a one trick pony, it actually revealed itself to be a true chameleon of a pedal and is going to replace all four pedals on my board… well maybe.

I still love my other pedals, so they’re not going anywhere. It may be time to build my own pedalboard, just for the Chase Bliss pedals I have.

Support the channel and buy your own Preamp Mk II on Reverb.

Analogman DS-1 Pro Mod

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The Boss DS-1 is a classic distortion box used by many artists over the years. Known for it’s somewhat scooped tone and high amounts of gains, it’s really a pedal that lends itself only to the heavy metal/rock tones. Built to a price, cheap parts abound and a thin fizzy high end makes it unusable on too clean of an amp.

Enter Analogman Mike Pierra and his pedal modding wizardry. Refined over a couple variations, the Pro Mod replaces mod of the cheap parts allowing way more bass and mids to come through, and taming the top end fizz. This pedal can now be thrown in front of a clean amp (think Fender Silverface Twin) and gives are Marshall-esque tone that any player could find use of. With the gain all the way down you get a crunchy boost pedal that drives an amp from on the edge of breakup into full glorious gain. Maxed out the pedal invokes all kinds of beautiful harmonics and overtones while retaining a percussive clarity that drives rhythm tones without turning to mush.

When you want a high gain pedal, there are tons of modern alternatives that do a great job, but it’s definitely worth taking a look at this old favorite as it has some tonal qualities not found in many modern pedals. Plus who doesn’t love the classic orange box?

Buy one now on Reverb

T-Rex Replicator Junior

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Any amount of time spent searching forums or YouTube for tips and gear to give you the “ultimate guitar tone” will undoubtedly lead you at some point to consider a real tape echo unit. They are lauded for their liveliness, their clarity and the charm. But they are impossible expensive, unbearably noisy and require constant maintenance to keep running right, not to mention they are big and have to run off wall power, making their portability just a joke. A fair warning, this review is going to have lots of subjectivity to it. A real tape echo, even a well thought out and compact one like the T-Rex Replicator Jr, is not for everyone so lets dig in because, I adore them.

First of all, let me say that I am lucky. I have a large enough house with a finished basement and a funky split-like layout that means the bedrooms are far enough away that I can play loud without waking anyone. I can have a 30 watt PRS HXDA cranked without much problem, or run it wed/dry with a Bloomfield Drive combo and still be good. For those who have to play quiet, I’ve been there and I feel for you. I’ve had the 100 watt Mesa Boogie Mk III where you only just get the master turned on and even then you have to put a volume pedal in the loop to turn it down even farther to not disturb people at night. It’s not fun, and I hate to tell you, it pretty much disqualifies you from the real tape club. Even the modern quieter ones are noisy, and unless you’re able to turn up to the point where you drown out the noise, it takes away a lot of the charm. A quick test, turn your amp to your normal playing volume and strum some chords. If you can hear the clack of your guitar pick on your strings, then you likely don’t play loud enough to enjoy a tape echo.

Now that we’ve deterred half of your, lets talk about maintenance. It’s not rocket science, it won’t explode in a fiery ball or any other such things if you don’t take care of it, but it will wear out tapes quicker and sound “worse”. The good news is the T-Rex Replicator is pretty easy to take care of. Tape swaps are a breeze thanks to the cartridge system they use, just unscrew, push the slider down, pop out the old, put in the new, let go and replace screw. Takes one minute or less. There’s a dead simple adjuster on the record heads, simply back it off until there’s no signal, then move it in a quarter of a turn at a time until you have a clean echo. Done. Last is cleaning, a little isopropyl alcohol on a swab, clean the heads and reels and you’re good to go. All of this together takes less than 10 minutes and only needs to be done every month or two (or when it starts sounding “off”).

Still here? Great! Now we get to the good stuff, let’s talk price. Most vintage or new tape echo units are in the one to two thousand dollar range (USD), which puts them out of the range of most hobby players. T-Rex has made the Jr more simple, and therefore less expensive. A new one will still set you back a good chunk, but they can be found on the second hand market for around $400 making them about the same as a boutique digital recreation. The simplification also has another benefit, it will “fit” on a pedalboard. It is fairly heavy for a pedal, but it will fit on all but the smallest of pedalboards making portability less of a concern. One more quick not about portability, it also runs at 12v 300ma, which means most modern power supplies can get it going with at most a special cable.

So how does it sound? Well to be honest, at first I was a little underwhelmed by it. Now I’m not a huge delay user, having gotten rid of all of my delay pedals except for my Analogman ARDX20 with Amaze0 add-on. It’s not quite the night and day difference that some people would have you believe it is (granted this is a much less expensive unit than most, and it doesn’t have a monster pre-amp like some do) but as I use it more (on day 3 as of this writing) it’s really starting to grow on me. It definitely has a character to it that other digital pedals get close, but so far don’t seem to quite replicate.

So while my Analogman delay isn’t going anywhere, I’ll keep this noisy, heavy, difficult, fantastically glorious beast around. It may be converting me to it’s ways sooner than later.

Buy one now on Reverb

Can you Dumble?

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The Dumble Overdrive Special is an amp of legends. Smooth and creamy with nicely pushed mids, yet so tightly defined that individual notes ring through even with massive amounts of gain dialed in. Of course, this is what I’ve been told, or read on the internet so it must be true. There is no denying however that the sound you hear from various artists that use these holy grail amplifiers is alluring and inspiring for guitar players to listen to.

Now I can’t afford an ODS (yet! one day… ) but I do have a Two Rock Studio Pro 35 which is, through some levels of relation, based on the clean sound of a Dumble, and does do a very nice job indeed. A great “pedal platform” amp, it takes anything you can throw at it and makes it sound very good, but one thing I hadn’t tried until just now was mimicking the gain structure of an ODS. You see one of the things that sets apart the ODS is the fact that the overdrive happens after the tone stack of the clean channel, basically putting it where the effects loop of most other amps is. This got me thinking, why not put a gain pedal in the loop and see how it goes.

Now of course conventional guitar tone wisdom says that this would never work, but conventions are always being rewritten anyway so I might as well be the one to give it a show. My first try was a Paul Cochrane Tim, thinking the transparent nature of the pedal would help blend it into the sound of the amp and let me add just some hair to it as I do with the pedal going into the front. Strike 1, this did not work very well at all, it somehow wasn’t compressing in a way that felt right, now was it leaving the clean and clear overheat of the amp in tact. Maybe convention was there for a reason.

Attempt number two was much better. Much, much better. A tanabe.tv Dumkudo in the loop set to Dumble (green) mode and we are off and running. The Dumkudo offers a lot of volume and gain on tap with a mid boost that can be dialed in just right to get the amp singing. Turning the volume knob down on the guitar cleans up nicely, but loses a bit too much volume at the same time. Add a Keeley Compressor Pro before the amp input and the volume level stays more in the sweet spot while letting me adjust the gain with my guitars volume. The results speak for themselves, with high dynamic range (actually too much before the compressor was added), touch sensitivity, excellent sustain and works very well with additional pedal going into the front of the amp, it really is an all around win.

So some things to test in the future; I need to A/B the Dumkudo in front vs the loop as this pedal does just sound incredible all around so it may be that there isn’t that big of a difference wherever the pedal is, but I do need to try it out so I can see differences in sensitivity or dynamics. Also my testing was all done at semi-home levels, not bedroom but not live either. Turning up the amp and having the power section work harder may eliminate the need for the compressor and may yield different results. Lastly, I have only tried those 2 pedals so far, but I have many gain pedals so I should run through all of them and see which ones seem to work best to try and draw some conclusions as to guessing which other pedals may work well (I am looking at you Kingsley).

For now, how a listen and give it a try on your own amp if you have an effects loop. Worse you can do is learn what not to do.