HI everyone. BK BUTLER here. Just want to sincerely thank all the loyal users out there. Greatly appreciate the pro users also: David Gilmour, EJ, Billy F Gibbons, Joe Satriani and Bonamassa, etc., etc. I'm always hearing of pros using Tube Driver I wasn't aware of! Just a comment about noise or buzz. The older pedals had the IN and OUT jacks electrically connected to the case and a 2-wire AC cord. This can cause (or in other situations) eliminate ground loop hums, etc. The current (and electrically compliant to required safety codes) production have a 3 wire AC cord with the standard 3 prong AC plug. The current chassis case is isolated from the IN / OUT jacks. Depending on the amp (or other device) the Tube Driver is plugged into, a ground loop hum can (or generally not) exist. Sometimes a 3rd prong AC plug ground eliminator can be tried, etc. But honestly I seldom get any comments from players and especially not from the pros. (Their techs understand grounding issues) Also, the Tube Driver is quite sensitive to the GAIN of the tube installed. Tube Drivers are more sensitive to the tube installed than typical tube amps. I'm sure that if I were personally able to compare any 2 pedals in real-time, I could easily eliminate any buzz or hum in either of them. The electrical design remains correct, but wiring AC connected devices and amps in combination with differing house ground wire connections can cause an issue from time to time. Anyone with an issue can contact me for advice: bk@butleraudio.com I answer all emails. Again, THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT and ENJOY the TONE!!
Thanks for the comment. My videos, and often my personal conversations don't always convey the message I intend so I hope this wasn't one of those cases. The BK butler tube driver is great. It is one of my all time favorite pedals and lives on my board for any gig I've ever played. Not having a guitar tech and being only a hobbyist guitar tech myself, I never was able to solve the buzzing issues on the three pedals I've purchased over the years. When I decided to make a video about it, I never thought it would reach even a fraction of the viewers that it did, but I'm glad it did and hope others have made a purchase as a result. Late last year I sent my unites to a guy in Italy who was a recommendation of Pete Cornish, and had them modded to use 18v DC power instead. To my ear, there is very little difference in the tone and responsiveness of the pedal and it is now 100% buzz free. Super clean, and great sounding!
I have two with the bias dail one with the 12AX7 and the other with the Gilmore tube. Both have no hum on my rigs. Best investment I have made so far by a country mile.
That BUZZ is actually what gets Eric his Royalty on the pedal :) Use a EJ Fuzz into a TS-10, the gain on fuzz is FULL up , 65% on the TS-10, n its relatively VERY quiet BOTH in operation thru clean channel of my 80s Dble build..
****2023 Update**** I had both of my tube drivers modded by a guy in Italy (sorry folks, mine were the last two he'll ever do) and I'm happy to say these are now completely buzz free and sound amazing.
I’ve been looking at tube driver vids because I recently got one and waiting for it to get here, have to say I thought your vid was one of better ones on YT nice
Hey man ! Quick thought about 2:20 when you talk about impedance. A good pedal is well designed when the input impedance is high, and the output impedance is low, and the perfect signal chain would be solely composed of pedals like this. If the input impedance is too low, it sucks your tone and removes the treble, unless you have a buffer before it. If the output impedance if high, it will attenuate your signal level. Some "badly designed" pedals are really good sounding though, like a Fuzz Face or a Tonebender, but that's still not good stricly from an engineering point of view. The BK Butler Tube Driver seems to have a high output impedance, and the impedance actually depends on the output volume pot AND the tone stack, which will indeed make it more interactive with other pedals, sometimes in a bad way. Hope that helps a bit ! :)
I will have had mine for a year this Christmas. I bought it new. I love this pedal. It’s simply the purest overdrive out there. And it’s so versatile between tasteful crunch, boost, or distortion that I’m going to buy another one. But it has its quirks. You’ll read that this pedal can be picky ab other pedals it is used with. I used to love having my delay in front of my overdrives, but that was a no-no for the tube driver. Once i made the change, it was tone heaven. You may have to make it happy, which will put some people off, but I’m so glad i made it work
So did they both buzz real bad or just the one with the 5th knob the bias knob? Surely there is an easy fix right? How could anyone use it if it buzzed like that all the time? Why would those major players use it if it buzzed real bad and was a poor design? Surely there must be more to this story.. tell us what the deal is.
I run a boss HM-2 into tube driver into a 50w plexi sim w/greenbacks and the crispness the hm-2 really removes a lot of the squishiness and keeps the thick saturation really makes the tone awesome and touch sensitivity is great, can play ultra fast cleanly with little effort, just gotta experiment with different pedals in front of after and see what happens.
Awesomeness! I’m a new sub. I got my 1st BK Butler TD in ‘87. I just got another last year. Methinks BK isn’t using the good ‘oL original Groove Tubes, they were bought out in the mid 90s, if I recall ok. I traded a hopped up JCM800 for a Real Tube TubeWorks 12” 100w combo in ‘91; just settled it happily. BK reduced the plate volts to the preamp tubes, Groove Tubes again, & that gives the TubeWorks amps that chewy, juicy preamp sag. It’s only 1 tube in the TubeWorks stool boxes, so they’re thin by comparison to the amps. Wes, you sounded great! 👏 Have a good one!
The problem isn't exactly the proximity of the power transformer, but the half cycle rectification and the puny filter capacitors in the power supply. The lower the voltage, the higher capacitance must be those capacitors.
Per your video, I ordered a 97 model. Quite simply, it is the best overdrive I’ve ever heard from my Reeves Custom 50. With a compressor it does spot on Gilmour. With humbuckers I can get Angus to Billy Gibbons. Really nice chirp to the pick attack and very defined. I don’t like it as much with my fender amps. It still sounds good, but it really melds well with the Reeves, maybe it’s the EL34s?. BK Butler himself has some of the brand new ones for sale on Reverb and I just bought one to test side by side with the older model. I asked him about the noise issues and he said he’s now using a hum bucking toroid transformer. I’ll report back.
Yep the brand new one sounds even better than the old one. Noise level is the same, no louder than any other drive pedal I own, but more transparent than the older model. Might be that the tube is brand new. I sold the old one.
I get the Eric Johnson tone with a Jetter GS68 and a booster or a Jetter Gain Stage Black. For Davey G. BK Butler tones, I go with the Maxon ROD-880 or 881, a RAT, and a Muff in various stacking combination. The Maxon pedals are based on the OG Ibanez Tube King and are a lot friendlier than these newer BKs. The 881 has the Hi-Fi mod. No buzz! That's a great tone you had going on with the 2006 BK.
Great tones! I have three; two have been in my Floyd rig (I have been doing a touring Floyd act for 18 years now) for a long time but to be honest I don’t use them much live because they break pretty often on the road…. Every once in a while they sound incredible though. I haven’t figured out how to be consistent with them yet I’m afraid :)
230V here and no buzz. I've had 2, first i bought 2008 (w/ bias) and second around 2018 with no bias and have been wondering why some have noise issues. Unique sounding pedal, does low gain, cream-era clapton crunch to silver jubilee-like highgain. Everyone has to have one. I dont much use mine but it's good to have one available.
They sound great in a few videos and crap in loads, so i think I know that other pedals should be sufficient.... i got tu get off the "watch glowing video then keep buying" conveyer
Depends how you use it, mines dead quiet and the absolute best overdrive ive ever played. I use mine as an overdrive pedal, not something to push an amp on the edge of breakup, to me thats what the tube screamers are for
I haven't played a Katana but I owned a Roland Blues cube and thought it sounded great. Here's a vid of that amp with this pedal live ruclips.net/video/xPJgJaub2O0/видео.html
@@majd.z Nope the Roland Blues cube is a SS amp. It has these "tone capsules" but they're not tubes, they're just like a hardware equivalent of a digital plugin.
Ok this is going to sound strange but as its been my main stage tone for many years heres my theory with the 5 dial anyway. Its not actually a tube driver! If you think of it as more of a stand alone over drive pedal and not a boost, it will begin to make sense. By that i mean it ALL depends where your amp gain is. These things sing with very little gain on the amp, so driving the power section and not the pre amp section is where it comes alive! In a sense, adding more colour to a loud cleanish tone. The bias is 9 oclock all day and not much else, volume up to 2 to 4 oclock to get unity, drive on about 9 oclock. And yes it works with other pedals in this manner, especially an ibanez ts9 before it, pushing its tube. I get a massively wide crunchy but smooth tone i havent been able to match yet. And buy limiting the amps gain, i get very little noise.
I've always found mine took pedals well, but it was 4 knob, 96'. Brand new, and it made full grown dudes hate me when I broke it out of the pedal bag! 375 new, then. VERY Powerful. Can dominate whatever stands across from it by not trying, its a touch and go pedal, not a balls to walls type. You can, but you better get a noise reducer, a noise gate, a compressor. The whole 9. It is pretty awesome sounding, though, live. Raw, untouchable full distortion worked for alternative like Alice in Chains very well.
@@caiusmadison2996 couldnt agree more, its very marshally, i use it for lots of pearljam, and most other alternative covers. Me personally, i dont have any problems with noise
I have 2 of them a newer 5 knob version and on my board is a older 3 knob with a Fromel bias knob modded Tube Driver that I'm using with 18v pwr and a old 12AT tube. It's not real high gain but stacked with my Meat and 3 modded SoulFood and/or Alchemy modded Blues Driver, I pretty much got a lot of dirt sonic area covered.
I appreciated your video - nicely done and informative - but if I understand you correctly you are saying that the "bias knob"- fifth knob addition - only appeared in 2016 and later. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding but that is absolutely incorrect. I think Eric Johnson himself had BK add the first bias knob ages ago. I bought mine probably 15 or 20 years ago, and it was used. Again apologies if I'm mistaken - if not, it's really not that hard to reach out to them via the website to confirm details of this sort historically they've always been really responsive.
So had occasion to send BK an email on an unrelated note yesterday (one of the reasons I found this video) and asked about this while I was at it. He began making the Tube Driver again in 2011 and has offered the fifth bias knob since then. So clearly I was off on the purchase date on my end (which surprised me) Said the original knob was added to EJ's pedal(s) back in 1986 Hope that is helpful - BTW love your playing on the video.
Do These 2 Pedals Kill Each Other?!! nice sound, .personally I would never pair a Boss CS2 with a Butler Tube Driver, to my ear and hands these are 2 pedals are incompatible.in fact they are designed very differently, one has the typical 80's circuit, with an Op-Amp at the "center stage" (lots of mids, closed with a big and stiff attack), the Butler instead is a Tube, with a lot of dynamics, very open in tone, elastic in the attack and fresh in the sound. these 2 pedals kill each other!?..!!
The compressor definitely does not work against the tube driver. Quite the opposite. It might, if you were to put the CS-2 after the tube driver, but you wouldn't want to do that. The compressor goes in the front of your signal chain, before anything else. That basically gives your direct guitar signal a tube-like saturation feel. And that is fed into all your pedals and essential amplified in different ways. When putting the CS-2 in front of the Tube Driver the TD screams.
Kind of, I feel like it nails the Dumble/dirty rhythm with a fuzz on top. Of course need to buy an actual Tube Driver to tell the difference. Try Hermida’s UNIMOS for a nice silicon flavor of the Dover Drive also, just my 2 cents.
I bought a older 3 knob Driver modded by Frommel with bias knob. I run it with 18v pwr and have an older RCA 12ax7 tube in it. It's on my board and can get buzzy at times. I shut it down either with hitting the tuner or just kill it before end of song. Don't keep the gain very high for this reason. But best fuzz sound for me. Also have a newer 5 knob Tube Driver but so big to put on board. It too is fuzzy,buzzy with too much gain. Great sweet sound using the bias knob though.
@@weslikestoplayguitar i had to grind one of the plug ends so i could reverse polarity . works for me. also it should be the first peddle in your chain
@@weslikestoplayguitar The hum is caused by the proximity of the internal toroidal transformer to the valve heater pin. Converting the Tube Driver to operate on an external 12vAC source (such as the Voodoolab AC) will remove the hum. Better yet, convert it to DC with the mod that Massimo at M-Tech Audio offers
![Why Use A Valve Overdrive Pedal? [Tube-y Or Not Tube-y, That Is The Question]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/b7UyIqSZLlI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Why Use A Valve Overdrive Pedal? [Tube-y Or Not Tube-y, That Is The Question]](/img/tr.png)
HI everyone. BK BUTLER here. Just want to sincerely thank all the loyal users out there. Greatly appreciate the pro users also: David Gilmour, EJ, Billy F Gibbons, Joe Satriani and Bonamassa, etc., etc. I'm always hearing of pros using Tube Driver I wasn't aware of!
Just a comment about noise or buzz. The older pedals had the IN and OUT jacks electrically connected to the case and a 2-wire AC cord. This can cause (or in other situations) eliminate ground loop hums, etc. The current (and electrically compliant to required safety codes) production have a 3 wire AC cord with the standard 3 prong AC plug. The current chassis case is isolated from the IN / OUT jacks. Depending on the amp (or other device) the Tube Driver is plugged into, a ground loop hum can (or generally not) exist. Sometimes a 3rd prong AC plug ground eliminator can be tried, etc. But honestly I seldom get any comments from players and especially not from the pros. (Their techs understand grounding issues) Also, the Tube Driver is quite sensitive to the GAIN of the tube installed. Tube Drivers are more sensitive to the tube installed than typical tube amps. I'm sure that if I were personally able to compare any 2 pedals in real-time, I could easily eliminate any buzz or hum in either of them. The electrical design remains correct, but wiring AC connected devices and amps in combination with differing house ground wire connections can cause an issue from time to time.
Anyone with an issue can contact me for advice: bk@butleraudio.com
I answer all emails.
Again, THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT and ENJOY the TONE!!
Thanks for the comment. My videos, and often my personal conversations don't always convey the message I intend so I hope this wasn't one of those cases. The BK butler tube driver is great. It is one of my all time favorite pedals and lives on my board for any gig I've ever played. Not having a guitar tech and being only a hobbyist guitar tech myself, I never was able to solve the buzzing issues on the three pedals I've purchased over the years. When I decided to make a video about it, I never thought it would reach even a fraction of the viewers that it did, but I'm glad it did and hope others have made a purchase as a result.
Late last year I sent my unites to a guy in Italy who was a recommendation of Pete Cornish, and had them modded to use 18v DC power instead. To my ear, there is very little difference in the tone and responsiveness of the pedal and it is now 100% buzz free. Super clean, and great sounding!
I have two with the bias dail one with the 12AX7 and the other with the Gilmore tube. Both have no hum on my rigs. Best investment I have made so far by a country mile.
That BUZZ is actually what gets Eric his Royalty on the pedal :) Use a EJ Fuzz into a TS-10, the gain on fuzz is FULL up , 65% on the TS-10, n its relatively VERY quiet BOTH in operation thru clean channel of my 80s Dble build..
****2023 Update**** I had both of my tube drivers modded by a guy in Italy (sorry folks, mine were the last two he'll ever do) and I'm happy to say these are now completely buzz free and sound amazing.
Nice job, the demo was great to listen to.
I’ve been looking at tube driver vids because I recently got one and waiting for it to get here, have to say I thought your vid was one of better ones on YT nice
Hey man ! Quick thought about 2:20 when you talk about impedance. A good pedal is well designed when the input impedance is high, and the output impedance is low, and the perfect signal chain would be solely composed of pedals like this. If the input impedance is too low, it sucks your tone and removes the treble, unless you have a buffer before it. If the output impedance if high, it will attenuate your signal level. Some "badly designed" pedals are really good sounding though, like a Fuzz Face or a Tonebender, but that's still not good stricly from an engineering point of view. The BK Butler Tube Driver seems to have a high output impedance, and the impedance actually depends on the output volume pot AND the tone stack, which will indeed make it more interactive with other pedals, sometimes in a bad way. Hope that helps a bit ! :)
What can be done about it to make it not buzz and sound good with other pedals too?
Got one in 96', at Samuel's Music in Effingham, Illinois. Nothing could touch it. It's so incredibly powerful and lush. It's very dynamic.
Does it buzz real bad like how he is showing this one?
Too much echo and reverb on the demo to hear the effect between dry and wet - sorry.
Love me some B.K. Butler tube designs... TubeWorks MosValve Combos never need a drive or distortion pedal. Just some great tone.
I will have had mine for a year this Christmas. I bought it new. I love this pedal. It’s simply the purest overdrive out there. And it’s so versatile between tasteful crunch, boost, or distortion that I’m going to buy another one. But it has its quirks. You’ll read that this pedal can be picky ab other pedals it is used with. I used to love having my delay in front of my overdrives, but that was a no-no for the tube driver. Once i made the change, it was tone heaven. You may have to make it happy, which will put some people off, but I’m so glad i made it work
So did they both buzz real bad or just the one with the 5th knob the bias knob? Surely there is an easy fix right? How could anyone use it if it buzzed like that all the time? Why would those major players use it if it buzzed real bad and was a poor design? Surely there must be more to this story.. tell us what the deal is.
Surely.
Amazing and tasteful playing ! Could you please share the amp settings ? Thank you !
It's a pair of vibrolux reverb reissues in stereo. Channel 1 on the "custom" side of the amps. Volume 5, treble 4, bass 5.
have a 2017 with the bias, dont have any noise issues. i'm also using single coil pickups. (suhr ML's)
I run a boss HM-2 into tube driver into a 50w plexi sim w/greenbacks and the crispness the hm-2 really removes a lot of the squishiness and keeps the thick saturation really makes the tone awesome and touch sensitivity is great, can play ultra fast cleanly with little effort, just gotta experiment with different pedals in front of after and see what happens.
3:00 I am in love with that tone
Enjoyed the demo…great playing!
Awesomeness!
I’m a new sub.
I got my 1st BK Butler TD in ‘87.
I just got another last year.
Methinks BK isn’t using the good ‘oL original Groove Tubes, they were bought out in the mid 90s, if I recall ok.
I traded a hopped up JCM800 for a Real Tube TubeWorks 12” 100w combo in ‘91;
just settled it happily.
BK reduced the plate volts to the preamp tubes, Groove Tubes again, & that gives the TubeWorks amps that chewy, juicy preamp sag.
It’s only 1 tube in the TubeWorks stool boxes, so they’re thin by comparison to the amps.
Wes, you sounded great! 👏
Have a good one!
Like the style and phrasing of your playing 🙂
The problem isn't exactly the proximity of the power transformer, but the half cycle rectification and the puny filter capacitors in the power supply. The lower the voltage, the higher capacitance must be those capacitors.
Per your video, I ordered a 97 model. Quite simply, it is the best overdrive I’ve ever heard from my Reeves Custom 50. With a compressor it does spot on Gilmour. With humbuckers I can get Angus to Billy Gibbons. Really nice chirp to the pick attack and very defined. I don’t like it as much with my fender amps. It still sounds good, but it really melds well with the Reeves, maybe it’s the EL34s?. BK Butler himself has some of the brand new ones for sale on Reverb and I just bought one to test side by side with the older model. I asked him about the noise issues and he said he’s now using a hum bucking toroid transformer. I’ll report back.
Yep the brand new one sounds even better than the old one. Noise level is the same, no louder than any other drive pedal I own, but more transparent than the older model. Might be that the tube is brand new. I sold the old one.
and is it quieter?
I get the Eric Johnson tone with a Jetter GS68 and a booster or a Jetter Gain Stage Black. For Davey G. BK Butler tones, I go with the Maxon ROD-880 or 881, a RAT, and a Muff in various stacking combination.
The Maxon pedals are based on the OG Ibanez Tube King and are a lot friendlier than these newer BKs. The 881 has the Hi-Fi mod. No buzz!
That's a great tone you had going on with the 2006 BK.
Great tones! I have three; two have been in my Floyd rig (I have been doing a touring Floyd act for 18 years now) for a long time but to be honest I don’t use them much live because they break pretty often on the road…. Every once in a while they sound incredible though. I haven’t figured out how to be consistent with them yet I’m afraid :)
tasteful playing, thank you
I bought mine around 1986...it's almost unused to this day...upstairs in a closet.
At 3:22 is there really no chorus in that signal chain? I hear some definite phase fluidity but neither the description nor on-screen chain list it 🤔
I don’t believe so. There have been some phasing on the mics or in the delay I used on the DAW
Wes Paul Unoccupied do you hear what I mean though? Sounds like a ce2 with the midrange focus and all 🧐
Mr. Spock maybe I did have the CE-2 on.
Wes Paul Unoccupied either way, nice vid and playing 👍🏻
@@MrSpock I thought it was a flanger lol
230V here and no buzz. I've had 2, first i bought 2008 (w/ bias) and second around 2018 with no bias and have been wondering why some have noise issues. Unique sounding pedal, does low gain, cream-era clapton crunch to silver jubilee-like highgain. Everyone has to have one. I dont much use mine but it's good to have one available.
Can I have it?
They sound great in a few videos and crap in loads, so i think I know that other pedals should be sufficient.... i got tu get off the "watch glowing video then keep buying" conveyer
You just saved me $314. I was checking reviews before I hit send. So I j.g ave to find a pre 07 for it to be good?
I prefer the earlier versions for sure. I've owned two 2016 ish models and both buzz quite badly.
Hi Toney.....glad I came across same vid.....gotta be pre 2007 without the bias for sure......fantastic sounds via that strat.....
Depends how you use it, mines dead quiet and the absolute best overdrive ive ever played.
I use mine as an overdrive pedal, not something to push an amp on the edge of breakup, to me thats what the tube screamers are for
Great video! Just ordered mine! How do you think it will work with a boss katana 50??
I haven't played a Katana but I owned a Roland Blues cube and thought it sounded great. Here's a vid of that amp with this pedal live ruclips.net/video/xPJgJaub2O0/видео.html
Wes Paul Unoccupied it did sound great indeed! However it’s a tube amp (if I’m not wrong) as opposed to the boss katana! Thank you tho
@@majd.z Nope the Roland Blues cube is a SS amp. It has these "tone capsules" but they're not tubes, they're just like a hardware equivalent of a digital plugin.
Wes Paul Unoccupied oh my mistake then! Thank you so much! You got a new follower!
Subscriber *
Ugh.. you’re so right. So if there is a Bias Knob its a 2016+ ?
More or less. I think they started making the bias knob versions earlier than that though.
@@weslikestoplayguitar MUCH earlier...see comments above
No, you’ve been able to order the bias knob since at least 06.
You deserve many more views And likes
Ok this is going to sound strange but as its been my main stage tone for many years heres my theory with the 5 dial anyway.
Its not actually a tube driver!
If you think of it as more of a stand alone over drive pedal and not a boost, it will begin to make sense.
By that i mean it ALL depends where your amp gain is.
These things sing with very little gain on the amp, so driving the power section and not the pre amp section is where it comes alive!
In a sense, adding more colour to a loud cleanish tone.
The bias is 9 oclock all day and not much else, volume up to 2 to 4 oclock to get unity, drive on about 9 oclock.
And yes it works with other pedals in this manner, especially an ibanez ts9 before it, pushing its tube.
I get a massively wide crunchy but smooth tone i havent been able to match yet.
And buy limiting the amps gain, i get very little noise.
I've always found mine took pedals well, but it was 4 knob, 96'. Brand new, and it made full grown dudes hate me when I broke it out of the pedal bag! 375 new, then. VERY Powerful. Can dominate whatever stands across from it by not trying, its a touch and go pedal, not a balls to walls type. You can, but you better get a noise reducer, a noise gate, a compressor. The whole 9. It is pretty awesome sounding, though, live. Raw, untouchable full distortion worked for alternative like Alice in Chains very well.
@@caiusmadison2996 couldnt agree more, its very marshally, i use it for lots of pearljam, and most other alternative covers.
Me personally, i dont have any problems with noise
I have 2 of them a newer 5 knob version and on my board is a older 3 knob with a Fromel bias knob modded Tube Driver that I'm using with 18v pwr and a old 12AT tube. It's not real high gain but stacked with my Meat and 3 modded SoulFood and/or Alchemy modded Blues Driver, I pretty much got a lot of dirt sonic area covered.
@@sparkyguitar0058 yeah they do cover a very wide sonic range don't they
Thank you ! your videos are really helpful!
I appreciated your video - nicely done and informative - but if I understand you correctly you are saying that the "bias knob"- fifth knob addition - only appeared in 2016 and later. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding but that is absolutely incorrect. I think Eric Johnson himself had BK add the first bias knob ages ago. I bought mine probably 15 or 20 years ago, and it was used.
Again apologies if I'm mistaken - if not, it's really not that hard to reach out to them via the website to confirm details of this sort historically they've always been really responsive.
So had occasion to send BK an email on an unrelated note yesterday (one of the reasons I found this video) and asked about this while I was at it. He began making the Tube Driver again in 2011 and has offered the fifth bias knob since then. So clearly I was off on the purchase date on my end (which surprised me)
Said the original knob was added to EJ's pedal(s) back in 1986
Hope that is helpful - BTW love your playing on the video.
What's this strat that you are playing?
It's a frankenstrat of sorts. It's a 1991 Japanese body with a neck that came from somewhere else. Pickups are Seymour Duncan SL1 and SL5
I just bought the one with no bias knob and waiting here in Buenos Aires, then will get rid of the boss'
does eric johnson use the old or newer one
Pretty sure he has a newer one since the bias knob was a custom addition by BK at Eric's request.
Good to note-$250-300 with bias, old one w/o $150-200.
Do These 2 Pedals Kill Each Other?!!
nice sound, .personally I would never pair a Boss CS2 with a Butler Tube Driver, to my ear and hands these are 2 pedals are incompatible.in fact they are designed very differently, one has the typical 80's circuit, with an Op-Amp at the "center stage" (lots of mids, closed with a big and stiff attack), the Butler instead is a Tube, with a lot of dynamics, very open in tone, elastic in the attack and fresh in the sound. these 2 pedals kill each other!?..!!
The compressor definitely does not work against the tube driver. Quite the opposite. It might, if you were to put the CS-2 after the tube driver, but you wouldn't want to do that. The compressor goes in the front of your signal chain, before anything else. That basically gives your direct guitar signal a tube-like saturation feel. And that is fed into all your pedals and essential amplified in different ways. When putting the CS-2 in front of the Tube Driver the TD screams.
awesome jam
Thanks!
The pedals are good, but his rack gear was WAY ahead of its time. I use the 922 and it’s the best $100 I ever spent.
Like#233 and Subscribed... Thx 4 Ur Video :)
Oh the pentatonic..
Hum sounds like a ground loop issue.
The Dover Drive does that sound
Kind of, I feel like it nails the Dumble/dirty rhythm with a fuzz on top. Of course need to buy an actual Tube Driver to tell the difference. Try Hermida’s UNIMOS for a nice silicon flavor of the Dover Drive also, just my 2 cents.
No, i have a hermida Dover drive, he isnt This sounds.
Hermidas sounds like a dark overdrive.
Very different. And no two Dovers are the same.
did you send yours to massimo mantovani for a mod?
tunaXonXtoast I want to but I’m waiting for this virus to die down because shipping to Italy is going to be impossible
@@weslikestoplayguitar same here
I bought a older 3 knob Driver modded by Frommel with bias knob. I run it with 18v pwr and have an older RCA 12ax7 tube in it. It's on my board and can get buzzy at times. I shut it down either with hitting the tuner or just kill it before end of song. Don't keep the gain very high for this reason. But best fuzz sound for me. Also have a newer 5 knob Tube Driver but so big to put on board. It too is fuzzy,buzzy with too much gain. Great sweet sound using the bias knob though.
I like you.
To clear the hum Use a cheater plug to float ground and or reverse polarity of the plug
I've tried a cheater plug, hum eliminator, both at the same time...Nothing seems to kill the hum on that thing.
@@weslikestoplayguitar i had to grind one of the plug ends so i could reverse polarity . works for me. also it should be the first peddle in your chain
@@weslikestoplayguitar The hum is caused by the proximity of the internal toroidal transformer to the valve heater pin. Converting the Tube Driver to operate on an external 12vAC source (such as the Voodoolab AC) will remove the hum. Better yet, convert it to DC with the mod that Massimo at M-Tech Audio offers
Kid ray
That bias knob sucks.
The nightrearveiw