The fulltone obsessive compulsive drive is a very popular overdrive now on its fourth incarnation v4. It was the first distortion pedal to use a real tube, it was designed by a keyboard player brent butler, and it was made famous by eric johnson who used one straight into a marshall for his lead sound. Some used 4knob tube drivers marked chandler are not the original design by bk butler. A sample of the colorsound powerboost vs vintage colorsound overdriver vs colorsound overdriver, with a fender stratocaster custom shop 60 relic time machine, a vintage 72 hiwatt custom 100 head. Again, this is assuming that the circuits inside each of those 198687 tube drivers used in 1994 were the more common variant with the green backed pcb. A tube driver, or similar overdrive pedal, can be used as a light boost before or. This three transistor circuit was also used later in the 1976 colorsound jumbo tone bender.
They both got that powerful transparent tone with thundering lows and. I get preamp tubes in a preamp, but ive found it difficult to find a clear explanation of what the driver and input tubes are actually doing, and their relative importance to the sound of the amp. I typically like to keep each pedals volume around unity perhaps slightly higher on the tube screamer, with gain at about noon on the rat, and at about 9 or 10 oclock on the screamer. All other brand names mentioned in this website, are brand names of their respective. I am not referring to a volume boost, but rather a gain boost, or more accurately a blend of the gain and tone from the two different pedals. As with all good tube drives, it has the lovely compression and sag that we. Colorsound tonebender mark ii professional this is the classic, vintage colorsound tonebender mark ii professional. The original was used by david gilmour, jeff beck and.
Get the tone in your head hand made, high quality, point to point, tube amps, pedals, and studio units. The pedal was also an essential part of his tones on 2006 on an island album an tour. Colorsound power boost 18v effects pedal element14. Sola sound ltd tonebender mki hornby skewes zonk machine dam fz673 the sola sound tone bender mki was one of the first fuzz pedals available in the uk. Read about colorsound power boost 18v effects pedal on. A distortion pedal takes over as the main distortion. Will it work with my blues junior rola g1280 equipped and les paul. These pedals are completely hand made by the original manufacturer in. The secrets behind eric johnsons tone on cliffs of dover.
This is a listing for a vintage colorsound tone bender jumbo fuzz in 1970s wide case. The tube driver is a holy grail type pedal, but many people, especially younger players, have never heard of it. The overdriver is a bass and treble boostoverdrive pedal that works great with tube amps. This could be an issue if you stomp a pedal from a clean tone, but i always. The short plates reduce interelement capacitance for rf applications. Throbak overdrive boost effects pedals, colorsound power. It is not transparent and it has annoying frequency peaks. Stage name posted by guitarmakernyc in the sound hound lounge wednesday at 11. The top 50 stompboxes of all time50 years of footstompin.
The bd2 has a transaprent tube amplike tone, with a hint. For more than two decades, the tone bender as we know and love it today lay dormant and forgotten. There was a late70s colorsound tone bender distortion, which used an ic and clipping diodesthis is not a tone bender. Its really an addictive sound, and the tactile responsiveness is very satisfying as well. Colorsound tonebender mark ii professional general. Colorsound sola sound tonebender mkii professional the sola sound colorsound tonebender mkii professional is probably the second most famous fuzz box after the fuzz face. Running a tube screamer into a rat can yield a thick, harmonically delicious crunch when driven by the guitars bridge pickup, or a creamy, endlessly sustaining woman tone when the neck pickup is engaged. The crayon is a slightly more modern full range overdrive, similar to the bk butlerchandler tube driver and boss bd2, with lots of headroom and tube like compression and dynamics. I would put it on par with the ocd i think or around level 6. With a hiwatt or similar youd have to play insanely loud to get the amp to distort so david, beck etc would use the pedal for overdrive. Gilmour used a colorsound for a long time before the tube driver. Its great to be involved with yet another great british builder and especially stu who seems to know this circuit better than anyone on the planet.
Butler tube driver famously used by david gilmour, eric johnson, billy gibbons and joe satriani to name a few. Sometime in the early 1990s, the vox tone bender fuzz model v829 appeared, announcing itself as germanium charged. Cranking the gain and volume too high on either pedal will result in a farty, muddy tone that you probably wont find very pleasing. The colorsound power boost and tube driver are very.
Designed by gary hurst it was the british response to the american made gibson maestro fuzz tone fz1. The bk has a bit more presence and a generally more aggressive tone. There is no chandler tube driver never was a chandler tube driver. I would never include that pedal in gilmour rig, remove at once.
The colorsound powerboost was designed for loud tube stack and for taking them beyond tube break up. The top 10 bluesapproved overdrivedistortion pedals. They were designed to be an rf radio frequency tube. Colorsound power boost my favourite david gilmour tones.
On smaller amps it, and most of the clones, will sound a bit fizzy due to the bright silicon transistor and the overall bright tone of the pedal. Difference between colorsound overdriver and colorsound. I like to invest on a tube overdrive and for using a laney cub, do you think i can get good smooth tone out of bk butler tube driver assuming i can replace the tubes to au. With a twoyear waiting list, the analog man king of tone is one of the most soughtafter overdrive pedals, and for a very good reason. The only difference is that the 2200pf capacitor in the tone control section was changed to 2000pf. Colorsound diagrams, schematics and service manuals download for free. You were making a limited run of 6 this year, any plans to mass produce them in the future. My favorites are the sms earth drive, bd2, bk butler four knob tube drivers, and the colorsound overdriver. I mainly use the colorsound or throbak for clean boost and the tube driver for gain. Heart of the tube driver is a real handselected 12ax7 tube by bk butler himself.
Have you seen how much your original bk butler chandler tube driver units are getting on ebay. The hot tubes is a transparent overdrivebooster capable of producing those huge overdrive tones similar to the old colorsound power boost david gilmour used in the early and mid 70s. In about 1998, by public demand, colorsound recreated the original sounds of the sixties and seventies with this range of pedals. The prescription electronics yard box the prescription electronics yard box is a more recent take on the sola sound tonebender 3knob. The tube driver is more appropriate for what you are looking for used to own one wish i hadnt traded it a tube screamer is best suited to pushing the front end of a tube amp into a nice singing lead type overdrive think srv. The best reverb driver tubes telecaster guitar forum. This change doesnt really have any effect on the tone of the pedal, but it does help to prevent q3 from becoming saturated. Chandler tube driver or any clean boost will do level 10 drive 0.
Im very interested in building a colorsound overdriver from a layout i found on the internet. Part of the characteristic sound of the tone bender mk ii is the uneven bias. Tonewise, i would perhaps place the chandler somewhere between a tube screamer and a bk tube driver. The tube driver and tdx can be tricky to set up because its so much. Although the sound of this pedal is more akin to a big muff than an old tone bender, it is an excellent classic distortion box and is probably a bit more in your face than a standard big muff. There was a tone bender fuzz reissue made in the 1990s that used a version of this same simplified big muff circuit, but the case was marked treble and bass like the earlier version instead of tone. Smitty pedals makes a killer colorsound od and boost, the smittydriver. A boostoverdrive is used to add gain by pushing the preamp harder.
David had previously used other boosters, such as the colorsound power boost. The fifth change was to replace the 8k2 resistor on the emitter of q3 with a 20k trimpot so that the. The ocd differs from the tube screamer in that it retains a wider range of bass and higher frequencies, while the famous sound of the tube screamer midhump. Difference between colorsound overdriver and colorsound power boost. It seems strange, but if it sounds good, i dont question it. This circuit is nearly identical to the we had for sale here recently. The colorsound power boost and tube driver are very similar, which may be one of the reasons why david chose the tube driver. Colorsound overdriver clone project documentation plasma. By now youre probably all familiar with the power boost pedal i built, and the issue i had with motor boating sky im coming for you. Today i tried somethin new and used to boost my tonewicker muff with a hot tubes while rollin the tone pot of the ht almost to the treble side. Aug01 colorsound effects are longer be available in the usa, we do not sell them. A tube driver, or similar overdrive pedal, can be used as a light boost before or after a big muff in the signal chain to add gain and sustain or eq the big muff signal. I believe it uses three bc109 transistors, its amazing. The core of the pedal is a handselected 12ax7 tube which gives you a lovely sort of fuzzdrive sound than can sound amazingly smooth and textured in the hands of masters like david gilmour who still features 2 of these within his rig.
This overdrive tone is most likely what was heard on the pulse concert album and video recording from the final earls court concerts. While the tube driver type circuit is properly one level lower at around a level 5. It was the primary overdrive and distortion pedal for davids on an island tour. For cliffs of dover, he used his lead setup exclusively, which is dialed in to provide a sweet, sustaining tone with a smooth, nonpercussive attack resembling the sound of a bowed violin. On the other hand, i use the colorsound overdriver to color the tone of my big. Free colorsound diagrams, schematics, service manuals. David gilmour solo tone settings for time boost colorsound power boost. Options are to build it with pnp or npn germanium transistors or with npn silicon transistors. I have a tube multifx that kinda give me that but i dont like the frequency response on it. Driverinput tubes i need somebody to either explain or steer me to an explanation of the 12ax712at7 tube s purpose in my jolida jd502p power amp. Known the world over for creating the eric johnson violin tone and as one of two main pedals used by david gilmour.
Throbak has reproduced and improved the circuit of the original colorsound power boost guitar effects pedal also known by the name colorsound overdriver. If you investigate the colorsound and similar, you might have a look at the basic audio futureman and the black arts toneworks black forest overdrive. Williams audio power driver colorsound power boost. A brief overview of some modern alternatives to the classic and vintage colorsound power boost overdriver pedal. This studio rig was relatively simple, mainly employing a maestro ep3 echoplex, paul c. If you really want to audition 12at7s use a frequency generator and transducers that function above the range of human hearing. Again, this is assuming that the circuits inside each of those 198687 tube drivers used. Or, itcan be used as a clean boost by getting rid of some of the lows, tightening the remaining lows, adding a bit more lows and highs, and making the overall tone clearer.
Its a three transistor fuzz circuit that creates an unholy amount of gain and sustain. I have a colorsound power boost but didnt want to gig with it, so i went with. Ehx big muff and colorsound power boost tone tutorial youtube. You might need to roll down the treble for a bit smoother tone. Most people will use it as either a tone shaper on low gain settings or an allout fuzz near the top end of the gain range. Electro harmonix hot wax the ultimate dual overdrive for. Colorsound tone bender mk ii project documentation. There are the three variations of the mark ii professional. This is one of the widecase versions from the midseventies. With the ocds volume, tone and drive knobs you can dial in a range of drive from clean boost to high gain distortion. Colorsound powerboost vs vintage colorsound overdriver vs. History has been kind to it, though, and today a vintage colorsound. Its open and transparent tone is really the secret to be able to drive those old. The power boost is a transparent preamp designed to inderact with your pickups and tube amp.
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