TS-808 - do they actually *sell* for this price?

Professor_SourTone

TS pedals, with a midrange hump, are made for gooseing blackface amps. It's quite a particular thing. Also it's been said elsewhere that SRV turned the volume up and the distortion way down, so possibly you could get a similar effect with an EQ pedal.

The Super Tubescreamer, which really is quite rare, has a midrange control and two chips rather than one. But I think the prices are down on where they once where.

Voxman

@ICBM - yeah, he used the TS9 from 1982 but I had forgotten about the TS10 - although if I remember right SRV used that pedal only at the end of the 80's for high gain tones, rather than the way he used the TS808/TS9's. I love SRV's tone but I can't play with those thick strings (even dropped down a semi-tone) which was a real big part of his tone. It's also interesting how he used his amps as it's kind of backwards to the way most of use ours.  Normally' if you used a joint Fender/Marshall rig you'd typically use the Marshall for high gain and the Fenders for clean - SRV did it the other way round - Fenders for gain and the Marshalls for clean!  He had so many different rigs at different times inc a Dumble in later years - but whatever rig or effects he used, it still sounded like SRV!  Great player (very hendrix influenced who he loved), who went way before his time.  

ICBM

Professor_SourTone said:

TS pedals, with a midrange hump, are made for gooseing blackface amps. It's quite a particular thing. Also it's been said elsewhere that SRV turned the volume up and the distortion way down

Also not true. He used them with the distortion above halfway and the level around 10-11 o'clock - there's a photo somewhere. It's only more recently that people have started using overdrive pedals not as overdrive pedals .

Professor_SourTone said:

The Super Tubescreamer, which really is quite rare, has a midrange control and two chips rather than one. But I think the prices are down on where they once where.

Yes, I had one of those that I got cheap (£30 I think) from Crack Converter, and thought I would get a fortune for. No… £100, which isn't bad, but not as much as they were going for at one point. I think they went up when Skunk Anansie were big and fell again afterwards .

Panama_Jack666

Sell it and buy 24 Bad Monkey's with your winnings.

allicio

ICBM said:

allicio said:

Sell it, buy one of these and pocket the price of a pretty decent guitar!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41YfoJzac3L._SY300_.jpg

But the switches are wired wrong on those and there's no locking washers! Shabby!

robinbowes

If I actually want a Tubescreamer-style box I'll make my own

R.

ICBM

allicio said:

But the switches are wired wrong on those and there's no locking washers! Shabby!

That's true, but if an expensive pedal has the same faults, you might as well buy the cheaper one .

Professor_SourTone

Good point!

ICBM said:

Professor_SourTone said:

TS pedals, with a midrange hump, are made for gooseing blackface amps. It's quite a particular thing. Also it's been said elsewhere that SRV turned the volume up and the distortion way down

Also not true. He used them with the distortion above halfway and the level around 10-11 o'clock - there's a photo somewhere. It's only more recently that people have started using overdrive pedals not as overdrive pedals .

not_the_dj

This is the famous SRV pedal photo I know. Not sure if it's the same one @ICBM remembers seeing

http://www.effectsbay.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/stevie-ray-vaughan-pedal-board.jpg

allicio

ICBM;433685" said:

allicio said:But the switches are wired wrong on those and there's no locking washers!

Shabby!That's true, but if an expensive pedal has the same faults, you might as well buy the cheaper one .

Why the fuck do I bother!

ICBM

not_the_dj said:

This is the famous SRV pedal photo I know. Not sure if it's the same one @ICBM remembers seeing

Yes, that's one of them. It's hard to see the actual knobs but the level is marked at 10 o'clock with some black tape on the pedal body, and the distortion seems to have a Tele-type knob on it (presumably for foot control) with a red tape marker set to nearly full up.

There's another one too, with two TS-9s on it - I can't find it now, but both distortion knobs were set above halfway, one higher than the other, and both volumes below halfway. (Going from memory, but I remember it since it was the opposite of what the perceived wisdom says.)

Also this one with just a TS-10, where you can see the distortion control is just above halfway, pointing directly at the camera.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f117/twostring/SRV/Pedalboard.jpg

RichValentine

Yes they do.

I've got an '81 Tubescreamer and it is the one pedal I'll never sell. It sounds better to my ears than any other overdrive pedal I've tried.  How much of that is "placebo" effect I don't know, nor do I care. I love the way it sounds.

Overpriced? Maybe, have I played anything that comes close. Not at all.

Dave_Mc

Dave_Mc said:

I agree on the rarity thing, and it's unlikely the price will drop much- but you never know.

Just to clarify what I meant here- when I said "rarity", what I actually meant was "they're only going to get rarer". I dunno how many of them they originally made. ) But obviously the number of working originals is only going to decrease as time goes on.

shuikit said:

This has got me wondering.. So old 70/80s toys like Star Wars figures have gone up in value, one of the main reasons being adults who now have lots of money now but had no money as a kid to buy them so now they have lots of money and just have to own one. So then, presumably the prices will go back down once all the people who fit into this category dry up, there's no 'next generation' of buyer for them.

I wonder if a similar thing can be said for the type of person who wants to spend a lot of money on a ts808..?

That's an interesting point.

I'm not sure.

The other thing is, once things get value, they start to become valuable as an investment, and people who otherwise have no interest might buy them as an investment.

I doubt the TS808 is at that point yet, obviously, but it could happen. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, it's worth a lot because it's worth a lot, which makes more people buy them in the hope the price rises further. Kind of a (not so) elaborate ponzi scheme. Though I guess you could say a lot of assets are priced like that. )

ICBM said:

And a TS-10 at least at some point, there are photos.

Although the TS-10 is slightly different, there is no practical difference between the TS-808 and TS-9 - two resistors in the output section, which don't affect the tone. I had a TS-9 (original) which I fitted with a switch to swap it to the 808 values and it made no difference whatever. It's true that individual TS-808s and TS-9s don't always sound the same, but that will be due to component tolerances, so two 808s or two 9s can sound just as different.

What always makes me laugh are the Maxon versions. The sought-after one seems to be the OD808, rather than the OD9- yet the OD808 is actually a TS10. )

I got to try the two head to head several years ago (only at low volumes, and only into a clean JMI ac30)- and I have to admit, though there was very little in it, I thought the OD808 sounded very slightly sweeter. I dunno if that means I'm as prone to the hype as anyone else (at the time I just assumed, like most do, that the OD808 was a TS808), whether the TS10 actually sounds better than the 808 but the hype is all for the 808 because it's the original, or whether they pretty much sound identical and the differences I was hearing were just parts tolerances at play. )

PolarityMan

Panama_Jack666 said:

Sell it and buy 24 Bad Monkey's with your winnings.

Do they stack well then?

PolarityMan

ICBM said:

not_the_dj said:

This is the famous SRV pedal photo I know. Not sure if it's the same one @ICBM remembers seeing

Yes, that's one of them. It's hard to see the actual knobs but the level is marked at 10 o'clock with some black tape on the pedal body, and the distortion seems to have a Tele-type knob on it (presumably for foot control) with a red tape marker set to nearly full up.

There's another one too, with two TS-9s on it - I can't find it now, but both distortion knobs were set above halfway, one higher than the other, and both volumes below halfway. (Going from memory, but I remember it since it was the opposite of what the perceived wisdom says.)

Also this one with just a TS-10, where you can see the distortion control is just above halfway, pointing directly at the camera.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f117/twostring/SRV/Pedalboard.jpg

I thought the whole zero gain thing was a metal specific use of the TS, essentially using it as a filter rather than an overdive.

ICBM

It seems to have become the 'received wisdom' way to use them for most styles - using them as a nearly-clean boost to push the amp harder, rather than as an overdrive generator. Especially true of posh derivatives. (And some non-derivatives.)

Dave_Mc

^ I dunno. Most of the slightly tweaked boutique TS pedals normally seem to have features which make them work better as a standalone OD? Things like flatter mids, less of a bass cut etc. To me that makes them work less well as a boost.

I generally just use it as a boost. That's with a high gain amp, though. With a lower gain amp I'd probably use it more like an OD (or probably more like a bit of both).

ICBM

Dave_Mc said:

^ I dunno. Most of the slightly tweaked boutique TS pedals normally seem to have features which make them work better as a standalone OD? Things like flatter mids, less of a bass cut etc. To me that makes them work less well as a boost.

I wouldn't know, I never use them as a boost - only ever as actual overdrive into a clean amp, or as "more dirt" into an overdriven one. Which may explain why I am always so sceptical about posh TS derivatives… they still don't sound great into a clean amp, certainly not "amp like" as usually claimed, and into a dirty amp you lose any subtlety they might have. I've never actually heard one that sounds better than a TS-9 or a Boss SD-1 for that.

Dominic

Anything ,any single commodity is worth what somebody will pay for it - economics fact -nothing peculiar to music about that

 ..............as for music and tubescreamers or Klon Centaurs its quite ridiculous that hyperbole and mystique make people so irrational 

......if you add in a bit of snake oil and reverance to any legendary player that may have been an endorsee ( paid or not) and you have the perfect recipe for good old fashioned marketing inflating true value .

 Back on planet Earth and in the back of a social club bar with your drummer hard up against your left elbow and bassist with his cab facing slightly in the wrong direction neither the public nor the player would be able to tell the difference between any two remotely similar amps or pedals within the mix ...........sad but true .....in fact most audience wouldn't even know the sound difference between a guitar and a ukelele for that matter ..........maybe a bit different in the studio !

 A year ago Guitar did a blind testing of about 10 boutique amps played by experienced players from behind a screen and the results were very illuminating - there were a few bog standard ringers amongst them and if I remember correct most people chose the meat and potatoes hot rod deluxe as thebest sounding "boutique " amp !!

robinbowes

^^ Wisdom - right there!