this is one of my over the top efforts to prove that a turret board Tube Screamer would sound bollocks all different to a normal one - at the time Ibanez had just released a turret board version of the tube screamer at an extremely inflated cost - so I took one apart and copied it and as I suspected, it sounded no different - still, audiowank aside (and I'll include some of the COMICAL sales shit at the bottom) - turret board construction is fun so here you go.
there are a few confusing abbreviations I have used (for some reason) so I will try and clear it up best I can.
(VR) is Voltage Reference - these are supposed to be connected to each other
where you see a number in brackets eg (1) this denotes that it should be connected to the same number at any other points on the board.
V1 V2 V3 - refers to the Volume Potentiometer
T1 T2 T3 - refers to the Tone Potentiometer
D2 D3 - refers to the Drive (gain) Potentiometer
The Ibanez TS808HDW Hand Wired has a Select 4558D IC Chip - yeah so does mine, I picked it up out of the little draw, the hard decision came when I was trying to choose between that one and another one with a slightly bent leg
This one is hilarious...
the incomparable overdrive pedal thats been described as "the Holy Grail of Tube screamers." Our 2004 TS808 reissue features the same famous standout square footswitch of the original and the even more famous warm tones of the JRC4558 chip used in most of the original TS808s. Ignore any over-the-counter lookalikes. If your tone is suffering from a lack of real warmth, the TS808 is the real, non-generic prescription.
and this..
The TS9DX Turbo Tube Screamer features the slightly warmer JRC4558D IC found in most of the old TS808
they keep talking about the IC being "warm" I had a JRC4558 IC that was warm, in fact it was hot, but that was mainly because I was putting 2000 volts through it. it also achieved the greatest transparency I've ever known from an op-amp, you could see through the hole that was blown through it.
the simple fact is that in this kind of device the op-amp you use is going to make sod all difference unless say the op-amp has a drastically different gain characteristic or output current. this is one of those traps for idiots who go to eBay to buy a NOS JRC4558 for £30 a go! shit, I bought 4558's when I couldn't afford more reliable ones!
the RC4580s are good ICs for real audio as it was designed for audio applications - with quite a high gain bandwidth of 12MHz and around 50mA of output current - if I were going to spend £30 I would just buy a box of 4580s or get them for free by taking apart literately anything that has audio involved with it - old DVD player etc.
If it must be a tubescreamer then please anyone who may read this save yourself alot by going for Maxon's OD808. If you are after just a really good overdrive pedal to hit your valve amp's front-end then for even less money get yourself a Digitech 'Hardwire series' CM2 'Tube overdrive' if you like what a tubescreamer sounds like but would like far more flexability. For a thicker low-mid range an MXR ZW44 Zakk Wlyde signature Overdrive is a really sound buy, Again can be had for not very much money. Last but by no means least - If you're on a really tight budget then you simply can not go wrong with Boss's SD-2 'Super Overdrive' which you can have for less than any of the others mentioned and a slightly modified SD-1 (or SD-2, Can not be certain off the top of my head) is all the ZW44 signature overdrive pedal is (Or of course you could build your own). Did I mention that I quite like overdrive pedals? haha
ReplyDeleteHi Paul,
ReplyDeleteThe layout is a bit out, the output should be taken from the junction of C11 and R13. Where you show 'OUT' is the end of R13 which should be connected to ground. On the LHS board R10 below IC1 should be R16, it is still 10K ohms, but R10 is shown correctly on the LHS strip below C7. Thanks for posting though.
I guess a big difference between this and the normal version are the lack of input and output buffers here. They are sometimes cited (in other pedals) as 'tone sucking'. In this case (the original TS808) similar complaints do not seem to have been made.