Wondering if anyone knows anything about DOD's 250 overdrive preamp and how it stacks up to the Ibanez or Maxon's line of overdrive. I was gonna buy a new tube screamer for clean boosting my mesa and i remembered i allready had the DOD. I read somewhere that it is similar to the Maxon osd-9
Tube Screamer FAQ Version 1
- Thread starter JBroll
- Start date
I'd go TS. Yngwie Malmsteen uses a somewhat customized 250 for his rig, but that's the only user I know of - the 250 is fun but I don't believe it works quite as well.
EDIT: For more on the 250, check out http://www.rabbathrecordings.com/DOD250.htm - it's readable and explains what things do and what can be changed.
The reason why I'd go for a TS instead of a 250 (and, if the 250 is in fact like the OSD-9, the OSD-9) is that you won't have to manually reshape the frequency response (so that you get the mid hump we really want), move the diodes from the end of the circuit (where they usually reside and where they won't work as well to our ends) to the feedback loop of the op-amp and add a 'smoothing' capacitor, optimize much for noise (the LM741 typically used in the 250 is like a blender full of paperclips compared to the nicer chips out there, especially as they're used here), or add more controls (unless you really hate knobs)... by all means, try the 250, but I'd consider it to be more of an additional gain stage than a full-on 'conditioner' like the TS.
To make that last bit clearer, I'd essentially separate the TS and the 250 by saying that the 250 is an 'overdrive' pedal while the TS is an 'overdriver' pedal... by that I mean that the 250 purposefully distorts for the sake of *distorting* and the TS' primary purpose (when it was used back before gain knobs on amps did dick) was to shape the tone going into an amp so that the amp's characteristics would be brought out more. Sadly, you'll walk into a Guitar Center and hear about how the TS has 'great tube tone'... which is fine, I suppose, if your ideal 'tube tone' is a pocket radio under a pillow, but it really exists to slam the fuck out of the amplifier and make it work harder. The 250 to my ears isn't as smooth and the EQ response isn't what we're after - it just clips and gets out of the way. If you want a TS, there's really no substitute for a TS - if you don't, the 250 is something to try.
Jeff
EDIT: For more on the 250, check out http://www.rabbathrecordings.com/DOD250.htm - it's readable and explains what things do and what can be changed.
The reason why I'd go for a TS instead of a 250 (and, if the 250 is in fact like the OSD-9, the OSD-9) is that you won't have to manually reshape the frequency response (so that you get the mid hump we really want), move the diodes from the end of the circuit (where they usually reside and where they won't work as well to our ends) to the feedback loop of the op-amp and add a 'smoothing' capacitor, optimize much for noise (the LM741 typically used in the 250 is like a blender full of paperclips compared to the nicer chips out there, especially as they're used here), or add more controls (unless you really hate knobs)... by all means, try the 250, but I'd consider it to be more of an additional gain stage than a full-on 'conditioner' like the TS.
To make that last bit clearer, I'd essentially separate the TS and the 250 by saying that the 250 is an 'overdrive' pedal while the TS is an 'overdriver' pedal... by that I mean that the 250 purposefully distorts for the sake of *distorting* and the TS' primary purpose (when it was used back before gain knobs on amps did dick) was to shape the tone going into an amp so that the amp's characteristics would be brought out more. Sadly, you'll walk into a Guitar Center and hear about how the TS has 'great tube tone'... which is fine, I suppose, if your ideal 'tube tone' is a pocket radio under a pillow, but it really exists to slam the fuck out of the amplifier and make it work harder. The 250 to my ears isn't as smooth and the EQ response isn't what we're after - it just clips and gets out of the way. If you want a TS, there's really no substitute for a TS - if you don't, the 250 is something to try.
Jeff
So apparently I've missed a few other posts... whoops. Let me know if I missed one of yours and I'll try to fix that, I must have missed some notifications over the last few months.
It is pretty shallow - it only really affects a small range in the upper mids and doesn't even do much there. Don't be too surprised, I rarely touch it myself... the biggest thing I notice seems to be in my pick attack with very specific picks on one single guitar, so I don't care a whole lot about where that is - the biggest things I worry about are having the gain zeroed (sometimes I even drop the volume going into the TS so that it doesn't clip audibly, which lightens the compression and obviously results in less clipping) and the level set such that the attack with and without the pedal sound identical.
That's about right... long story short, people fall easily for louder things, so when you have the bulk of these mods that claim to 'smooth out the mid hump' and add more gain you might as well have just bought a proper fucking distortion pedal from the start and not something designed solely to condition the tone for your amp. You don't need massive amounts of bass in the *input* to get a thick sound in the output, and if the TS and your amp don't have enough gain together you're probably using the wrong equipment for your sound.
It's hilarious to see high-schoolers using things like the TS as their primary distortion and claiming that it gives them SRV's tone... I'm sure he'd have loved to know that custom Dumble amps weren't necessary as long as a cheap vomit-green pedal was around, but the only option is to call bullshit there.
Somehow I'm not surprised that three or four models of the same poor fucking chip design didn't sound much different.
On top of that, nothing about that screams 'scientific' in any way at all and the sample was too damned small and limited; I'm as hesitant to use it in support of my assertion that worrying about which 4558 is in use is utter wank as I am to take it against my recommendation of another chip like the 2134 - in the biggest category we'll notice, *noise*, other chips can easily smoke the 4558. While noise may not have seemed like a particularly big issue with mild overdrive in a fairly controlled situation, it can be a much bigger problem when you're shoving it in front of something as gain-crazy as the shit metal guitarists pull off.
Jeff
It is pretty shallow - it only really affects a small range in the upper mids and doesn't even do much there. Don't be too surprised, I rarely touch it myself... the biggest thing I notice seems to be in my pick attack with very specific picks on one single guitar, so I don't care a whole lot about where that is - the biggest things I worry about are having the gain zeroed (sometimes I even drop the volume going into the TS so that it doesn't clip audibly, which lightens the compression and obviously results in less clipping) and the level set such that the attack with and without the pedal sound identical.
That's about right... long story short, people fall easily for louder things, so when you have the bulk of these mods that claim to 'smooth out the mid hump' and add more gain you might as well have just bought a proper fucking distortion pedal from the start and not something designed solely to condition the tone for your amp. You don't need massive amounts of bass in the *input* to get a thick sound in the output, and if the TS and your amp don't have enough gain together you're probably using the wrong equipment for your sound.
It's hilarious to see high-schoolers using things like the TS as their primary distortion and claiming that it gives them SRV's tone... I'm sure he'd have loved to know that custom Dumble amps weren't necessary as long as a cheap vomit-green pedal was around, but the only option is to call bullshit there.
Somehow I'm not surprised that three or four models of the same poor fucking chip design didn't sound much different.
On top of that, nothing about that screams 'scientific' in any way at all and the sample was too damned small and limited; I'm as hesitant to use it in support of my assertion that worrying about which 4558 is in use is utter wank as I am to take it against my recommendation of another chip like the 2134 - in the biggest category we'll notice, *noise*, other chips can easily smoke the 4558. While noise may not have seemed like a particularly big issue with mild overdrive in a fairly controlled situation, it can be a much bigger problem when you're shoving it in front of something as gain-crazy as the shit metal guitarists pull off.
Jeff
yeah J-broll i think your right about it being more of an overdrive rather than an overdriver i noticed very little difference in the sound of my amp until i rolled up the gain on the DOD 250, and more gain is not really what i need. Based on your past posts it looks like you would say to even go for a TS7 being no different from the 808 or ts9. if so good news for me cause 40$ is definitely more manageable than 150$
I would definitely go for the TS7.
Anyone who has gotten anything out of this, please do me a favor and recommend TS7s wherever possible - the guitar electronics industry could use quite a bit more honesty, and this is one of the easiest places to start.
Jeff
Anyone who has gotten anything out of this, please do me a favor and recommend TS7s wherever possible - the guitar electronics industry could use quite a bit more honesty, and this is one of the easiest places to start.
Jeff
Another option... someone is selling a TS-9 for $45 in the Equipment section. Help a Sneapster out.
Jeff
Jeff
So i got my hands on a TS9 and im not really impressed it just seems to be adding more gain with no additional punch. All i can get it to do is make my gain sound more fizzy which sounds worse. This is with the gain on the pedal all the way down and the level all the way up. Also i cant hear it boosting my mids really either. Am i missing the point or am i expecting too much.
Found your problem.
First, make sure the TS9 isn't modded.
Second, set the gain so that there is no change in volume between 'pedal on' and 'pedal off' (on the *clean* channel!) so that you can judge the pedal on fair ground. TAKE CARE HERE. If you perceive more gain, there's a good chance you've turned your level too high.
Third, don't expect to hear much of a mid boost when the amp is on a dirty channel - you'll notice more focus and less flub, unless the pedal is fucked or your pickups already have an EQ curve that looks like a fucking barn viewed head-on. The mid boost should be significant on a clean channel, but after distortion (and the massive tone shaping that goes on in your fourteen fucktillion gain channels) it won't be as if your mid knob went from zero to ten in quite the same way.
If you could provide clips of some kind that would help, but let me know what that does.
Jeff
What's the best mod for the TS9? (already have one)
What resistors need to be changed to get it to sound like the vintage 808s?
What resistors need to be changed to get it to sound like the vintage 808s?
Both questions were answered earlier.
Unless you know what you want already, don't ask what the 'best mod' is - find something you want changed and figure out what will do that.
For the 808 specs... unless you can read resistor color codes it wouldn't do much good for me to tell you. http://www.tonepad.com/photoessay.asp?photoEssayID=9 is a good writeup.
Jeff
Unless you know what you want already, don't ask what the 'best mod' is - find something you want changed and figure out what will do that.
For the 808 specs... unless you can read resistor color codes it wouldn't do much good for me to tell you. http://www.tonepad.com/photoessay.asp?photoEssayID=9 is a good writeup.
Jeff
Is it really worth it at all? Majority of players definitely prefer the OD 808 over the TS9 for clean boosting.. or so it seems.
(Pardon the delay, I didn't get an email notification for that post.)
Lots of guitarists are wankers. Some things aren't explained by technical superiority - the fact that all sorts of other guitarists use that model is a big deal. I might seem a bit too cynical and harsh with this, but the fact that these same guitarists will (after saying that their ears are so great that they can identify one over the other with near-perfect accuracy) describe a TS as a 'clean boost' - when the TS completely fails to be clean in EQ or dynamic response in a very clear way - makes it incredibly hard for me to not think 'full of shit' here.
Many guitarists go with the most expensive pedal they can afford (as evidenced by $500 clones of the original TS pedals, with components dating back to the original manufacture) or whatever they see someone else using, since actually diving into details and schematics seems scary.
The simple fact of the matter is that you have an incredibly high chance of running into bigger variations due to component tolerances than schematic changes - and some guitarists' propensity towards taking a single short experience as divine truth doesn't help the related misunderstandings. It should not be surprising to compare two TS9s and two TS808s and perceive that the two TS9s sound more different than one of the TS9s and one of the TS808s - when the resistor labeled as '100kOhm' has as its actual reading some practically-random number between 80 and 120 kOhms, different pedals of the exact same make are all but guaranteed to change like a middle school choir's repertoire.
Jeff
Lots of guitarists are wankers. Some things aren't explained by technical superiority - the fact that all sorts of other guitarists use that model is a big deal. I might seem a bit too cynical and harsh with this, but the fact that these same guitarists will (after saying that their ears are so great that they can identify one over the other with near-perfect accuracy) describe a TS as a 'clean boost' - when the TS completely fails to be clean in EQ or dynamic response in a very clear way - makes it incredibly hard for me to not think 'full of shit' here.
Many guitarists go with the most expensive pedal they can afford (as evidenced by $500 clones of the original TS pedals, with components dating back to the original manufacture) or whatever they see someone else using, since actually diving into details and schematics seems scary.
The simple fact of the matter is that you have an incredibly high chance of running into bigger variations due to component tolerances than schematic changes - and some guitarists' propensity towards taking a single short experience as divine truth doesn't help the related misunderstandings. It should not be surprising to compare two TS9s and two TS808s and perceive that the two TS9s sound more different than one of the TS9s and one of the TS808s - when the resistor labeled as '100kOhm' has as its actual reading some practically-random number between 80 and 120 kOhms, different pedals of the exact same make are all but guaranteed to change like a middle school choir's repertoire.
Jeff
+1 to all Jeff's cynicism and mistrust of stupid easily-influenced guitarists who gobble up placebo like it's booze! 
I'm sure it gets tiring to a lot of people, which I don't particularly mean to do, but I mean it when I say that I'm only cynical and negative because bringing about change requires knowing what to change. I wouldn't be so damned negative all the time if I didn't want everything to be better, and hopefully posts like that one make up for harshing everyone's morning mellow all the bloody time...
Jeff
Jeff
For those curious to hear the effect a TS has when used properly (meaning, NOT AS A CLEAN BOOST, notice the amount of gain doesn't change between clips )...
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/...2-ch-dual-rec-new-interface-better-tonez.html
)...http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/...2-ch-dual-rec-new-interface-better-tonez.html
Hmm interesting post. So, hold on let me try and understand something here:
So, the TS9 isn't a true "clean boost" but we all know that, right? when certain (which are many) guitarists prefer to use the Maxon OD808 as a clean boost rather than the Reissue TS9 the differences they are hearing can be attributed to their anal tendencies? Or like someone else said falling for placebo?
Maybe what they hear isn't the clean boost but the certain characteristics that make up the sound when ATTEMPTING to clean boost a tubescreamer? Am I making sense here? haha.
There's A LOT of people that swear by the Maxon. I must attempt it for myself I guess to truly see if it's all hoopla and then decide if I want to mod my TS9
The TS is neither clean (since it clips and filters significantly) nor much of a boost (it really doesn't add a whole lot of gain to the picture), so when guitarists say that you have every reason to hold them very suspiciously.
Jeff
Jeff
I dunno if this has been posted here before (as it has been a while since a read the whole thread), but...
Moar mojo!
...however, if someone wants me to make them a TS clone for $500...
Moar mojo!
...however, if someone wants me to make them a TS clone for $500...
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