tubescreamer jrc chip

[aramism]

i was talking to andy once online and he was telling me he uses the ts9 on some of the latter albums. i wanted to get a ts9 anyway, i was contemplating the maxon 808 or the ts8 but i figured if the man himself said a modded ts9 is better then what the hey...



so anyway i ordered a ts9 stock but he told me to get the jrc chip and mod it. what is the exact chip. there are several ones, he had mentioned to me having the picture of texas state on it and i saw on at the time on ebay put i typed in 'jrc chip' in ebay and got nothing with texas. would anyone happen to know which chip it is, they are all cheap i believe. but whatever the price, i wanna get "the" chip for "the" mod that helps make the tubescreamer such a hot commodity to put in front of all tube amps...


its mainly for metal but ive heard some good rock stuff with a pedal in front to give a nice signal boost.

 

[JBroll]

JRC4558D. There's also a JRC4558DD, which doesn't have a nicer rack (like the name might suggest) but, if I'm not mistaken, has lower noise due to higher shielding. This isn't going to be a noisy fucker, though, so don't worry about the difference - get whatever is cheaper.

Honestly, most Tube Screamers these days (unlike before, when there were some questionable things done for a sale) already have 4558 chips. Some will have slightly different names, but the design is what we're after. A while back, different chips were experimented with... and a lot of them fucking sucked. Some were better, inevitably, but a whole 'New Coke' clusterfuck went on when people thought that this guy and that guy were trying to ruin their tone with inferior, non-vintage horseradish, and the 4558 came back.

The difference between a 9 and an 808 is precisely two fucking resistors. Get the cheaper of the two, and fix it if you need to try the other side of the fence. Hell, shoot me a PM and I'll draw you up a little diagram for making a switch that goes between 9 and 808 specs. The $40 Ibanez TS-7 is fucking ideal - half the price of the other ones, same circuit - period - as the TS9, and great for modding if you want to try new shit.

Honestly... the 4558 fucking sucks. It wasn't chosen for its tone. It was chosen because it was insanely cheap and easy to work with. There are plenty of other chips you could try, and I'm fucking positive there's another one that you'll like better. Pull the current op amp out of its place, install a socket (these can be bought at Radio Shack - or whatever the European equivalent is, if you're of that persuasion), and try new things. If the current op amp says anything like RC4558 or JRC4558, you've already got the 'mojo' chip, so don't fuck with it if that's all you want, but I would strongly recommend against it because the 4558 is the op-amp equivalent of Bud Light. Fuck that. Your call, but don't forget that you have options.

I'm taking questions of every kind in the 'TS Questions' thread now on the main page, so if you have any more questions I'd really appreciate it if you asked over there so I have fewer threads to check. I'll be putting useful stuff in the FAQ that I'm working on.

EDIT: I just popped open a stock TS-7 as well as my usual victim and found that they both had JRC 4558D chips. You're not too likely to find other things, so don't worry about it too much. END EDIT

EDIT TWO: I'm pulling my list of 'naughty' and 'nice' chips, and if you're interested you could try the OP275 and LM833 with. Also, the difference between a JRC4558D and an RC4558D is where it's made. Japanese and American. Betcha can't guess which one... wait, you can spell 'I', so you can probably pull it off. END EDIT TWO

Jeff