TUBESCREAMER Shoot-out!

Ermz

¯\(°_o)/¯
Apr 5, 2002
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Melbourne, Australia
www.myspace.com
Ahoy folks,

So I've spent the last two days with a friend, building tubescreamers on end with no time to lift our heads.

Our original tubescreamer was the classic vanilla design with all the traditional parts. Due to a fiesty PSU mishap, the JRC4558D chip intended to go in this one was fried and it ended up with the RC4558P (which some folks prefer) going in.

The end sound is classic... almost cliche. It has that fantastic warm mid-bump, fuzzy top and bass-cut.

Our second design, which I've dubbed the 'Ermzcreamer', had a few mods done to it, which I felt looked good on paper. Essentially it has enhanced ability to clean up at low-gain settings, a different frequency range for the 'tone' knob, improved 'fidelity' & a different capacitor at some point in the chain.

So without further ado, here are the clips:

http://drop.io/moonlapse/media

The versions:

Clean: No TS
Bog-RC455P: Original TS /w RC455P chip.
Ermz-RC455P: Ermzcreamer /w RC455P chip
Ermz-JRC455D: Ermzcreamer /w JRC455D chip

I recommend downloading them over streaming as when you stream you get a compressed mp3 vs a wave file.

(please excuse the sloppy playing)

Settings on all TS clips were:

Drive: 9 o'clock
Tone: 12 o'clock
Level: 3 o'clock

Note that on the 'Ermzcreamer' there is a mod that subtracts how much gain there is at lower levels, so at identical settings it may sound cleaner than the other, simply because there's less overall distortion.

This shoot-out will keep growing as we built more units with slight variations, and we both settle on our favorite builds. The next batch may experiment a bit in asymmetrical clipping, using different diodes, some mid-cut mods, possibly even different ICs etc.

The gear chain for this was a very simple:

Schecter Hellraiser C7 (EMG 707) > (tubescreamer) > Digidesign Mbox 2 Mini > Wagner Sharp Mk 2 > Revalver MkII (running poidaobi's ENGL V30 cab impulses only).

No post-processing of any kind, and no real in-depth tweaking was done to the tone.

Hope you guys enjoy, and remember, this shoot-out will keep growing as we build more.

Cheers!
 
Yours have noticeably less muddyness compared to the original. I couldn't really decipher a difference between both of the ermz, though.

Lookin' forward to hear more!
 
Let me know if you'd like a few more mod ideas or info on where to get better chips... and when you get a few more could we post them in my massive TS thread of doom?

Jeff