Tube Works Tube Driver Amp Review
I saw that very one while I was researching the purchase of another just like it. I paid too much for mine (it hasn't arrived yet), but it's rare to find one that's already set up for 240V. Stupid Aussie electricity.There's an interview with B.K.
Butler (I'll track it down in a sec and post a link) in which he states that the Real Tube line was superior to the Tube Driver in some ways, and that Billy Gibbons' favourite has always been the Real Tube (as stated above).I think that there was a late-'80s version of the Real Tube that preceded the Tube Works, but I doubt that there's much of a difference between them. Both are black/yellow five-knob pedals. Tube Works was Butler's company, anyway, so this pedal is his product. I've been after one of these for a while, as I have an old Tube Works MosValve half-stack amplifier (purchased in '92) with the Real Tube rack-mount pre-amp built in. I've always been partial to its sound, and for better or worse I've come to think of it as 'my' sound over the years. Recently I've graduated to a Swart Spacetone for home use (even though it's louder than the MosValve owing to absence of Master volume.
Yeah, good move, mondo), and I wanted to be able to add that Real Tube sound in a small package. It's weird that it'd only cost another hundred dollars or so so get a rack-mount version of the same unit with two 12' speakers, reverb and effects send/receive thrown in, but that's how it is.Here's that link:Tube Works gear hasn't really become fashionable yet (I'm sure its moment will come), but in my experience everyone goes nuts over the sound if they hear it without preconception.From reading around here and H.C., many Real Tube pedal owners only really start liking it once they've swapped out the stock 12ax7 for a nice 12au7 or 12at7.
Tubes with a higher 'break-up' point will give the Drive knob its full range. Some people feel that there's just too much gain with the 12ax7, robbing you of half your Drive knob.Anyway, nice one, and I hope to join you in a couple of days! I saw that very one while I was researching the purchase of another just like it. I paid too much for mine (it hasn't arrived yet), but it's rare to find one that's already set up for 240V. Stupid Aussie electricity.There's an interview with B.K.
Butler (I'll track it down in a sec and post a link) in which he states that the Real Tube line was superior to the Tube Driver in some ways, and that Billy Gibbons' favourite has always been the Real Tube (as stated above).I think that there was a late-'80s version of the Real Tube that preceded the Tube Works, but I doubt that there's much of a difference between them. Both are black/yellow five-knob pedals.
Tube Works Tube Driver Amp
Tube Works was Butler's company, anyway, so this pedal is his product. I've been after one of these for a while, as I have an old Tube Works MosValve half-stack amplifier (purchased in '92) with the Real Tube rack-mount pre-amp built in. I've always been partial to its sound, and for better or worse I've come to think of it as 'my' sound over the years. Recently I've graduated to a Swart Spacetone for home use (even though it's louder than the MosValve owing to absence of Master volume. Yeah, good move, mondo), and I wanted to be able to add that Real Tube sound in a small package.
It's weird that it'd only cost another hundred dollars or so so get a rack-mount version of the same unit with two 12' speakers, reverb and effects send/receive thrown in, but that's how it is.Here's that link:Tube Works gear hasn't really become fashionable yet (I'm sure its moment will come), but in my experience everyone goes nuts over the sound if they hear it without preconception.From reading around here and H.C., many Real Tube pedal owners only really start liking it once they've swapped out the stock 12ax7 for a nice 12au7 or 12at7. Tubes with a higher 'break-up' point will give the Drive knob its full range.
Some people feel that there's just too much gain with the 12ax7, robbing you of half your Drive knob.Anyway, nice one, and I hope to join you in a couple of days! I've had one for about 20 years. I originally bought it to get a more natural sounding gain out of the JC120 I was playing at the time, and it did a very admirable for what I was playing.
It will do a Gilmour tone quite well. I tossed it in a drawer once I traded my JC120 for a mesa boogie, but I broke it back out about five years ago and use it with the gain set to almost nothing for a nice mellow boost (which my boogie won't really do).I am very intrigued by the idea of putting in a mellower tube to get a more subtle gain. What would be the recommended choice? Click to expand.12au7 tubes are the usual choice for this. I've found wild variations between brands of tube, though, with some 12au7s sounding as powerful as 12at7 or even 12ax7s.I have an old National 12au7 in there at the moment. I bought some NOS RCAs through eBay, and the seller threw in a couple of the Nationals. Turned out those were much better in this pedal, while the RCAs sounded good in my V-Twin.
I would try and get half a dozen mixed 12at- and au7s and experiment. It's good fun. In the very early 90's, went into local Westwood Music asking if they had the blue tube overdrive, owners son looks back and says I need the original pictured one. I used it w/ my first 'rig'; a SS Fender sidekick reverb 30 in the FX Loop? Gave it a heavy warm girth to it.
I also liked using 12at7 tubes in it as well, I could hear various changes when swapping tubes.It wasn't very popular because the moment I said I had it someone would say the voltage used on the preamp tubes was very low! Might as well just be a solid state dirt pedal or eq pedal. Check out supposed Seymour Duncan's twin tube pedal(that gave my HIWATT a nice rounder warmth in the cleaner mode).I know a scottish band called Teenage Fanclub used the rack versions for eq supposedly.I don't miss mine to be sure, but I likes the tube driver model on my Line 6 distortion modeler and so do others when they first try the pedal!
Tube Works Tube Driver Combo
Click to expand.Well there are the name players, tone gods like Eric Johnson and David Gilmour who play original BK Butler TDs to get part or more of their basic huge lead tones.I have both. I got my TD in 1993 or so used for $75 and went 'wow, where has This Pedal been all my life?!!' It failed a couple years later and I couldn't find anyone local to repair it. I bought a (BK Butler) Tubeworks Real Tube to replace it- for more than I paid for the TD! Never bonded with that pedal.
Same general tone territory, but just not the Creamy-as-in-Cream tones I got from the TD.I retired them both and went to 2 channel amps using the overdrive ch for lead, sometimes goosing it with a booster pedal., just a 'booster,' nothing as radical as a (Tube Driver type) 'distortion' pedal which you typically plug into a (cranked) clean channel and let it take over your tone.about 5 years ago I located BK himself via the internet and he said to send him my TD and he'd fix it for a nominal fee. So it's back and rocking.My tastes/style have changed since 1993 and I -imo- have better amps these days, so the Tube Driver is not my go-to pedal anymore. Buit it's certainly there when I want 'That Sound.' As most know, BK resumed building the original TDs a couple or so years ago. I think he's still doing it.
They run between $200-$300, I think. An original may run you in the same price range.I think if I'd never owned a Tube Driver, the Real Tube may have been ok. The Real Tube is currently in storage.
I never sell pedals.as with all things Tone, ymmv. Cars 2 game nds downloader.
When I saw this, I was actually kinda hoping it was regarding the BK Butler TubeDriver amps, which have the same circuit in them as the pedal (except lacking the external bias adjust), used as a preamp. I have a couple of these and they're real sleepers and one can still find them for well under $300.00 (for a long time they were widely available for about $100 bucks). I found one pic I have showing the amp with some other stuff.the other amp is the earlier, black-face/yellow lettering version.this one is the white with black lettering version (lower left-hand corner of the pic).These are the TD 752 version, with a 100 watt mosfet power amp. Butler's genius with these is that he sort of reverse-engineered the response characteristics of tube amps and came up with a mosfet design tailored for guitar.something he called 'Mosvalve'.very tube-like, and one of the first hybrid amps out there.With that great distortion circuit in front of the mosfet power amp, they get a surprisingly tube-like warmth and they absolutely love pedals. Without the Tubedriver circuit switched in, they get a very respectable, big clean tone that is perfect for manipulating with pedals, or in my case, an old Line 6 POD. I tend to use the TD circuit as a mildly distorted boost, which works very well if you swap out the 12ax7 tube for something with a bit more clean headroom and/or attenuated mids (very easy to do).
It's great for punching out in a live mix for solos. That's another great thing about the design of both the pedal and the amp.it is very little trouble to customize the type of overdrive, insane shred, soft bluesy burr, or a beeatch of an old Marshall, with a simple, single tube swap.I finally wore out the custom Eminence (Legend-ish) speakers that came in those amps and replaced them, one with a Celestion V30 and the other with one of the newer Celestion 'V-series'; in both cases the tone is much improved. For live use I also use an Avatar 1x12 closed back extension cab with a V30. For some gigs I use both amps, driven off the stereo outputs of the POD for a big, spacious feel.I've never found a more practical amp.versatile, consistent, rugged, LOUD as hell, musical sounding and lightweight (about 26lbs). I've taken my Supro Titan to a few gigs; the Supro is a great sounding little amp, usually, but in some rooms it just isn't as easy to dial in the tone I need. I have NEVER had that problem with the TD-752s. I've often wondered about those little amps.
A few years ago a friend of mine was given a two-box rack rig containing a Marshall JMP-1 preamp, a Rocktron Intelliflex 24-bit Intelligent Effects Processor, a Digitech IPS33B Super Harmony Machine, a Rocktron MIDI Mate MIDI Foot Controller with a road case full of patch cords, and germane to this discussion, a Tube Works MV-962 MosValve Power Amp. That's an 80 watt per channel stereo version of the MosValve technology. A friend of his had bailed out of the rack electric guitar scene for a combo amp and just handed him everything. They still come up from time to time.Reverb, Ebay, etc, although they're usually asking a bit more for them now.$200 to $300 range.
Still, for what these are it' a great deal. The BK Butler stuff is all high quality, handmade in the USA, and for an aging rocker north of 60 years old with bad knees I really appreciate how lightweight they are.They are also very reliable.still gigging with the one I bought in about '91, with no issues. About 4 years ago, one of these came up on consignment at a nearby music store and I pounced on it.$125.00.just to have a spare.I keep one at home and the other at our rehearsal space. I immediately replaced the speaker with the Celestion V-series, not that there was anything wrong with the stock Eminence.BTW, they still have documentation (manuals, schematics) for these at Genz-Benz, which company bought out Tubeworks about 15 years ago.I just googled these and found one that sold about a year ago on Reverb for under $200. Incidentally, the heads (TD-752ES) are pretty nice too, although they're asking a bit more for them when I see them. Sellers also tend to ask a premium for the ones with tweed tolex.