RADIAL TONEBONE HOT BRITISH

Hello, today I want to talk about the Radial Tonebone Hot British tube overdrive pedal. While there are so many tube overdrive pedals out there in the market, apparently there are only a few that sound really good. This pedal happens to be one of them. Let's check it out.

The Spec
It contains a 12AX7 tube inside that produces most of the overdrive sound. There are so many knobs; a knob to control the output level, treble knob, bass knob, contour knob, drive and three voicing switches that controls the top end, the overall voicing and mid boost. Each of the switches had three different options, so you pretty much get wide variety of overdrive tone.

It comes with 15V adapter with more than enough power to accommodate the 12AX7 tube. It's also true bypass so if you turn it off it won't suck some power from your tone. The manual provides some helpful example settings that you can use as a starting point before you tweak the pedals.

The Sound
Extremely killer, life changer!!! This pedal can be used as your dedicated lead/crunch channel without changing your amp's channel. I used this pedal only on the clean channel of my amp and it does a wonderful job of providing high amount of gain to the amp. The knobs are extremely sensitive and they do provide so many options of tone that you can use to create whatever overdrive sound you have in your mind.

Turn the drive knob all the way down, the pedal will deliver you a hot Tube Screamer-ish kind of overdrive level, while turning it all the way up will deliver a super high gain Mesa Boogie lead distortion sound. It takes other overdrive pedals pretty well in front of it such as Tube Screamer or BB Preamp to add extra grit to your sound.

The Application
I highly recommend this pedal to those who only had single channel tube amplifier or an amp with bad sounding overdrive channel and needs to have a natural sounding amp-like overdrive that comes in a form of a pedal.

You can also use this on an overdrive amp that doesn't have an effects loop for your delay pedals. Set the amp clean, put the pedal in front of your delay pedal and you can have a natural sounding delays without the need of having FX loop.

I, however, do not recommend this pedal if you are going to use this on a solid state amp, I tried it with an Ibanez 5 Watt amp and it sounds like a total piece of garbage. Also, if you want to use it to boost a tube amp with a great overdrive channel, this might not going to impress you that much(although it can and it sounds good) because you can get a very decent overdrive pedal that sounds as good for cheaper price.

The Maintenance
Tube needs to be replaced once every few years depending on how often it's being used. Also, you have to let the tube warm up before you can switch it on, meaning that it has to be off when the power supply is connected and you have to wait for like 3 minutes or so to prolong the tube life.

Is it worth the money?
$230 is the normal price on the market, you can get it very close to $200 on some stores. I say this is worth it if it's applied the right way(see "The Application" above).

From 0 to 10
Obviously 10.

Sound Clips
Andy Timmons Tube Driver style overdrive
John Petrucci Mesa Boogie Mark style distortion
Warm Tube Screamer-ish overdrive

Hope you enjoy the post, cheers and God bless :)

SATURATION

In this post, I want to explain a little bit about different kind of saturation on guitar tone. Familiar with the word distortion, fuzz or overdrive? If you had heard any of these words before, then you'll probably understand most of the content of this post. Let's get started!

Clipping

A saturated guitar signal is basically an amplified guitar signal that's boosted until it reaches clipping(above the range of signal tolerance). While some electrical engineers think that clipping is bad, some guitarists think that getting a clipped guitar signal on an amplifier is the best thing they ever heard. Most rock guitarist rely heavily on saturated tones. Whether it's a crunch rhythm, singing sustained lead, boosted clean-break up or fuzzy creamy tones, they're all basically clipped guitar signal.

Achieving clipped signal

There are multiple ways of reaching saturation. One is by driving an amp or running the amp volume as high as it can be. This works well especially on tube amps. Some amps don't have the capability to reach clipping without being driven prematurely, this leads to the invention of preamplifier that contains tubes or solid state components that will boost the signal before it enters the amplifier so that clipping can be achieved without pushing the amp volume too high. This kind of saturation is called amp-overdrive.

Other way is by using boost pedal on a clean sounding amplifier. The benefit of using pedal to achieve clipping is that it can emulate the sound of amp-overdrive at even lower volume level. People sometimes use pedals on an already driven-amp to achieve a higher level of distortion.

Types of saturation

There are three types of saturation that are common:

Overdrive

Overdrive signal will usually sound pretty open, the clipping isn't too much and it doesn't break too much from the clean signal. This is the type of sound that you can get from amp-overdrive. You can also achieve this sound by using common overdrive pedal such as Tube Screamer or similar stuffs. This sound can be found mostly on blues and some classic rock songs.

Distortion

This is the sound that defines rock and metal music. Distorted signal comes from stacked amps that are already on overdrive state. The sound that it generates is very compressed, heavy, crunchy and clips even more compared to overdriven signal. Modern amplifiers are sometimes high-gain, meaning that it can achieve distortion without having to be stacked. People can even achieve this using distortion pedal on clean channel or even using overdrive on dirty channel. You'll be surprised that sometimes people combine two overdrive pedals to create a smooth distortion sound. Metal player usually cut the midrange of their tone to get even crunchier and tighter distortion; lead rock guitarist will boost the midrange to get more body out of the distortion.

Fuzz

Fuzz is the most clipped signal compared to distortion and overdrive. It can be achieved using any fuzz pedal that contains germanium diode. This kind of sound was starting to emerge on the '60s and '70s thanks to Jimi Hendrix. People sometimes combine an already dirty amp with the fuzz pedal to achieve higher gain guitar tone that can sing and sustain the notes better.

RC BOOSTER

Yes, it's finally here in the blog! The ultimate clean boost machine is now available for reviewing. After spending some time with this pedal, I'm finally able to share some cool stuffs that this pedal has to offer.

Xotic Tremendous Trio

First, let me explain the concept of Tremendous Trio by Xotic. The Tremendous Trio are actually three booster/overdrive pedals that Xotic has to offer: BB Preamp, AC Booster and RC Booster. You may wonder, what's the difference between the tree? They are all almost identical, they have similar control knobs and they're all booster pedals.

Well, they are in fact very different...

... in terms of gain level, sound characteristic and function. A cranked up RC booster will sound like a near-breakup vintage tube amp on a clean channel while an AC booster will deliver Tube Screamer like quality with more warmness; as we already know, BB preamp has the highest gain and can really drive an amp into a high saturation level. In terms of sound characteristic: RC booster is clean and smooth, AC booster is somewhat more mid-scooped compared to a TS and BB preamp have the most amount of warmness compared to the others.

RC Booster in more detail

I said above that RC Booster is clean and smooth: it's not just clean, it's TRANSPARENT. That means, you can use it as a clean boost to increase your volume level without adding gain or altering your tone. You can add some bass or treble depending on what you want but you can really keep your original tone as it is. This is very useful for a clean lead tone where you need extra volume boost.

Personally, I use the RC Booster only on the clean channel. When I tried to use it on an already overdriven amp, I can't really get a volume boost and I don't really need to get extra gain out of it. I once tried to use this as a tone modifier to make my single coil sounds warmer and it did a great job on doing that. Well, there's actually many ways that you can use this pedal to suit your needs. Leave it on all the time with minimum amount of gain and added level increase, it will help to bring out your long-cable-degraded tone back to life while boosting your tone.

Please remember

This won't give you a massive amount of distortion as I mentioned before, so don't really expect this pedal to work on a high-gain situation although it will still surely provide something useful in that case. This also doesn't work as a compressor although it can boost your output and add some sustain. Don't get disappointed when it doesn't provide you with enough gain and massive amount of compression, it's not really what it's designed for. Remember that there are AC Booster and BB Preamp that provide more compression and more gain compared to this baby.

Is it worth?

Current retail price of around $170.00, it's an expensive pedal for sure. But for its true bypass capability, boutique quality, tone enhancement features and unique functions, I would say that this thing worth every penny. Clean boost and tone enhancer is not really something that you may want, but give this pedal a try and you'll surely know why Xotic made this pedal.

From 0 to 10?

9.5. Cheaper price can bring it to 10 for sure. Xotic is a very expensive boutique pedal maker, but for a price this high you'll get something with a very high quality.

Sound clip: CLICK HERE, first original signal then RC booster with minimum gain maximum volume, and then RC booster maximum gain and volume, I backed off the treble a little bit by the way.

Cheers and God bless :)

ANALOGMAN OD-9/808 WITH SILVER MOD

I bought this pedal from Analogman's website and it's one of the best version of Tube Screamer in the market I must say. Maxon is the original company that designed TS for Ibanez. They now produce their own TS9 that is quite different from the original TS from '70s Ibanez era.

Are you serious? Another Tube Screamer?

YES. In fact, this is one of the best version of Tube Screamer available. This OD9 is using JRC4558 chip that IS EXACTLY THE SAME as the original TS808/TS9 that many players put on their pedal board: Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons(YES, him again), Stevie Ray Vaughan....

So yes, this is another Tube Screamer.....BUT

The one that I purchased from Analogman features Silver Mod. That was basically capacitors and components upgrades to increase clarity and warmth a little bit. It also add more sustain to the overall sound. And this Maxon version is already True Bypass. Sound-wise, it does not have high amount of gain to be honest, even when I tried to crank this thing up all the way, it does not saturate too much. This is great as a clean boost and that amount of gain can be used to replicate the tone of a vintage tube amp that is pushed right after it starts to saturate.

This might means it's not for heavy stuffs, but it add pleasant touches to your tone. I got earlier Andy Timmons' famous Electric Gypsy tone by using this pedal on a clean channel.

I'm sorry though, I haven't got a chance to review this with any other Tube Screamers on the market. I tried an Ibanez TS9, but that thing cuts the bass a little bit, so I prefer this box rather than the original Ibanez version.

Wow that sounds great, but was it worth?

I forgot how much I spent but I think it was around $200.00 since I opted for the Silver Mod. This is so much more expensive compared to any other Tube Screamer on the market. I would love to compare this as a modded pedal with other modded TS from Keeley or everyone else. I know that Keeley TS has been used by many people including John Petrucci and that must says something. Unfortunately, Petrucci does use it in an already saturated amp so I don't know how it originally sounds.

It sounds good though, so I think it is still worth every penny.

Other thoughts?

I plugged mine before an AMT SS-11 Preamp that I use as a tube amp replication box since I am not allowed to play with tube amp in my apartment *sad*. It sounds very bluesy overall as a gain box. If you have not ever try any Tube Screamer pedal or even know what a TS is, this thing is an instant Stevie Ray Vaughan replicator if you have a strat style guitar with bright single coils. Very effective to add smoothness to your already saturated amp, you can set it to be your "lead switch" and step on it when you begin your solo.

How I set it up personally

Drive around 12 to 2pm, Tone around 4pm(YES, this is what a TS is famous for!), and as usual Level depends on your entire rig, I set mine around 10am.

Sounds almost perfect! Anything missing?

It lacks bass frequencies. I guess that's the nature of any Tube Screamers we all can find in this world. But hey, this thing sounded great already and you can reduce the Tone knob a bit to get a little of that bass back but sacrifice the famous tone everyone loves :D. This might not be true, I mean how can reducing treble adds the bass if we talk about circuitry, but if you add more Level while reducing the Tone, this will help to achieve that effect.

From 0 to 10

I will give this fantastic box an 8.9! Price is the main factor. The lack of bass does not really bother me that much since this is already warmer than most TSes in the market.

So what bothers you?

The switch. It's so hard to step on it even if it's angled. It's not your regular small circular switch, it's almost similar to a Boss style switch but smaller and placed in the middle with not too much height difference compared to the enclosure around it. However, note that the usual TS9 has the same switch, so I can't really complain.

Check it out : www.analogman.com

Audio clip: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12709731/sound%20demo/maxon%20od9.mp3

Cheers and God bless !

p.s stay tuned for audio clips for this post and my previous BB Preamp :) Will be around sometime in August