First designed by one S. Tamura in the
late ’70s, the Ibanez Tube Screamer is
arguably the most beloved of overdrive
pedals. It’s been rocked by guitar greats as
diverse as Eric Johnson, Trey Anastasio,
and Brad Paisley, and some would go as far
as saying no single pedal has had a greater
impact on musical expression or played
as important a role in the development of
effects modification.
The essence of the Tube Screamer’s
appeal—what multitudes of similar designs
that it has inspired over the years aim to
capture—are the subtly pleasing qualities
it induces as it interacts with a tube amp:
As you increase the amplitude of an input
signal to overload a tube amp’s preamp, it
distorts the signal in a way that adds sustain,
edge, and harmonic liveliness, while
preserving the innate tonal characteristics of
the guitar and amp—and without obscuring
the player’s dynamics. For the Tube
Screamer, the design goal was to distort the
signal symmetrically, not asymmetrically
like a vacuum tube does.
Humble Beginnings
Stompboxes emerged as the guitarist’s tone-warping
tool of choice in the wake of the
guitar mania fueled by British Invasion
bands like the Stones, the Beatles, and the
Kinks in the mid 1960s, and then Hendrix,
Beck, and Cream toward the end of that
decade. Though these bands predominantly
relied on tube amps for classic tones, the new
sounds they injected into their signal paths
via pedals were made possible by the 1948
invention of the transistor. Pedals quickly
became one of the most cost-effective, convenient,
and instantaneous ways to generate
the exciting new sounds that shaped rock
’n’ roll—and modern culture by extension.
By the late ’60s, the market was flooded
with portable sound-modifying devices, and
effects became commonplace in pop music.
Sonic expression was forever changed.
1979-1981
Model: TS808
Series: Top Ten
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Tone, Level
Notes: First Tube screamer. Considered by some to be the holy grail of overdrives.
Country of Origin: Japan
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Ibanez and its parent company, Hoshino,
were infamous in the late ’60s and early ’70s
for their Fender, Gibson, and Rickenbacker
knockoffs. Unsurprisingly, it also added
effects pedals to its lineup by the mid ’70s.
These pedals were actually manufactured
by Nisshin, a Japanese company that produced
pickups for some Ibanez guitars. In a
curious business arrangement, Nisshin was
allowed to market its own line of effects,
which were identical to those it made for
Ibanez, and they were sold under the Maxon
brand name. By the late ’70s, Nisshin was
developing the first Tube Screamer—the
famed TS808 that debuted in 1979 and
that was later popularized by Stevie Ray
Vaughan, among others. According to former
Ibanez product manager John Lomas,
when the Tube Screamer was created,
Roland—a major Japanese competitor—was
producing the Boss OD-1 OverDrive and
already had a patent on solid-state asymmetrical
clipping. This prompted Nisshin to use
symmetrical clipping in the Tube Screamer.
“If you look at the schematic between a
Tube Screamer and a Boss OD-1, they’re
almost exactly the same thing,” Lomas
says. “The OD-1, though, is what they call
an asymmetrical clipper. When you put a
signal in it, it does not distort the top and
bottom of the soundwave the same. Instead,
it distorts one differently—the way a tube
would. The original Boss OverDrive was
designed to be a tube simulator, which was
really big back then because, of course,
most amplifiers were starting to get away
from tubes. They were solid-state, and they
really sounded like shit. So there was a
market for tube-simulation pedals. I believe
that’s probably why the Tube Screamer was
named the Tube Screamer.”
The TS808 also differed from the OD-1
in that it had a Tone control, featured a
common JRC 4558D integrated circuit
(IC) chip, and had a small rectangular
footswitch. “The Tube Screamer was really
the first pedal I saw that had an IC in it,”
says Lomas. “All the overdrives prior to the
Tube Screamer were built around transistors.”
Lomas contends that the sweet, vocal
midrange sound the TS808 is known for has
everything to do with that JRC4558D IC
chip—which explains why Lomas and many
other overdrive aficionados prefer the sound
of the original over other permutations of
the pedal that have emerged over the years.