
A historical account of guitardom's most iconic overdrive pedal—the Ibanez Tube Screamer.
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.
TS808 (1979-1981)
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
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.
The TS Hits Its Stride — TS9 (1982-1984)
Series: 9 Series
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Tone, Level
Notes: Same basic configuration as TS808 but with a bigger footswitch and 9V AC operation.
Country of Origin: Japan
Despite the popularity and Holy Grail status attained by the original TS808, the Tube Screamer wasn't left alone—and plenty of pedal lovers are glad. Perhaps the most popular of all Tube Screamers, the TS9 replaced the TS808 in 1982 with the introduction of the 9 Series. The TS9 was slightly brighter and a little less smooth sounding than the 808. The two were almost identical internally, apart from the TS9's expanded output. The footswitch got bigger, too. Nine Series pedals had a footswitch that took up approximately a third of the pedal—a move clearly intended to compete with the easy-to-stomp design of Boss pedals. However, one drawback of the new Tube Screamer, according to Lomas, was that TS9s were built with a somewhat random sourcing of parts—basically whatever was readily available at the time of manufacture. This resulted in TS9s that varied widely in tone from batch to batch.
"[The introduction of the TS9] was not a magical moment by any stretch of the imagination," Lomas says. "The public didn't give a rat's ass—not for the longest time. It caught on much later. I would say guys really started talking about it in the late '80s, and by 1990 it was really starting to roll along." Since there was little demand for the TS9 when it came out, it was out of production by 1985. Ibanez then released a new series of stompboxes, the Master Series, without a Tube Screamer in the lineup. Instead, it included the Super Tube STL—a 4-knob affair with a Tube Screamer circuit and a 2-band EQ. According to "Analog Mike" Piera—a noted stompbox expert whose company, Analog Man, began modifying Tube Screamers to original specs in the mid 1990s—the STL was similar to the rare (and very valuable) European ST-9 Super Tube Screamer that was never released in the US.
ST9 (1984)
Series: 9 Series
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Mid Boost, Tone, Level
Notes: Mid Boost control added. Breifly available in Europe but not in the US. Extremely rare.
Country of Origin: Japan
STL Super Tube (1985)
Series: Master/L
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Level, Bite, Bright
Notes: Not officially a Tube screamer, but uses a Tube
Screamer circuit with a 2-band EQ.
Country of Origin: Japan
The Master Series only ran for one year, though—and the Tube Screamer wasn't M.I.A. for long. In 1986, Ibanez released the brightly colored Power Series (aka the 10 Series), which boasted a new, high-fidelity TS10 with quieter circuitry that eliminated the vexatious chirp that older Tube Screamers sometimes emitted when all the controls were turned up. However, these alterations affected the burgeoning star's signature tone, and the TS10 wasn't as well received as Hoshino hoped. Thanks to blues and blues-rock mavens like SRV, many players were getting hooked on the tones of TS808 and TS9 Tube Screamers.
TS10 (1986-1993)
Series: Power/10 Series
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Tone, Level
Notes: Changed cosmetically to match the 10 series. Was John Mayer's current Tube Screamer of choice.
Country of Origin: Taiwan
TS5 (1991-1998)
Series: Soundtank
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Tone, Level
Notes: Changed cosmetically to match the Soundtank series of smaller, plastic pedals.
Country of Origin: Taiwan
Piera says that, until the recent use of TS10s by players such as John Mayer, TS10s had remained undesirable. "I still hate them," he says, calling it a "disposable" pedal. "They used cheap, proprietary parts— jacks, switches, and pots that often break and can't be replaced, because the sturdy parts used in handmade, handwired pedals like the TS9 won't fit. They have circuit boards that have all these parts mounted on them that break off, just so they could make pedals cheaply with machine soldering."
Lomas explains how the economy affected the quality of manufacturing during those years. "When I first joined the company," says Lomas, "back around '83 or '84, it was, like, 260 yen to the dollar. Today, it's around 77 or 78. Back around '85, the yen started a turnaround and was coming down to about 150, 160—and they [Hoshino] were crapping their pants. They used to be able to take anything that was made in Japan and throw it out on the US market and make money because it was good quality and the exchange rate was very favorable for the yen. Then, suddenly, they had to start worrying about making things cost effectively."
When Ibanez launched its Soundtank effects line in 1991, the new TS5 Tube Screamer's design goal was to capture the sound of the older, vintage units at cheaper costs by using streamlined manufacturing techniques. The TS5 was not handwired like the TS9 and TS808, and it was eventually sold in a high-impact plastic case, rather than the original metal casing. The TS5's circuit is comparable to the TS9, but it was made by Taiwan-based manufacturer Daphon rather than Nisshin, and it featured smaller, cheaper components.
Rebirth of a Classic
Perhaps the resurrection of the TS9 was inevitable, but Lomas contributed to its legacy first by insisting on the 1992 reissue of the TS9, and then by developing the TS9DX Turbo Tube Screamer. He says when he took over product development in 1990, he immediately started pushing for a TS9 reissue. Used TS9s were selling in stores for well over $250, when Ibanez itself was selling used units to dealers for five bucks. Lomas says management was wary. Nisshin wanted to move toward digital technology and had no interest in going "backward" to the old analog products—which is somewhat ironic, Lomas notes, considering that Nisshin is producing many of the older analog effects now. "At the time," he says, "they thought we were crazy."
But money often talks when words fall short. After prolonged browbeating, Nisshin started to see the dollar signs that had convinced Lomas, and they authorized the reissue. Lomas recalls how he and his colleagues spent weeks buying every original TS9 they could get their hands on in order to ensure that the pending reissue was an exact replica. As they cracked open and examined the pedals, they found that almost every one had a Toshiba TA75558 IC chip rather than the JRC chip commonly found in TS808s. "Since 90, 95 percent of TS9s had that chip," says Lomas, "that's what we decided to put back in it." He recalls with a hint of nostalgia the way the company boasted about the reissue when it finally came out—about how it was made in the same factory as the original. "It was even built by the same middle-aged ladies. It was a dead, nuts-on copy," he says. Even the manual was identical—dated 1981, for authenticity. More than 5,000 sold within weeks of the release, and Ibanez estimates it has sold 10,000–12,000 TS9 reissues each year over the last decade.
TS9 Reissue (1992-Present)
Series: 9 Series
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Tone, Level
Notes: Faithful reproduction of the original TS9
Country of Origin: Japan
TS9DX (1998-Present)
Series: 9 Series
Knob Configuration: Overdrive, Tone, Level, Mode
Notes: Offers traditional Tube Screamer tones, as well as three additional modes with increasing amounts of volume and bass response.
Country of Origin: Japan
With the success of the TS9 reissue, the TS9DX seemed like a no-brainer. According to Lomas, the company watched, a glint of envy in its eye, as Dunlop multi-load wah pedals flew off the shelves. Hoshino felt it needed a Tube Screamer with different modes for output and distortion, and it seemed the only thing to do was to get in on the action.
So, in 1998, Lomas designed the DX for players who craved more volume, distortion, and low end. In addition to the Drive, Tone, and Level knobs that had already become Tube Screamer staples, he added a fourth knob with four mode positions: TS9, +, Hot, and Turbo, each one adding low end and increasing volume to some degree. The circuit is exactly the same as that of the original TS9, but the mode switch changes certain components' parameters via clipping diodes and tone capacitors. The + mode is grittier than the original TS9, whereas Hot yields a crunchier tone with boosted mids, and Turbo, the most powerful of the four modes, projects a thicker, more modern sound.
"I wanted to come up with something that would be as true to the Tube Screamer tonality as possible, so that at least in one position it would be a classic Tube Screamer," says Lomas. "That's where I came up with the concept of varying the clippers. I didn't want any digital simulation because, in my mind, it just wouldn't be a Tube Screamer then."
A Legacy of Mids
In the past decade, the Tube Screamer has continued to evolve with new editions such as the TS7 Tone-Lok, the TS808 reissue, the TS9B—the first Tube Screamer for bass—and the 2010 introduction of the Tube Screamer amp—an ultra-portable, low-wattage amp (available in head and combo versions) that incorporates a selectable Tube Screamer circuit in its preamp. So far, 15-watt head and combo models are available, although models with varying wattages are rumored to be in the works.
Despite the Tube Screamer's many variations, Ibanez electronics merchandiser Frank Facciolo says its legendary sound is rooted in its characteristic midrange presence. Lomas agrees. "It's still one of the best things to overdrive any tube amplifier with," he says. "It just does magical things to tubes."
[Updated 7/27/2021]
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
Recorded live at the Sydney Opera House, the Australian guitarist’s new album reminds listeners that his fingerpicking is in a stratum all its own. His approach to arranging only amplifies that distinction—and his devotion to Chet Atkins.
Australian fingerpicking virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel is turning 70 this year. He’s been performing since he was 6, and for every solo show he’s played, he’s never used a setlist.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
Our columnist has journeyed through blizzards and hurricanes to scoop up rare, weird guitars, like this axe of unknown origin.
Collecting rare classic guitars isn’t for the faint of heart—a reality confirmed by the case of this Japanese axe of unknown provenance.
If you’ve been reading this column regularly, you’ll know that my kids are getting older and gearing up for life after high school. Cars, insurance, tuition, and independence are really giving me agita these days! As a result, I’ve been slowly selling off my large collection of guitars, amps, and effects. When I’m looking for things to sell, I often find stuff I forgot I had—it’s crazy town! Finding rare gear was such a passion of mine for so many years. I braved snowstorms, sketchy situations, shady characters, slimy shop owners, and even hurricane Sandy! If you think about it, it’s sort of easy to buy gear. All you have to do is be patient and search. Even payments nowadays are simple. I mean, when I got my first credit card…. Forget about it!
Now, selling, which is what I mainly do now, is a different story. Packing, shipping, and taking photos is time consuming. And man, potential buyers can be really exhausting. I’ve learned that shipping costs are way higher, but buyers are still the same. You have the happy buyer, the tire kicker, the endless questioner, the ghoster, and the grump. Sometimes there are even combinations of the above. It’s an interesting lesson in human psychology, if you’re so inclined. For me, vintage guitars are like vintage cars and have some quirks that a modern player might not appreciate. Like, can you play around buzzing or dead frets? How about really tiny frets? Or humps and bumps on a fretboard? What about controlling high feedback and squealing pickups by keeping your fingers on the metal parts of the guitar? Not everyone can be like Jack White, fighting his old, red, Valco-made fiberglass Airline. It had one working pickup and original frets! I guess my point is: Buyer beware!
“They all sound great—all made from the same type of wood and all wired similarly—but since real quality control didn’t really exist at that time, the fate of guitars was left up to chance.”
Take, for instance, the crazy-cool guitar presented here. It’s a total unknown as far as the maker goes, but it is Japanese and from the 1960s. I’ve had a few similar models and they all feature metal pickguards and interesting designs. I’ve also seen this same guitar with four pickups, which is a rare find. But here’s the rub: Every one of the guitars I’ve had from the unknown maker were all a bit different as far as playability. They all sound great—all made from the same type of wood and all wired similarly—but since real quality control didn’t exist at that time, the final state of guitars was left up to chance. Like, what if the person carving necks had a hangover that day? Or had a fight that morning? Seriously, each one of these guitars is like a fingerprint. It’s not like today where almost every guitar has a similar feel. It’s like the rare Teisco T-60, one of Glen Campbell’s favorite guitars. I have three, and one has a deep V-shaped neck, and the other two are more rounded and slim. Same guitars, all built in 1960 by just a few Teisco employees that worked there at the time.
When I got this guitar, I expected all the usual things, like a neck shim (to get a better break-over string angle), rewire, possible refret, neck planing, and other usual stuff that I or my great tech Dave D’Amelio have to deal with. Sometimes Dave dreads seeing me show up with problems I can’t handle, but just like a good mechanic, a good tech is hard to come by when it comes to vintage gear. Recently, I sold a guitar that I set up and Dave spent a few more hours getting it playable. When it arrived at the buyer’s home, he sent me an email saying the guitar wasn’t playable and the pickups kept cutting out. He took the guitar to his tech who also said the guitar was unplayable. So what can you do? Every sale has different circumstances.
Anyway, I still have this guitar and still enjoy playing it, but it does fight me a little, and that’s fine with me. The pickup switches get finicky and the volume and tone knobs have to be rolled back and forth to work out the dust, but it simply sounds great! It’s as unique as a snowflake—kinda like the ones I often braved back when I was searching for old gear!
Sleep Token announces their Even In Arcadia Tour, hitting 17 cities across the U.S. this fall. The tour, promoted by AEG Presents, will be their only headline tour of 2025.
Sleep Token returns with Even In Arcadia, their fourth offering and first under RCA Records, set to release on May 9th. This new chapter follows Take Me Back To Eden and continues the unfolding journey, where Sleep Token further intertwines the boundaries of sound and emotion, dissolving into something otherworldly.
As this next chapter commences, the band has unveiled their return to the U.S. with the Even In Arcadia Tour, with stops across 17 cities this fall. Promoted by AEG Presents, the Even In Arcadia Tour will be Sleep Token’s only 2025 headline tour and exclusive to the U.S. All dates are below. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, March 21st at 10 a.m. local time here. Sleep Token will also appear at the Louder Than Life festival on Friday, September 19th.
Sleep Token wants to give fans, not scalpers, the best chance to buy tickets at face value. To make this possible, they have chosen to use Ticketmaster's Face Value Exchange. If fans purchase tickets for a show and can't attend, they'll have the option to resell them to other fans on Ticketmaster at the original price paid. To ensure Face Value Exchange works as intended, Sleep Token has requested all tickets be mobile only and restricted from transfer.
*New York, Illinois, Colorado, and Utah have passed state laws requiring unlimited ticket resale and limiting artists' ability to determine how their tickets are resold. To adhere to local law, tickets in this state will not be restricted from transfer but the artist encourages fans who cannot attend to sell their tickets at the original price paid on Ticketmaster.
For more information, please visit sleep-token.com.
Even In Arcadia Tour Dates:
- September 16, 2025 - Duluth, GA - Gas South Arena
- September 17, 2025 - Orlando, FL - Kia Center
- September 19, 2025 - Louisville, KY - Louder Than Life (Festival)
- September 20, 2025 – Greensboro, NC - First Horizon Coliseum
- September 22, 2025 - Brooklyn, NY - Barclays Center
- September 23, 2025 - Worcester, MA - DCU Center
- September 24, 2025 - Philadelphia, PA - Wells Fargo Center
- September 26, 2025 - Detroit, MI - Little Caesars Arena
- September 27, 2025 - Cleveland, OH - Rocket Arena
- September 28, 2025 - Rosemont, IL - Allstate Arena
- September 30, 2025 - Lincoln, NE - Pinnacle Bank Arena
- October 1, 2025 - Minneapolis, MN - Target Center
- October 3, 2025 - Denver, CO - Ball Arena
- October 5, 2025 - West Valley City, UT - Maverik Center
- October 7, 2025 - Tacoma, WA - Tacoma Dome
- October 8, 2025 - Portland, OR - Moda Center
- October 10, 2025 - Oakland, CA - Oakland Arena
- October 11, 2025 - Los Angeles, CA - Crypto.com Arena
The Rickenbacker 481’s body style was based on the 4001 bass, popularly played by Paul McCartney. Even with that, the guitar was too experimental to reach its full potential.
The body style may have evoked McCartney, but this ahead-of-its-time experiment was a different beast altogether.
In the early days of Beatlemania, John Lennon andGeorge Harrison made stars out of their Rickenbacker guitars: John’s 325, which he acquired in 1960 and used throughout their rise, and George’s 360/12, which brought its inimitable sound to “A Hard Day’s Night” and other early classics.
By the early 1970s, the great interest the lads had sparked in 6- and 12-string Ricks had waned. But thankfully for the company, there was still high demand for yet another Beatles-played instrument: the 4001 bass.
Paul McCartney was gifted a 4001 by Rickenbacker in 1965, which he then used prominently throughout the group’s late-’60s recordings and while leading Wings all through the ’70s. Other rising stars of rock also donned 4000 series models, like Yes’Chris Squire, Pink Floyd’sRoger Waters, the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Stu Cook, and more.
And like that, a new star was born.
So, what’s a guitar company to do when its basses are selling better than its guitars? Voilà: The Rickenbacker 480. Introduced in 1972, it took the 4000-series body shape and created a standard 6-string out of it, using a bolt-on neck for the first time in the brand’s history.
The 481’s slanted frets predate the modern multi-scale phenomenon by decades. The eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
“It was like a yo-yo at Rickenbacker sometimes,” factory manager Dick Burke says in Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo. “We got quiet in the late ’60s, but when the bass started taking off in the ’70s, we got real busy again, so making a 6-string version of that was logical, I guess.”
The gambit worked, for a time. Sales of the 480 were strong enough at first that, in 1973, a deluxe model was introduced—the 481—and it’s one of these deluxe versions that we’re showcasing here.
“The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.”
Take a close look and you’ll notice that the body shape isn’t the only remarkable feature. The 481 was Rickenbacker’s first production run to feature humbucker pickups. Here, you can see each humbucker’s 12 pole pieces dotting through the chrome cover, a variant casing only available from 1975 to 1976. (Interestingly enough, the pickups had first been developed for the 490, a prototype that never made it to public release, which would’ve allowed players to substitute different pickups by swapping loaded pickguards in and out of the body.)
The new pickups were also treated with novel electronics. The standard 3-way pickup-selector switch is here, but so is a second small switch that reverses the pickups’ phase when engaged.
The inventive minds at Rickenbacker didn’t stop there: The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
Long before the fanned fret phenomenon caught on in the modern, progressive guitar landscape, Rickenbacker had been toying around with the slant-fret concept. Originally available from 1970 forward as a custom order on other models, slant frets were all but standard on the 481 (only a small minority of straight-fret 481s were built).
The 481 was the deluxe version of the 480, which preceded it and marked the first time the company used a bolt-on neck.
Dick Burke, speaking separately to writer Tony Bacon in an interview published on Reverb, only half-recalls the genesis and doesn’t remember them selling particularly well: “Some musicians said that’s the way when you hold the neck in your left hand—your hand is slanted. So, we put the slanted frets in a few guitars. I don’t know how many, maybe a hundred or two—I don’t recall.”
Even proponents of the 481 do not necessarily sing the praises of the slanted fretboard. Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, a 481 superfan, told Rickenbacker Guitars author Martin Kelly, “I don’t just love the 481, it’s part of me.... The 481’s slanted frets have made my fingers crooked for life, but I don’t care, I’ll take that for it’s given me riff after riff after riff."
Initial 480-series sales were promising, but the models never really took off. Though they were built as late as 1984, the slant-fret experiment of the 481 was called off by 1979. And these slanted models have not, in the minds of most players or collectors, become anywhere near as sought-after as the classic 330s and 360s, or, for that matter, the 4001s.
For that reason, 481s—despite their novelty and their lists of firsts for Rickenbacker—can still be found for relatively cheap. Our Vintage Vault pick, which is being sold by the Leicester, England-based Jordan Guitars Ltd, has an asking price of 3,350 British pounds (or about 4,300 U.S. dollars), which is still well under half the going-rate of early 360s, 660s, and other more famous Ricks. Some lucky buyers have even found 481s on Reverb for less than $2,000, which is unheard of for other vintage models.
With its idiosyncratic charms, the 481 remains more within reach than many other guitars of a similar vintage.
Sources: Martin Kelly’s Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo, Tony Bacon’s"Interview: Dick Burke on the Creation of the Rickenbacker 12-String | Bacon’s Archive" on Reverb, Reverb Price Guide sales data.