What I learned modding a Tube Screamer for six months.
I rebuilt a TS-9 four times. The pedal got better. I got worse.
In the fall of 2024 I bought a used TS-9 in Brooklyn for $90 from a guy who was selling his board because his wife was pregnant. He told me he had played one show with it. I believed him because the pedal looked unplayed and because the receipt was in the box. Over the next six months I took that pedal apart at least a dozen times. I want to tell you what I learned.
First: the TS-9 is a great pedal that is intentionally crippled in three specific ways. The clipping diodes are 1N914s, which are bright but harsh. The op-amp is a JRC4558D, which is fine. The capacitor at C3 cuts low end below about 720 Hz, which is the famous 'Tube Screamer mid hump.' If you change any one of those three things, you change the pedal. If you change all three, you have built something that is not a Tube Screamer.
I did all three, in sequence, with a multimeter and a notebook. I am not a circuit designer. I am a guy with a soldering iron and a lot of time. The first mod, the diode swap to asymmetrical Schottky and silicon, was the biggest improvement. The pedal got more open, less compressed, less 'in a box.' The second mod, the op-amp swap to a Burr-Brown OPA2134, was almost imperceptible. I want to be honest about that. The third mod, the capacitor swap to extend the low end, made the pedal sound like a different pedal — closer to a Bluesbreaker than a Screamer.
Here is what I actually learned. The Tube Screamer is not a great pedal because of its components. It is a great pedal because the specific combination of those components — the cut bass, the mid hump, the symmetric clipping, the gain structure — does a specific job, which is to push a tube amp into breakup while keeping a single-coil guitar audible in a mix. The moment you mod those three things, you no longer have a tool that does that job. You have a different tool that does a different job, possibly worse.
Kobu (kobu.tinker) has been telling me this for years. He plays a Jaguar through an AC15 with a stock TS-9 in front, and the entire reason it works is that the TS-9 is doing its specific TS-9 thing. I modded my way out of that. I sold the modded pedal in March for $140 to a kid in Queens. I bought a stock TS-9 reissue and put it in front of my Deluxe. I have not opened it.
'The TS-9 is not a great pedal because of its components. It is a great pedal because the specific combination of them does a specific job.'
— Johnny
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