01—Ibanez
TS9 Tube Screamer
Every Stevie Ray Vaughan record — the single most famous overdrive sound in electric guitar history.
Buy the current production TS9. Cheap, reliable, and identical to the originals in every meaningful way. The most defensible $109 in a guitar player's life.
02—On the bench
The most famous overdrive pedal ever made. Originally released as the Maxon-built TS-808 in 1979, the TS9 is the 1982 cost-reduced revision that became the canonical green box on millions of pedalboards. The Tube Screamer's signature is its midrange hump — it boosts frequencies around 720 Hz by about 6 dB while rolling off bass and treble, which is exactly the shape a dirty Marshall or Fender needs to cut through a band mix. Used by Stevie Ray Vaughan to push a Vibroverb into singing distortion. Used by Eric Johnson, Trey Anastasio, Kirk Hammett, John Mayer, and roughly everyone else who has ever played electric guitar in a band. Cheap, reliable, and one of the few pedals genuinely worth its place in history.
- 01the canonical mid-hump — 720 Hz, +6 dB
- 02cleans up well off the guitar volume
- 03rolls off bass and treble — adds focus
- 04as a clean boost into a dirty amp, unbeatable
- 05TS9 is brighter than TS808; both are correct
03—In the room
Where else this pedal lives.
- Stevie Ray Vaughan
- Eric Johnson
- John Mayer
- Trey Anastasio
- Kirk Hammett
JHS Bonsai if you want to A/B all nine TS variants; TS9 if you want the canonical one cheaply.