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BK Butler Tube Driver- Clones?


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DAM pedals has a clone of it

 

and you can still pick up the tubeworks tube drivers fairly cheaply (the 3 knob ones are usually only ~$100) and there are the 5 knob 'real tube' pedals that have a mids pot and cost that much as well.

 

anyway, it's a pretty small circuit and the schematic is floating around the internet so you could get someone to build it for you

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You could try the Ibanez TK999 Tube King. Check this link, the TK999 is near the bottom of the page:

 

http://www.dirk-hendrik.com/ibanez.html

 

I have the US version and I really like it. You can hear tonal change depending on the brand of valve you use. I've had excellent results with a Telefunken 12ax7 and EHX valves too (yellow writing on the glass, not the dirt-cheap black writing ones). There's a fair amount of gain on tap and the EQ is very good. I picked mine up for

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DAM pedals has a clone of it


and you can still pick up the tubeworks tube drivers fairly cheaply (the 3 knob ones are usually only ~$100) and there are the 5 knob 'real tube' pedals that have a mids pot and cost that much as well.


anyway, it's a pretty small circuit and the schematic is floating around the internet so you could get someone to build it for you

 

Dam has or had a clone? No production models at the moment have a tube inside :idk:

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LOL.. he said CHEAPER than the bk... that dam is very limited (5 models?) and probably super expensive.

The tube king has nothing to do with the bk...

Just get a used one.

Despite the fact I love gilmour, I hated that pedal btw... fuzzy, terrible eq and "closed" sounding

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LOL.. he said CHEAPER than the bk... that dam is very limited (5 models?) and probably super expensive.

The tube king has nothing to do with the bk...

Just get a used one.

Despite the fact I love gilmour, I hated that pedal btw... fuzzy, terrible eq and "closed" sounding

 

From the Tube King link I posted:

 

The US version states the BK Butler 5022305 patent number on it's case. Since there has been quite some drama over the BK Butler patent I have always understood that the Japanese TK999's were for the world and manufacturered by Maxon and the US TK's were manufactured under the TubeWorks flag.

 

I've just opened mine up and the circuit board quite clearly reads 'Patented: BK Butler' as you can see in the picture below. The Tube King is reputed to be a very similar circuit design to the Tube Driver and the patent there certainly backs that notion up. It might not be identical to the Tube Driver but it's in the same sort of area.

 

TubeKingButlerpatent.jpg

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you could also pick up one of the old rack tube drivers. the original BK Butler ones are very very hard to find (luckily i have one which i will actually be putting up for sale soon i think), but the chandler copies come very close in quality, unlike with their pedals (i talked to BK about this recently and he told me this).

the chandler rackmounts are usually ~$100-150 on ebay

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From the Tube King link I posted:




I've just opened mine up and the circuit board quite clearly reads 'Patented: BK Butler' as you can see in the picture below. The Tube King is reputed to be a very similar circuit design to the Tube Driver and the patent there certainly backs that notion up. It might not be identical to the Tube Driver but it's in the same sort of area.


TubeKingButlerpatent.jpg

 

HeartfeltDawn = fx mythbuster :thu:

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A couple of pedal builders told me in the past the tube king and the tube driver are not alike. butler might be the designer, but that don't mean theyre the same pedal. ;)

Btw... th tube king was real good afai remeber. :D

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A couple of pedal builders told me in the past the tube king and the tube driver are not alike. butler might be the designer, but that don't mean theyre the same pedal.
;)
Btw... th tube king was real good afai remeber.
:D

 

At no point have I claimed they were the same pedal. There are similarities in the circuit and the Tube King clearly borrows a lot from Butler's original design. Buying a Tube King will get you into the same sort of territory as the Tube Driver. Not precisely the same but definitely in the same sort of area :)

 

The trick is to find the valve that suits you. Different valve brands and types suit different people. The Telefunken I use with mine sounds great but a NOS Mullard wasn't so hot. Horses for courses.

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How do you do this? I like Tung Sol tubes, but how am I guaranteed to get the sound I want from the preamp tubes in a pedal?

 

The answer is to buy a shitload of tubes and find the ones that suit you :D

 

Everyone's ears are different. I like Harma valves in a Vox AC15 but they sound crap in my Cornell Romany. I like Mullards in the Romany but a Mullard 12AX7 didn't suit the Tube King. I have RCA valves in my Princeton but I wouldn't use them with the Champ. Someone else might have totally conflicting views.

 

I liked the Tung-Sol valves I had, couple of 6L6 valves from memory. Never tried their preamp valves.

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I had the 3 knob Tube Driver for years and now have the Behringer VT911. The VT911 doesn't sound exactly like the Tube Driver, but it's pretty close. A little too much on the high end. There's a mod for it to make it closer to an overdrive. I know one part consists of putting a resistor and cap on the tone pot to make it more responsive to small adjustments. The other it a resistor and cap on one of the tube pins and then to somewhere on the circuit board. Unfortunately, I don't know where. I have a hard time dropping $15 on two resistors and two caps, when I could probably go down to the electronics store and get the whole mess for less than $1.00.

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Hows the quality of the Behringer VT911?

 

 

Seems to be fine. I'm not gigging or anything, but it holds up to mild use. It's a little noisy, but so was the original. When I fist got it, I thought the stomp switch was broken, but it turn out it's fine. I was expecting a click on the engage, but it's more like a momentary switch. The casing is like the Small Stone clone they make. It's a sheet metal housing, similar to (coincidence I'm sure) the old EHX pedals.

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