TS-808HW

This is where this pedal gets interesting. Tube Screamers are noted for a very smooth, bluesy type overdrive effect, but are not fully transparent. Low end is lost, mids are bumped upward, and the treble frequencies can get a bit shrill if you turn the tone control up too far. The TS-808HW looks like it is positioned as the ultimate boutique TS that also corrects for these shortcomings. The bass low end has been enhanced in this pedal; much more comes out when hitting your low E string. The usual midhump IS present, but it's more subdued and not as dominant as a stock TS. The sweep on the tone control is completely different. It's darker when set at 12:00, but even when the tone control is turned up to 3:00 range, you don't get the typical spiky treble. Overall, this is a more open, natural sounding overdrive and gets out of the "boxey" sound of a common Tube Screamer. Also, this works well with a humbucker guitar, which to me is a first for a Tube Screamer (at least when used as an overdrive). A stock tube screamer (when the OD control is set past 12:00 and used as an overdrive, has a clean-bleedover effect with louder humbucker-equipped guitars. This one took to my Les Paul Custom well. I'm not sure what was altered with the circuit, but Ibanez's engineers definitely dialed in something good with this one.

I don't want to get into the handwired vs. PCB debate. Some can argue that a 9v pedal won't gain the benefits of handwiring on turrets like a tube amp, which may have capacitance problems on PCBs running high voltages. Consistency (or lack thereof) of build quality can be a potential issue anytime you have a human doing the work rather than a machine, but overall I'm personally not concerned. I think that this was quite a nice endeavor for Ibanez to take and I appreciate the HW effort. Very cool IMO.

If you're familiar with a Tube Screamer or ts-type circuit, then this will be familiar territory. Tone, Drive, and Level controls, easy to dial in as an overdrive or as a clean-boost. The difference on this unit is inside, with turret-board construction and direct handwiring of all components. Very interesting. I'm certain the circuit is a little bit different from the original TS-808, which I'll talk about more below.

Not sure here.

"It's too expensive," would be a likely argument with an average selling price of $349...But how many boutique pedals are there out there that are built on PCBs that are produced offshores and then marketed as "boutique"? There are a lot. I can respect the amount of work that goes into the wiring of this pedal - debate the benefits of it or not in sonics vs. PCB - but, whatever Ibanez has done to carefully mod this circuit, they REALLY nailed on something good here.