BK Butler Tube Driver review/question

[jetmarshall]

I just got my new reissue Tube Driver this weekend and I've been playing around with it. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my hyped up expectations.

 

I think it sounds good - a lot of juicy lead tone and plenty of rich sustain. It's got very smooth attack, so it makes the amp sing creamy lead notes if you dial it for the EJ sound. On the other hand, it doesn't handle chords well - it seems to be too rich for chords. There's all sorts of muddiness and the dry sounding distortion craps out. The pedal tends to be noisy as well.

 

Do I have to experiment with different tubes to find a clear, high-gain 12AX7 in order to make the chords less muddy? Or is it part of the sound of the pedal for the chords to sound like this?

 

For the moment, I still love my mosfet FD 2, which has more edge and juice. I like the aggressive attack and the transparency of this pedal.

[j_hotch]

My advice, if you want to tame the pedal and make it more chord-friendly just turn the gain down very low.

 

Try setting it around 9:00 o'clock or so. The pedal still packs a lot of punch even at that level.

 

I tried a lower gain tube in mine (12AU7) but it made it too smooth and took away all of the 'crunch.'

 

Just my US$0.02

[jetmarshall]

Thanks. Will it help to put in a really high-gain 12AX7?

[j_hotch]

I'm not familiar with the difference between a 'high-gain' 12AX7 and a 'regular' 12AX7, but my initial thought is that if you are trying to get less distortion, a higher-gain tube would be the opposite of what you want.

 

The pedal definitely sounds different when swapping the tube, however. So give it a try and let us know how it worked.

[waveman]

 

Originally posted by j_hotch I'm not familiar with the difference between a 'high-gain' 12AX7 and a 'regular' 12AX7, but my initial thought is that if you are trying to get less distortion, a higher-gain tube would be the opposite of what you want. The pedal definitely sounds different when swapping the tube, however. So give it a try and let us know how it worked.

 

 

That depends on the pedal. As weird as this sounds, try an Ei high gain 12ax7. They are fairly cheap. I typically don't like the Ei tube in most things, but I put one in my US Tube King, which is fairly close relative of that pedal (I think), and that tube sounded the best to my ears. It will definately help with the mud.

[Arjae]

If you "just" got it, give it some time as is but pay attention to how you are setting the two tone knobs. When I first got mine, I thought it sucked balls. But that is because I set the tone knobs visually instead of with my ears. What I mean is, I ended up find out that you need to start with the tone knobs almost off, and then slowly start increasing them. If you have the low tone knob too high, it is going to make it fart out. If I remember correctly, I have my low tone knob around 10 o'clock and my high one around 11 o'clock. What the pedal lacks is a mids tone knob. But it is not needed once you find where the low and high knobs need to be set to get it all to balance out. With the settings I mentioned above, I am able to use the entire sweep of the gain knob and get excellent results at any gain setting.

 

Give it some more time and tweak it. I ended up going back to the stock tube after trying some others. I talked to BK Butler and the tube he puts in there is not just an ordinary, unlabeled, no-name tube. It has been built exactly to his specs to compliment the pedal. He wouldn't however tell me who builds it since it is somewhat proprietary to him.

 

Hope that helps a bit. It has made me go from hating the pedal to having it be a really great piece on my board.