Difference between Real Tube pedal and Real Tube rackmount?

[Fusion1]

I have owned the RT902 rackmount version with the yellow lettering and it seemed to only have pretty mild overdrive and even after changing out the pre amp tube it still was pretty tame. I remember hearing a guy using a small combo amp and the only distortion he used was the Real Tube pedal, which was thick and had noticeably much much more high gain than the rackmount version. How is this possible? Did they redesign the circuit or something? Weird thing is I preferred the sound he was getting out of the pedal and the rackmount I rarely got decent tones out of. Anyone know the story here? I do recall the Real Tube II rackmount had cascading gain of sorts which provided much more gain than the original. Was the Real Tube II just the rackmount version of the Real Tube pedal?

 

Here is the same model rackmount that I owned:

 

 

Here is the pedal that I remember having a super high gain:

 

[guitarman3001]

I don't know the answer to your question but this thread brings back memories. I used to have a real tube II rackmount and nowadays I kick myself for ever getting rid of it. That thing had amazing tone.

[benzem]

Different animals.

[kayd_mon]

I've got that same pedal, and it does have some heavier distortion. I swapped a 12AY7 in for the original 12AX7 to decrease the gain a bit, and all it did was take off some of the fizz. It still has plenty of overdrive. Sadly, I never use the pedal anymore, since the switch is going bad.

[Alecto]

 

I've got that same pedal, and it does have some heavier distortion. I swapped a 12AY7 in for the original 12AX7 to decrease the gain a bit, and all it did was take off some of the fizz. It still has plenty of overdrive. Sadly, I never use the pedal anymore, since the switch is going bad.

 

 

I had one of those back in the day; I used it to warm up my lousy Fender Frontman 15 solid-state piece of {censored}. That footswitch was always garbage but the tone was quite musical. I wonder what happened to it.

[WRGKMC]

The foot pedal uses a starved voltage arrangement for the tube.

Vaccume tubes like 12AX7's need a couple of hundred volts to operate at optimum

voltage and provide good sound quality. You dont get that from a wall wart.

Most of that overdrive you hear is from transistors.

The tube is simply a gimick to warm the sound up a little and add some compression.

Theres practically no gain factor running the tube bias so low. Thats why

theres so little difference in tone when you change tubes.

 

 

The rack using likely uses the same starved voltage circuit for the tubes as do many.

I have several rack preamps with the same starved tube circuits and they are all about the same.

 

The circuits involving actual high voltage biasing requires a large transfomer that wouldnt

fit into a rack unit, at least not easily without it being a special design to fit in there.

The difference in sound quality between a starved and high voltage circuit is like night and day

when you compare them side by side.

 

Im not completely knocking the starved tube designs completely. You can get some neat things out

of them if the transistor circuitry that does most of the work is good.

 

I have one of those Rocktec Silver Dragons I use on my live setup.

The sound quality was nearly identical to thee Real Tube my buddy has.

I did some mods on it to reduce the transistor gain which was way over the top.

I can get some really decent overtones out of the thing now.

Its definately not a high voltage tube preamp tone but the Rocktec runs on

18V which is stepped up which is allot better than the 9V starved plate designs I've used.

Run into an actual tube amp and you can get some nice glassy tones.

[gdsmithtx]

 

I've got that same pedal, and it does have some heavier distortion. I swapped a 12AY7 in for the original 12AX7 to decrease the gain a bit, and all it did was take off some of the fizz. It still has plenty of overdrive. Sadly, I never use the pedal anymore, since the switch is going bad.

 

 

I did exactly that same thing, and really dug it after the change. My switch is still going strong, even though I've had it for like 20 years.

 

EDIT: You can probably get that footswitch fixed quite inexpensively.

[GAS Man]

Hmm, I have the pedal and indeed it does have a lot of gain. It's quite fuzzy and somewhat industrial sounding, not really my cup O' tea since I can't tone it down to that "edge of breakup" level. I was torn between the blue tube and the black one, and some nimrod at MF talked me into the black one.

 

Right now my pedal needs another "real" tube.

[Fusion1]

Does anyone know why the rackmount Real Tube and the Real Tube pedal differ so much gain wise? You'd expect more versatility out of a rack unit than a small pedal but this was not the case.

[benzem]

 

Does anyone know why the rackmount Real Tube and the Real Tube pedal differ so much gain wise? You'd expect more versatility out of a rack unit than a small pedal but this was not the case.

 

 

Tough to say. But some tube pre's from that era were low gain and I'd GUESS this was due to fitting in with a rack full of gear. More intended as a tone enhancing/shaping tool than a dirt box.

 

BTW, have you tried a Peavey Rockmaster preamp? Incredible unit. My fav pre-amp, and that includes the built-in pre's I love on my Carvin V-3, fender HRD&'65 RI. It'll do jazz to metal, has a seperate fx loop for EACH of the 3 channels!!! AND a loop for the 2 gain channels, the clean only, and yes one that affects ALL the channels!

[kayd_mon]

 

The foot pedal uses a starved voltage arrangement for the tube. Vaccume tubes like 12AX7's need a couple of hundred volts to operate at optimum voltage and provide good sound quality. You dont get that from a wall wart. Most of that overdrive you hear is from transistors. The tube is simply a gimick to warm the sound up a little and add some compression. Theres practically no gain factor running the tube bias so low. Thats why theres so little difference in tone when you change tubes.

 

 

I know that a lot of the tube pedals, etc. don't run the tubes high enough, but to clarify, the change in tubes did change the tone (less fizz, and therefore more crunchy sounding), but it didn't affect the gain too much. So, as you say, much of the gain must come from transistors.