Unity Volume on a Tubescreamer

[ichilton]

Hi,

I built up a Tubescreamer on a custom PCB based on the open source / Green Bean schematic.

It has a TS-808 / TS-9 switch but none of the other mods - I just soldered links on the board as required.

It seems to work and sound fine, however unity volume with the Gain & Tone at noon is between 2 and 3 o'clock.

I seem to get plenty of boost between there and fully turned, but I just wondered if that was normal? - it seems very high. I'm used to unity being more around 11-12 o'clock on other pedals.

Thanks,

Ian

[DutchMF]

Are you using it with a clean amp? I've built a couple of TS's so far and with volume at 3 o'clock, they're definitely above unity, even with the gain quite low.

Paul

[ichilton]

Yep, into a clean Marshall JCM800 combo.

Where would you say unity is on yours?

Any ideas what would lower the output? - everything else seems to work ok....

Thanks,

Ian

[jkokura]

You should never use another pedal's controls to determine whether the pedal in front of you is normal or not.

One good piece of advice I was once given was to listen with my ears, not with my eyes. For pedal settings, or amp settings, or guitar settings, we often go to the 'normal' of what we expect with other devices. However, that gets us into the habit of only using one setting on everything, and we never experience the 'sweet spot' of the gear we're using.

I once heard a story about a guy who ordered a Marshall stack of some sort. It was his first marshall. He got it, and was super disappointed and a week later brought it all back in to the local shop. His complaint was that there wasn't enough bass. The problem was that he set the tone controls just like his fender amp, which had so much bass that he had it set at like 1 or 2. So when he setup his marshall, he turned the bass all the way off.

The guitar shop guy plugged in a guitar, tweaked the tone controls a bit, and then rocked some ACDC, and the guy was dumb founded.

Anyway, this turning long, and bordering on bossy, so I'll wrap it up. Basically, what I'm saying is - if the output is still low when the control is on max, then there might be a problem. However, if the pedal sounds great, just the knob is pointing in a different direction than you were expecting, I would say you should lose the expectations and rock the awesome sounding pedal.

Jacob

[DutchMF]

Good point Jacob! I was merely relating from my own experience. I use my OD's mainly to goose the dirt channel on my amp, with gain relatively low, volume quite high and the tone anywhere that suits my ears that night. I've noticed that when I switch to the clean channel with my TS accidentally still on, I get a pretty big volume boost... Good to know in a gig context!

Paul

[ichilton]

Yeah, valid point - it just didn't seem to have as much level as I thought it should, so I was wondering if there was anything I could do to narrow down the problem...

Thanks,

Ian

[jkokura]

Usually that would indicate the wrong value(s) on some part(s).

Jacob

[ichilton]

I'll check through everything - thanks.

Ian