Splattle101
V.I.P. Member
- Joined
- May 30, 2008
- Messages
- 8,818
- Reaction score
- 4,581
I can’t say I’ve been moved to write a review of a pedal very often, but I’ll make an exception in this case. A couple of weeks ago I bought a cheap (scratch n dent sale) MI Audio Tube Zone. It looks like this (sorry about the crappy reflection! It’s all shiny 
):
This is the last version, not the current one, but the controls are the same. I’m a convinced user of MI’s stuff. I’ve bought four of their pedals, three of them new, and they’ve all done what they’re meant to do and done it really, really well. But this pedal takes the cake.
This has the normal three controls: volume, tone and gain. They’re the ones in the row closest to the switch. They operate pretty much as you’d expect, except that there’s a lot more volume than any TS808-type pedal. Apparently there’s even more if you run it at 18 V. I’ve not done that yet. The tone control is active, so it boosts the treble when it’s clockwise, and boosts the bass when it’s anti clockwise. It is not your normal passive treble cut. And the gain control has a really good taper so there’s a lot of fine control in the lower gain settings. They’re three really good, well thought out and useful controls.
The gain itself sounds excellent. It’s not a fuzz, so look elsewhere if that’s what you want. It’s not really a hard distortion, either, even though you can get loads of it. I don’t know enough about symmetric and asymmetric clipping to go into detail, but to me it sounds like a complex overdriving sound rather than a distortion. It’s a sound that sits very well as the overdrive sound in front of a clean amp (e.g., Bassman, Champ at low vols), or as part of the overdrive voicing of a master vol amp (e.g., Tiny Terror), or as part of the overdive voicing of a flogged-dirty non-master amp (e.g., Bassman or Champ flogged hard).
The other three controls in the top row are, from left to right, the ‘brightness’, the mids and the ‘character’ controls. The mids first. This is an active mid control, boosting meaty, guitar-important parts of the spectrum, and it works really well with the tone and character controls. But it’s the other two controls that really make this pedal in my view.
The brightness is a post-clipping filter. It allows you to set the tone of the pedal to suit the amp. I’ve done this briefly in setting up the pedal for rehearsals, so it sits well with my two amp rig. But tonight I used it to voice the pedal for my Champ (which is much brighter than my bigger amps). I was astonished at how well it did this job, without loosing the high frequencies in the distorted sound. I don’t know how better to explain it, but simply turning the brightness control down allowed me to use the same settings on my Champ that I’d used on my Bassman a few nights ago, playing loud as hell.
But even more surprising was the ‘character’ control. This is a PRE-clipping EQ, with the emphasis on the bass. Turned anti clockwise it’s like your typical TS type pedal, and it fills out it’s turned clockwise. But as you get around past 12 o’clock, the bottom end really fills out. I thought I’d experiment a bit with this on the little Champ tonight. Oh-my-f**king-goodness! It made this little single-ended-class-A-5-Watts-downhill-with-the-wind-behind-it amp sound freakin HUGE!!! I stuck a little delay on it and was drifting off into California Jam Mistreated land…
Very impressive. The controls work really well together, and while 6 of them sitting on top there seems a bit too much to get one’s head around in a flash, they’re actually pretty simple. There’s also an internal trim to set the mid point of the tone control, too, although I’ve not mucked around with that at all yet.
So this is a really versatile pedal in it’s own right, and I find it takes the TS808 in front of it very well. It handled the booster function of the Boost N Buff very well, too. I’ve not yet tried a fuzz so that’s next. Importantly, whatever I did on the Tube Zone was retained when I turned on a pedal in front of it. So when I set it for that big sound through the Champ (still geeking out about that), and then turned the TS808 on in front of it, the tone was coloured by the TS but it still sounded huge, stadium filling, etc.
But beyond the range of possible sounds in this box, what I’m most impressed about is its ability to be tuned to a particular rig, or to tune a particular rig. And that’s really quite something in my experience.
):
This is the last version, not the current one, but the controls are the same. I’m a convinced user of MI’s stuff. I’ve bought four of their pedals, three of them new, and they’ve all done what they’re meant to do and done it really, really well. But this pedal takes the cake.
This has the normal three controls: volume, tone and gain. They’re the ones in the row closest to the switch. They operate pretty much as you’d expect, except that there’s a lot more volume than any TS808-type pedal. Apparently there’s even more if you run it at 18 V. I’ve not done that yet. The tone control is active, so it boosts the treble when it’s clockwise, and boosts the bass when it’s anti clockwise. It is not your normal passive treble cut. And the gain control has a really good taper so there’s a lot of fine control in the lower gain settings. They’re three really good, well thought out and useful controls.
The gain itself sounds excellent. It’s not a fuzz, so look elsewhere if that’s what you want. It’s not really a hard distortion, either, even though you can get loads of it. I don’t know enough about symmetric and asymmetric clipping to go into detail, but to me it sounds like a complex overdriving sound rather than a distortion. It’s a sound that sits very well as the overdrive sound in front of a clean amp (e.g., Bassman, Champ at low vols), or as part of the overdrive voicing of a master vol amp (e.g., Tiny Terror), or as part of the overdive voicing of a flogged-dirty non-master amp (e.g., Bassman or Champ flogged hard).
The other three controls in the top row are, from left to right, the ‘brightness’, the mids and the ‘character’ controls. The mids first. This is an active mid control, boosting meaty, guitar-important parts of the spectrum, and it works really well with the tone and character controls. But it’s the other two controls that really make this pedal in my view.
The brightness is a post-clipping filter. It allows you to set the tone of the pedal to suit the amp. I’ve done this briefly in setting up the pedal for rehearsals, so it sits well with my two amp rig. But tonight I used it to voice the pedal for my Champ (which is much brighter than my bigger amps). I was astonished at how well it did this job, without loosing the high frequencies in the distorted sound. I don’t know how better to explain it, but simply turning the brightness control down allowed me to use the same settings on my Champ that I’d used on my Bassman a few nights ago, playing loud as hell.
But even more surprising was the ‘character’ control. This is a PRE-clipping EQ, with the emphasis on the bass. Turned anti clockwise it’s like your typical TS type pedal, and it fills out it’s turned clockwise. But as you get around past 12 o’clock, the bottom end really fills out. I thought I’d experiment a bit with this on the little Champ tonight. Oh-my-f**king-goodness! It made this little single-ended-class-A-5-Watts-downhill-with-the-wind-behind-it amp sound freakin HUGE!!! I stuck a little delay on it and was drifting off into California Jam Mistreated land…
Very impressive. The controls work really well together, and while 6 of them sitting on top there seems a bit too much to get one’s head around in a flash, they’re actually pretty simple. There’s also an internal trim to set the mid point of the tone control, too, although I’ve not mucked around with that at all yet.
So this is a really versatile pedal in it’s own right, and I find it takes the TS808 in front of it very well. It handled the booster function of the Boost N Buff very well, too. I’ve not yet tried a fuzz so that’s next. Importantly, whatever I did on the Tube Zone was retained when I turned on a pedal in front of it. So when I set it for that big sound through the Champ (still geeking out about that
), and then turned the TS808 on in front of it, the tone was coloured by the TS but it still sounded huge, stadium filling, etc. But beyond the range of possible sounds in this box, what I’m most impressed about is its ability to be tuned to a particular rig, or to tune a particular rig. And that’s really quite something in my experience.
