Here is a photo of the board Donnie made with the amplifier foot switch added, ca. Stevie used this board for several years. Donnie made Stevie’s first pedal board, a piece of scrap aluminum bent along the top edge to lift that side off the stage floor, had Stevie place the wah, TS and a MXR Loop Selector where he wanted them on the board, and screwed the pedals to the aluminum board and reinforced with tape. After the song, he would run out and disconnect it! Then in 1982, guitar tech Donnie Opperman introduced Stevie to the Tube Screamer from his experience with Joe Walsh. Roadie Cutter Brandenburg would run out on stage between songs and plug the guitar into the wah pedal and the pedal into the amp. Perhaps the most popular of all Tube Screamers, the TS9 replaced the TS808 in 1982.”īefore 1982, Stevie went direct from guitar to amplifier with the exception of a wah pedal for Hendrix tunes.

Despite the popularity and Holy Grail status attained by the original TS808, the Tube Screamer wasn’t left alone - and plenty of pedal lovers are glad. The essence of the Tube Screamer’s appeal - what multitudes of similar designs that it has inspired over the years aim to capture - are the subtly pleasing qualities it induces as it interacts with a tube amp: As you increase the amplitude of an input signal to overload a tube amp’s preamp, it distorts the signal in a way that adds sustain, edge, and harmonic liveliness, while preserving the innate tonal characteristics of the guitar and amp - and without obscuring the player’s dynamics. It’s been rocked by guitar greats as diverse as Eric Johnson, Trey Anastasio, and Brad Paisley, and some would go as far as saying no single pedal has had a greater impact on musical expression or played as important a role in the development of effects modification. From Premier Guitar magazine: “The Ibanez Tube Screamer is arguably the most beloved of overdrive pedals.

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