EHX's Tube Pedals are wild, wonderful, and worth their own video
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ก.ค. 2024
- It started out catching a good deal on a Tube Zipper a few years ago. Then I had some Reverb money burning a hole in my pocket which happened to equal the asking price of a Wiggler. The Muff'n, I can't say, but some plants may have been involved in that one.
Either way, here's the most bonkers series of pedals ever to exist (perhaps).
Use my zzounds link when buying gear: www.zzounds.com/a--3981088
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro Jam
3:13 - English Muff'n
4:43 - Tube Zipper
7:01 - The Wiggler
9:23 - What's the deal?
11:25 - Voltage
12:55 - Tubes
14:54 - English Muff'n Tube Swap
17:09 - Conclusion - เพลง
I always overlooked the Wiggler because I don’t chase tremolo tones much, but holy shit, that is one of the nicest trems I’ve ever heard, more like a harmonic tremolo than a standard one.
I was legit surprised at how great that pedal sounds. Especially the tremolo and Hammond settings
Your channel has quickly become one of my favorites. Showcasing weird pedals, but also popular ones and ACTUALLY breaking them down. I love that it's so much more than just "look at this weird thing!"
Keep up the great work.
Agreed
Thoroughly enjoyed the pro wrestler intro. That Wiggler sounds nice.
Man and I thought the WORM was a freaky pedal 😂😂😂
Great video highlighting awesome gear!
Again, another great video. Your excitement when you're playing with the pedals is contagious. And the presentation and overall vibe of your videos is incredibly genuine. Again, keep up the great work! Always looking forward to your videos. :)
Keep at it buddy, love your videos!!!
Great video, looking forward to the deep dives on all of these
14:50 thank you for ‘going there’ and doing the research. You rock! I love my little Mesa boogie v-twin and took its 12ax7 tubes out for 12at7s to smooth it out and the difference was similar to what I hear here.
Haha, I was *not* expecting that shout-out at the end. 😄 But yeah, I'm definitely chuffed with the top jacks!
I really need to get me one of those Tube Zippers...
The "wurl" mode of the Wiggler sounds like they spit the signal, one with trem and one without. I like the "acey", it sounds like trem and vibrato at the same time. Thanks for doing these pedals. I thought they were just overly expensive when they were new. Boy was I wrong!!! VERY cool. Nice job.
Very nice! Tube pedals are always fascinating. Long live 90s wrestling!
Wow! Excellent opening riff!! Almost bought that Muffin a few years back.
Good stuff as always 👍
Great intro! Love my Wiggler.
Glad to see this, there's been a Wiggler for sale in my area for a very long time, given the size and power requirements, I'm glad I didn't take the offer. Still pretty cool though, thanks!
Awesome video. I’m sold on all 3!
EHX is a master of product and design iteration. They have tried so many form factors on some of these effects. This one in particular always caught my attention. And yeah, that filter sounds amazing.
Muffin tone nailed all the nooks and crannies on that sweet, buttery backing track.
I remember being obsessed with these pedals when I started playing, seeing them in every catalog. Never did get my hands on anything from this series but it definitely got me down the path to buying classic big box EHX pedals
At this point, it seems like a good investment. Heck, anything with full-size components that can be fixed and modded with a soldering iron seems slightly vintage.
Cool video. I really like the quick schematic breakdown. I think I'm going to order one or two of these. They'd be real fun to build a board for - especially one that doesn't use that whacky power jack. A charge pump/regulator would get it there.
I own an LPB2ube, while it now sits on the shelf, it gave my many many fun tones and stereo goodness
Always thought these were intriguing pedals and would buy a Wiggler or Tube Zipper if one came up at a reasonable cost. Please make the first deep dive on the Tube Zipper! It's just so different! Great video again. All the little gags! Plexit!! Haha! Good one!
Very nice and thorough review. I have an English Muff'n. Bought it brand new as a bass player but it didnt catch on to me as a 'muff' per say. (it kills the low end) For me this pedal has been an 'amp in a box' that I used in power amp in and fx returns of my amps, particularly when I switched to guitar and all I had around was bass amps. This pedal turned my bass amps in 'Faux guitar amps',
The Tube Zipper is glorious!
It’s a shining example of what a pedal can be
The wiggler and tube zipper are magnificent. I have both and they are inspirational.
Agreed! And they’re something special in that we’re unlikely to see them ever in any other form factor.
I’ve been wanting to see a video to explore these! I’m am so there for a tube zipper deep dive. I feel like there’s shades of raccoon labs ecto cooler present there. Great video! ✌️😃🎸
I loved this, I have the wiggler and used to have the English muffin and hot tubes (the one with actual tubes). Regrettably sold those two but the English muffin was one of the best drive pedals I’ve ever owned. Played through a 70’s fender bassman 100 head and Marshall 4x12 it sounded glorious. I tried some 12ax7’s too and it sounded massive and awesome but I found the 12ay7’s would clean up better with pick attack and guitars volume.
The X's in the Muffin sound brighter and clearer - like NEW tubes. Maybe a touch more overdrive but to me, better tone. The T's had more mud.
Love my English Muffin & Black Finger is a seriously special thing!
I *just* got a Black Finger after completing this video. Came with the wooden box and everything!
Reverend Reeves Gabbrels…his work with Bowie was insane. I was not aware of a Reeves signature guitar but will investigate!
I have the same three as you in my EHX collection. All great.
Good taste in pedals! Since the video, I got the Black Finger (in the wooden box!) too
@@StompboxBreakdown thanks. I enjoy your videos. I think we are from a similar era (were you born early mid 80s perhaps?). My first pedal was a DOD Vibro Thang, for example. I have looked at the Black Finger for collection purposes - I have around 25 EHX 90s era big box pedals - but am totally well served by the Dinosaural OTC-201 for always on comp. Im not sure I "need" it - but isnt that the case for like 99% of pedals?!
cheers.
Just found your channel, great stuff!
Thank you so much
6:50. The Conversation is required viewing to be in my cult! Rock on!
Heck yeah!! Such a good film. I watch it every year on my birthday
Also how do I sign up for your cult?
17:45 “a thought experiment that nobody has the heart to stop”. Amen. They power Jack coming outta the side is a real pain. But it’s worth the sound. My Wiggler is in line with a moog murf 105. They make very interesting cousins.
That muffn sounds fantastic. Not quite the plexi thing but it’s own thing. Pick of the bunch for me
Tube Zipper has a lot of questions and seems like it's a bit skeptical. Brilliant.
I collected all these tube pedals a few years ago. It cost me about $1,500 total and I have no regrets, but I’m a collector. The only ones that I recommend to players rather than collectors are the Wiggler and Hot Tubes.
You’ve already discovered how cool the Wiggler is. The Hot Tubes is a really great overdrive that can get a good amount of gain. The controls on it are somewhat unintuitive and can actually self-oscillate, which is pretty unusual and no other drive pedal I have does that. I think it’s a lot better than the English Muff’n.
The Black Finger is just a compressor that can squish like crazy. Not any big surprises. The Black Finger from the ‘70s squishes like crazy all the time, but the tube one has more control and lets you dial it back.
The LPB-2ube actually sounds pretty bad when you feed one side into the other for overdrive as EHX suggests you can use it for. Otherwise, it’s just two pretty plain boosts in one.
The Tube EQ has an expression pedal input, which you can use to make filter sweeps, which is why the Q is so emphasized on the art, like their Q-tron/Doctor Q/etc. pedals.
I have the 12AY7 mic preamp but I haven’t really had any opportunity to use it. I know mine is functional from testing it briefly, but you’ll find a lot of very positive reviews saying it sounds amazing and is a great bargain for a tube preamp of such quality, and on the other hand a ton of people saying theirs are very noisy and fickle. There’s a forum thread somewhere where the designer of it weighed in on things and he admits there had to be some compromises, but he still seemed pretty proud of the end result.
Your English Muff’n tubes are surely not original as you surmised, but EHX has always said that the English Muff’n uses two 12AY7s while mine came with, if I remember correctly, a 12AY7 on the right and a 12AX7 on the left. I found a forum post from when the pedal was just released where someone said the same thing. Apparently EHX decided to change it just before it went on sale and never updated their ad copy. I tried it with two 12AY7s and decided it was better with the 12AX7 anyway.
Whoa, this is incredibly helpful!! Thank you. I may or may not have just purchased a minty fresh (with the wooden box) Black Finger. Sounds like I need a Hot Tubes as well.
Thanks again for that, all great info.
The english muffin is my secret weapon on my board . it can nail that searing SRV tone pretty close if set correctly using a Strat and a Super Reverb .. had it for years now . maybe i should buy another in case it breaks down someday
Sooo cool. EHX is def my favorite company. No one else would make something so impractical. Could you imagine a Strymon tube zipper?? Hahha No. Keep the weird stuff coming Mike.
My desert island pedal brand would be EHX without a doubt, such a wide variety of unique products and usable sounds
Actually, I own a Strymon Damage Control Solid Metal pedal with two tubes providing ample distortion. I also owned a Damage Control Womanizer pedal and a Liquid Blues pedal but sold them because they sounded pretty much like the Solid Metal. Then they morphed into the Strymon lineup that we see today, which is probably a good thing. But I will keep the Solid Metal pedal because, well, tube distortion.
@@texanfournow yea there's def some cool damage control stuff. Their big delay is pretty much a timeline with tubes if I remember.. I gotta get some of that stuff.
That Wiggler... amazing, but total missed opportunity for a stereo effect, particularly with all the real estate available for jacks. Tube zipper is honestly one of the coolest envelope filters I''ve ever heard, sounds amazingly versatile and I can't wait for the deep dive. English Muff'n... I mean it's a thing, it's been done many times before. This one has tubes but it's also a lot of pedalboard real estate. But then I've never been a huge plexi fan.
I have the wiggler! it was always quite noisy until I opened it up and rerouted the power to the bottom of the pedal. It's ac and runs relatively high current for a pedal and the internal wires from the pcb to the power jack ran too close to some of the circuit. I wish it was something they'd addressed before release, but it was also an interesting learning experience!
I’d love to watch you do a deep dive into the Blackfinger Compressor from the same series. I think it definitely needs to be demonstrated in a mixing capacity as well. Throughly enjoyed this video as all your others. 🤘
That’s definitely the next one I want to get.
Man, you forgot about the Black Finger 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽
The Tube zipper is a great pedal!
I used to have a Wiggler and I regret selling it. Almost bought one last year but remembered I need to drag that adapter everywhere
Damn ... I loved Hacksaw!!!
Do you remember the Sheepherders!!🙌🏻
I sure miss my Wiggler ever since it stopped working about 20 yrs ago. The only always on pedal I’ve ever had on my board. Kept it on the Acey vibrato, rate at about 8 o’clock and intensity about 11:00 and it made Everything sound better
Have EHX fix it! I had a hog and wiggler stop working and they fixed both for under $100 if I remember.
@@doublebass Thanks for the tip double bass! I hadn’t thought of that. I’m putting together a new pedalboard and it would be sooo nice to get it back on my board. I’ll look in to that
I used a zipper as my main bass drive for years. Robert Been of BRMC did as well.
That sounds awesome. It’s absolute thunder on bass.
Gotta give it to EHX. Making the weirdest and wonderfull pedals 🙏
Exactly. If they didn’t, few others would
Hey! Nice video with the three tube pedals from EHX! On mine Tube Zipper the tubes does not light up. I got the effects running, the valves even got hot but they do not light up. Is there any problem with that? Should I change the tubes?
The majority of the light coming from the tubes on my Tube Zipper is actually coming from LEDs underneath the tubes themselves. If your tubes are getting hot, and it sounds right, then they're working right. I bet if you looked at them in the dark, you'd see some bits glowing orange/purple/blue. Yours not having the LEDs under them is interesting, I wonder if someone physically cut them out of the circuit or something.
Some of these pedals make a lot of sense (LPB 2tube, Black Finger, Tube EQ), others are novel but potentially useful (Hot Tubes, Muff'in) and then there's the Wiggler and the Tube Zipper. While they sound amazing, I cant imagine how tubes are gonna possibly affect the modulation effect itself other than through the gain stage. At that point is just better to have the same non-tube pedal in the same chain as a tube preamp/compressor (pedal)
Okay, so isn't the English Muff'n really the front end of a tube amplifier? It sure lays out in the schematic like that. Anyway, great breakdown (see what I did there?) of these pedals. The opener using the Gecko delay was more Gilmour-like than I would have thought. Which brings me to this; Why isn't the English Muff'n part of the Big Muff family, or is it? Thanks again for the great episode.
Thanks! Yeah, it's pretty close to what you'd expect in a preamp. I guess it technically could be a muff, having the same cascading gain design, but it has a lot more territory in straight-up overdrive before topping out in fuzz territory when pushed. Either way, I just haven't seen it mentioned on any of the Big Muff pages when I was doing research for that video, so I kind of assume it's... something else.
Bone Saw!!!
Shame you didnt showcase the hot tubes one! Thing is an absolute beauty of a pedal, hard to find tho haha
I wish I could find one. I’m still on the hunt
Does the English muffin have the glow lamp too??? Or no??
I'd love to hear your recommendations for the cheaper alternatives you mentioned. Im a newcomer to pedals and am find it fascinating learning ✌️
It's a really fun world with sooooo many options. For a lower-cost English Muff'n, check out the EHX Hot Wax. I straight-up love that pedal. For something Tube Zipper-esque, an envelope filter like the Fender Pour Over Envelope Filter looks like it's got some really nice sounds and maybe a little easier to control, though without the gain of the Tube Zipper. For modulation like the Wiggler, I love the DOD VibroThang, but the EHX Eddy is also amazing. You may also want to look into UniVibes and Rotary pedals, and the cheaper alternatives in there are the Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe, JHS Unicorn, and a few others I'm forgetting at the moment.
@@StompboxBreakdown Thanks so much for the reply. That's a big help to me. Cheers
@@mr-iz8cx Absolutely! None of those are what I’d call “budget” pedals, but they’re ones I’m sure would keep working for years and years and years.
@@StompboxBreakdown I like that the EHX pedals are designed to take line level as well. That's super handy. Could be the clincher
@@StompboxBreakdown Hi again, I watched your video on the DOD VibroThang which is awesome. The parallel processing you mentioned (at 8:55min:sec in that video), is that the same process the Wiggler employs?
That kind of lateral thinking is super interesting to me.
There's another really rad "8th" pedal in this series, though not really a pedal as there is no foot switch. The 12ay7 Mic Pre.
Oh wow. That's pretty rad. There's one on Reverb right now for $225, too. This is such a great series of pedals, and one we'll never see more of again (at least built this way)
I had all three and they all broke. The Tube Zipper went through three warranties. The Hot Tubes was better in the tube version though.
That's really unfortunate. I can see how they might be prone to breakage with all of the high voltage and tube sockets. I'm definitely trying to get my hands on a Hot Tubes. Found a Black Finger tube compressor WITH THE WOODEN BOX for an absolute steal the week after this video went live. Now I feel obligated to complete the collection.
As much as I was getting all hyped that I needed an English Muff'n. In the back of my head, I was thinking, "Angry Charlie, Angry Charlie, Angry Charlie, modern components, practical design, small footprint." You validated my thoughts at the end.
Have you or anyone you know had any experience with the Hot Tubes one? I’m super interested in it but there’s basically zero information or videos of people demo’ing one that I can find. I’d really love to get one but shelling out $200-$300 for one without ever hearing it is a big risk.
Haven’t been able to get my hands on one, unfortunately
I want a Tube Zipper…..that’s what she said
Have English Muffin,try other pedals,but it always ends up back again,it is the go to 12ax7 pedal
dude i replaced the tubes in my english muffn and ill tell you what not only is that thing to protect you from stepping on the tubes but mine glow red themselves not bright but they glow lol
I always thought tubes in effects were just an ornament. Sometimes true and sometimes not. I had an early Tubeworks, tube Driver (couldn't afford a Chandler). Nor real good.
dude i put ax7s in my english muffn and it sounds great. now i think i may go back to ay7's tho lol i dont know shit about tubes i just remmeber being told it would dirty it up more and at the time i was like lets do it.
Depending on the application, the 12AY7 should have about half as much gain as the 12AX7, so if you want more headroom before it starts distorting, in theory, that should help. I'll sometimes use them for the phase inverter tube on amps. Time spent experimenting is good, as long as everything's roughly in-spec.
@oxBreakdown the headroom makes sense i bought the thing for one of my first pedals thought i was buying a fuzz pedal like the other muffs i was wrong. i also got this thing from boss a vf-1 multi effects processor in a half rack i quit messing with the thing cause i blew something inside my sheffield bandit 112 and didnt want to mess up my marshallf or orange id like to mess with it again sometime its just so intimidating with all the settings. makes some really cool effects and sounds tho can be used for voice guitar bass kinda cool you know anything about half rack processors? could that of been what made me blow my amp. it still works but cuts on and off the amp that is
@@StompboxBreakdown its this thing the vf1 i was talking about
th-cam.com/video/uvK4vZ_U1Tg/w-d-xo.html
Do you have a music podcast?
Nope, just this
17:35 Is that a dig at me?! I hate top mounted jacks.
Haha, nope. That was aimed at @pedalexperiments
It literally sounded like it was directed straight at myself. And now I've found another pedal demo channel. Thanks.
Sadly, the Plexit is not too soon but too late
Demos need a cleaner amp setting!!
Amp was set clean, man.
I hope the full bridge rectifier is a reference or I will unfollow.
Jokes aside, when I was young and discover mi first ehx pedal in 2012 or something I dreamed scrolling in the ehx site about having those pedal with the bulb where all the toan is contained. I never had the money at the time and when I had the money I realized that I could not stand having those chunky delicate stuff. I threw my pedals around, I'm a disaster, I accepted my fate with only throwable pedal
100% an @ElectroBOOM reference
Had an English Muffin years ago. Horrible noisy pedal. Love EHX tho.
They took the conversation off iTunes
They need to put it back
@@StompboxBreakdown I was always interested in the tube zipper because it reminds me the paranoid android solo. Can’t wait for the longer vid about it
And sadly none are in production The Hot Tubes was best
Do you think your millennial and zoomer viewers will understand the "series of tubes" reference?
Probably not. But the elder millennials deserve some inside jokes of our own.
The Muff’n is a preamp made to sound like a classic Marshall. It’s is not a dirt box and it is not a Big Muff. If you don’t plug it in a power amp you are using it wrong
Please please do an episode about the EHX Flanger Hoax. That one should be fun!
I keep trying to score a deal on one of those. It looks so badass.