Do Valves make pedals better? The debate.

The tube alone is not the answer. Depends on how it is used. Duh!

At risk of being redundant, check out such as the Tone King PREAMP pedals (note that a third one, this time a Vox take, is about to drop). They are the full  TUBE preamp from their high end combo amps....Great sounding and very versatile. As I get older, smaller and lighter but still the full tone package, is a nice alternative.

Once more, the Effectrode Blackbird is also an excellent option.....Assuming you like that cascading gain sorta thing.....

 
The tube alone is not the answer. Depends on how it is used. Duh!

At risk of being redundant, check out such as the Tone King PREAMP pedals (note that a third one, this time a Vox take, is about to drop). They are the full  TUBE preamp from their high end combo amps....Great sounding and very versatile. As I get older, smaller and lighter but still the full tone package, is a nice alternative.

Once more, the Effectrode Blackbird is also an excellent option.....Assuming you like that cascading gain sorta thing.....
As these Tone King pedals are rather expensive, the concept begins to converge with the Synergy approach.  At some point you ask yourself: which is better for you - pedals on the floor, or modules in a head?

The Tubesteader pedals are cheaper so it makes the decision easier, but those Synergy modules sound GREAT. If the Synergy preamp head was cheaper I'd go that route in a heartbeat - one Morgan module and one Marshall JMP module.

SYN2-5.png

 
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As these Tone King pedals are rather expensive, the concept begins to converge with the Synergy approach.  At some point you ask yourself: which is better for you - pedals on the floor, or modules in a head?

The Tubesteader pedals are cheaper so it makes the decision easier, but those Synergy modules sound GREAT. If the Synergy preamp head was cheaper I'd go that route in a heartbeat - one Morgan module and one Marshall JMP module.

View attachment 99748
Which Morgan would you go with?

 
Yep.....The Tone King and Synergy products all trace back to the same folks, so they work much the same. It is pretty much a choice of which fits your needs better. For me,  I like the idea of having the preamp on a portable format board. And board mountable power amps work well, IMO. Of course the board becomes bigger if expanded to have more than one such preamp.😉

The Tubesteader tube pedals are also good AND less costly, but (IMO at least) not nearly as versatile. Still, if a person wanted multiple preamps on one board (like Dumble, Marshall, Tweed), they take up less real estate.

One of  these days I need to sort thru all this stuff and offload the extras......🤔

 
The Tubesteader tube pedals are also good AND less costly, but (IMO at least) not nearly as versatile. Still, if a person wanted multiple preamps on one board (like Dumble, Marshall, Tweed), they take up less real estate.
I'm not sold on the Tubesteader Gainlord or else I'd have gone that route.  Olly doesn't spam his pedals to reviewers before a launch, so there aren't many Gainlord demos on YouTube other than those from Tubesteader.

 
As these Tone King pedals are rather expensive, the concept begins to converge with the Synergy approach.  At some point you ask yourself: which is better for you - pedals on the floor, or modules in a head?

The Tubesteader pedals are cheaper so it makes the decision easier, but those Synergy modules sound GREAT. If the Synergy preamp head was cheaper I'd go that route in a heartbeat - one Morgan module and one Marshall JMP module.

View attachment 99748
I sometimes run a Syn2 system in the loop of a Tone King Imperial. Gives me IR options rather than cab cloning, and you get a tasty reverb and tremolo to boot. 

 
I sit a 12AX7 on top of my modeler du jour and man it sounds great!  🤣

It's like anything else, it depends on how it's done and what you're looking for.  

 
I had a Blue Tube pedal from Tube works. It was big, bulky and heavy - AND noisy. Once I also owned a very cool Ibanez PUE5 tube driver multi effect unit. It was cool. But I don't recollect that the tube inside made a noticable difference to it's tone. I should have kept it though, it was a damn cool unit.

 
I don't know if the tube pedals sound better. I've had two. The Tone Works Blue Tone, which was noisy as hell. And the Ibanez PUE5 tube unit, which was very cool. Should have kept it.

But don't get me started on pedals with Surface Mount Technology. The pedals I've had or tried that was built with this technology sounded stiffer and more harsh. It's audiable. Avoid.

 
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