Ibanez Tube King TK999US mod questions

glpg80

Well-known member
boyedav":3l8s1ldd said:
I owned one of these and was 90% happy with it, but just couldn't tweak that last 10% out of it. I mostly rolled different 12AX7 and 12AT7 tubes, plus I like it better at 12v than 9v. I just bought another one because I've been reading about the Tubeworks/Butler stuff and the Tube King, and think I might be able to get it the rest of the way.

The 12AT7 tubes didn't make the gain control as useful as I was hoping, but I've read about guys who love a 12AU7 in these pedals.

Beyond that, this article talks about a 100K resister before the first triode as being one of the key differences between the Real Tube 901 and Blue Tube 903, and that type of difference is what I think I'm going for:

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t2397/#post255174
http://music-electronics-forum.com/t2397/#post255272

Could something similar be down with the TK999US? Here's the schematic for that: http://www.dirk-hendrik.com/ibanez_tk999_us.pdf

Yeah you could do something similar. I'd change R10 from a 15k to a 7k and R9 from a 4.7k to a 10k. That should give you a considerable bump in gain. You may want to run a tube with a lower siemens value than 100, IE tube roll some 12AT7 or 12AU7's.

I'd also like to slightly lower the center frequency of the mid control in the TK999US, which I'm guessing my tech could do by switching out the midrange cap for a different value. Does that sound right?

I think I'd try changing R24 to a 120k and see if that does what you want. If not, change the cap from a 2n2 to a 3n3.

If I'm reading the schematic right (no guarantees there), there are multiple opamps in the signal path. Would there be any benefit to socketing those, or is their role not one that would have an affect on tone?

Finally, I typically have the Master control cranked, and wish it had a bit more. Any idea what that would take?

Remove R8 and short it out with a wire. A more extreme thing to do is changing the pot to a log taper 250k. Another extreme volume boost would be to remove R4. If you want something a little less drastic, you could try swapping R4 to either a 50k or 100k and leaving the pot the way it is (still do R8).

I'm going to have a qualified tech do the work, but I want to have an idea of whether this is viable and what's involved, and make sure I'm properly articulating what I'm looking for.

Thanks for your help.
 
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