BK Butler Tube Driver - TXBA Gear Index

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The Tube Driver houses a preamp tube and it generates distortion by overdriving the tube rather than conventional pedal methods. It’s kind of like having a section of your amp right in a pedal. I found this one at Guitar Resurrection in Austin Texas. This pedal is legendary, used by Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, David Gilmour, and many others.

It doesn’t take long to hear that this reacts quite differently than a lot of other pedals. Tubes are a lot more dynamic than solid state circuitry. The pedal acts and feels very differently at low gain than it does at high gain settings. At all settings it sounds good, the only exception being when the treble is pushed too high.

The tone controls aren’t super useful, the treble can be quite overbearing, but by keeping the treble low and the bass high you can get a nice fat tone that is super smooth and crunch.