The 1983-designed B.K. Butler Tube Driver famously used by David Gilmour, Eric Johnson, Billy Gibbons and Joe Satriani to name a few. The core of the pedal is a hand-selected 12AX7 tube - which gives you a lovely sort of fuzz-drive sound than can sound amazingly smooth and textured in the hands of masters like David Gilmour - who still features 2 of these within his rig.
![Butler Butler](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126013928/885199415.jpg)
I personally autograph each Tube Driver on the bottoms side. Those who want to reserve a unit, please contact me via email: [email protected] Expect the normal build time to be about 4 - 7 days, but I can give you an estimated shipping time when you place your order. 'I currently have two BK Butler Tube Drivers on my pedalboard, and I just use one or the other. If I need a little something more, I’ll stomp a compressor with a bit of drive onto the beginning of it, and that will turn things up another whole gear.' - Guitar Player interview.
Yea, I'm a little puzzled on the 'powerful' term as well. I use mine at unity volume, as a dirty rhythm sound. If I need to jump on a solo, I use a clean boost after it to just increase the volume with the same tone. The BK Butler Tube Drive Circuit is based on a OP-Amp Gainstage driven into two triode-stages of 12AX7 tube, using low plate voltage (about 16Volts) there are lot of similar products, such as chandler tube driver, Dean Markley Overlord (Classic Tube Overdrive) and many others.
Bk Tube Driver Pedal
These were off the market for a while, then manufactured under licence as Chandler Tube Drivers - but they are now being made to order in limited quantities by the originator himself. A couple of obvious downsides are the significant size of the pedal and the built-in power-lead / power supply. This is in effect a mini tube pre-amp, so it has a significant power requirement which does not necessarily sit comfortably on modern boards. Obviously pricing and availability may be an issue for you too!
Bk Butler Tube Driver Schematic
I have picked 5 really decent alternatives here - one of which - the TC Electronic Tube Pilot is actually powered by a 12AX7 type tube too. The other 4 pedals featured reproduce the same sort of sound via transistor-style circuits.
Butler Tube Driver Review
All of these sound pretty decent and I’m even tempted by the Tube Pilot here even though it has no tone controls, and is not as smooth as the others here. For a long time I have had my eye on the Buffalo FX TD-X - but that’s slightly larger than I would normally like. The similarly sized Fuzzrocious Dark Driving pedal is now discontinued, which makes my most likely acquisition either the Lovepedal / Hermida Audio Dover Drive or MXR FET Driver. https://powerupforward637.weebly.com/blog/assault-tech-1-battletech-download. Adios script pro font free download.