Maxon Collaborates With Susuma Tamura for the Apex 808

January 15, 2020 · 7 sources

Maxon announced the Apex808, an overdrive pedal designed by Susumu Tamura, the Japanese electronics engineer who created the original Tube Screamer. Tamura and Maxon released the pedal at NAMM 2020¹².

For the Apex808, Tamura spent three years combing through more than 100 takes on the Tube Screamer, both vintage and current production¹. According to Maxon, that analysis showed the TS specimens the company judged best sounding all featured a specific brand of IC, and that the IC in question came from a specific production period. Tamura sourced that IC himself and built it into the Apex808, where it changes the overtone components of the signal based on input level³.

The maker describes the result as an overdrive that captures the sounds and feel of the best vintage Tube Screamer, generating what it calls "a transparency, clarity and note-to-note separation so uncanny that it makes other drives sound as if they are being played with a blanket over the speaker"⁴⁵³.

How the pedal responds depends on how hard it is driven³:

• At low input levels it generates primarily even-order harmonics.
• At increased input level it produces a blend of even- and odd-order harmonics, which Maxon says imitates the preamp and power sections of a tube amp³.

Controls are kept to three knobs, drive, tone and level, which Maxon says hold "exceptional controlled gain, rich harmonics, and exceptional versatility"⁶. The pedal is housed in a classic Overdrive-Green chassis with a brushed aluminum black and silver faceplate⁷.