Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan is the player most closely tied to the Ibanez Tube Screamer family of overdrive pedals. The Texas blues guitarist relied heavily on the solid-state Tube Screamer to create his signature sounds¹, and the circuit is widely described as the quintessential mid-hump overdrive made famous by him². His pairing of a Tube Screamer with a Stratocaster and Fender amps is the reference point players still reach for when they describe the sound³.

The common picture of his rig, though, needs correcting in one place. Pedal-geek lore holds that Vaughan was a big fan of the TS-808 version⁴, and the TS808 is often named as his go-to overdrive pedal⁵⁶. But he used a TS808 only briefly, and the pedal on his albums for most of his career was a TS9.

The Tube Screamer at the center of his sound

Vaughan's name and the Tube Screamer are effectively inseparable in the gear press. Vintage Guitar notes that SRV had fun with Tube Screamers throughout his career, using the TS-808, then the TS9 and TS10 as each arrived⁹. MusicRadar describes him as having made a TS808 an essential component of his signal chain¹⁰, and Guitar World's account of the era calls him a Texan busy reinventing the blues with his Tube Screamer and his trusty No. 1 Strat¹¹. Warren Haynes, speaking to GuitarPlayer, calls the green screamer a key part of Stevie Ray Vaughan's tone¹².

His own explanation was simple and specific. Just after the release of the Texas Flood album in 1983, he told writer Frank Joseph:

He also often ran more than one. Gearnews reports that Vaughan loved the Tube Screamer and often had two of them in use, connected in series for more violent sounds¹³. Vein-Tap's buying guide describes him as famous for using a Tube Screamer to push his amp from clean to all the dirt the pedal was capable of¹⁴.

Tube Screamer settings for small Fender amps and big clean amps

How Vaughan set the pedal depended on what sat behind it. Analog Man's history of the circuit gives the two working configurations:

The first of those is the classic clean boost use of a Tube Screamer, an application Guitar World's Chris Gill describes as one of the pedal's most popular, with level cranked, drive turned down and tone set neutral, as used by Stevie Ray Vaughan¹⁶. In practice, Vaughan usually used his TS9 to provide a clean boost to his Fender Vibroverbs for solos, with the level control all the way up and the drive control set to relatively low gain⁴.

Dave Hunter's technical analysis for GuitarPlayer places Vaughan, alongside Eric Johnson, among the name players who used Tube Screamers for their amp-boosting functions⁸. The pairing works because of the pedal's voicing: on That Pedal Show, the presenters note that the Tube Screamer's mid-range punches through a scooped Fender-style amp, and that "Strat Fender amp Tube Screamer is home" for that sound³. A Sweetwater demo makes the same point, observing that historic players of the TS-style overdrive, Vaughan among them, invariably paired it with a scooped Blackface Fender-style amp platform, because the Tube Screamer has so much mid-range that it needs something more scooped to create a balanced EQ¹⁷.

The Dumble amplifier behind the tone

The other half of the equation was the amplifier. Vintage Guitar reports that SRV used the Tube Screamer to drive either a Fender Vibroverb or a Dumble Steel String Singer, depending on accounts⁹. Guitar.com's history of the circuit cites his use of TS9 Tube Screamers and Fender Vibroverb amps as the key element of the sound¹⁸.

The Dumble side is specific. Guitar.com's review of the J Rockett Lenny describes that two-knob boost as an attempt to recreate the silky clean tones of the Dumble Steel String Singer amp Vaughan used on his debut album Texas Flood¹⁹. Cornerstone's page for the Gladio SC likewise points to the Stevie Ray Vaughan sound as achieved using a Dumble amplifier²⁰. By 1988, his rig was a Dumble and Marshall Major combination, and the TS10's job was to supply high-gain distortion that rig could not otherwise produce⁴.

There was also a rotary element. Neo Instruments notes that pros like Stevie Ray Vaughan got their distinct sound on recordings and on stage by mixing the rotary speaker and guitar amp signals together²¹.

From the TS-808 to the TS9 and TS10

Vaughan's Tube Screamer use tracks three distinct periods:

The TS9 was Vaughan's preferred choice from 1982 through most of the Eighties, according to Guitar World's Chris Gill⁴. The TS10 that followed in 1988 was used to generate high-gain distortion, with both the drive and level controls boosted⁴. Pedal of the Day notes the TS10 was used by Vaughan during the later part of his career²², and JHS's Josh Scott puts it plainly: TS808, TS9, "but he preferred the TS10"²³. Guitar.com's Huw Price sums up the arc: the Tube Screamer is closely associated with Vaughan, and he used most versions of it²⁴.

Vaughan's influence on the circuit outlived him in the pedal market. Vintage Guitar describes the TS808 and TS9 as the pedals Stevie Ray Vaughan made famous²⁵, and Warm Audio notes that the original 808, TS9 and TS10 versions of the circuit have famously been used by players including Vaughan²⁶. The Pedal Pawn BluesPrint even built its first channel from access to a unit used by Vaughan that was probably used during the El Mocambo performance²⁷.

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