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EHX English Muff'n Vs. EHX Hot Tubes...

T

Terrorstorm

Feb 21, 2005
611
1
38
Wolfsberg/Austria
#1
Hi,
finally I have saved enough money to buy a good overdrive! I'd like to go with a Tube one, what one of these would you suggest??? The English Muff'n or the Hot Tubes overdrive...?
I have already tried a English Muff'n and liked it very much, but I've never tried the Hot Tubes, does anyone know the main differences between them?
I play a traben torrent 5-string bass through a Mesa bass 400+ & SWR Goliath.

greets
+ thanks!
 
#5
Opening this thread up again...

Looking for Hot Tubes info/opinion.

The Muff'N get pretty much universal praise, but there is almost no info on the Hot Tubes? How different are they? Anyone play through the Hot Tubes. I mean, both from EX, both w/2 tubes. Should I just do the Muff'N & be done with it?
 
#6
I use a hot tubes - On bass I've found that It doesn't do smooth overdrive that well, as it has a quite brash mid presence with the standard tubes. It does insane brash distortion that sustains forever very well though.

Its by no means the best distortion for use with bass but I like it for the quirky over the top sound you get when you turn up the bass and drive controls. If I were to change the tubes out it may be possible to get a smooth overdrive but I have a DOD 250 for that so I'm keeping mine the way it is.

If you want something more useable as a more subtle overdrive the English Muffin would be the way to go I think. On guitar the Hot Tubes does everything, brilliant crunchy overdrive and killer lead distortion. On bass its more useful for "I'm gonna melt your face off" moments of distortion madness :smug:
 
#8
All I have heard of the Muffin were some sound samples in the distortion megathread (I think?). It does a great old school tube overdrive, nice and warm and not too harsh. I'd imagine that being an EHX pedal you would be able to turn everything up over the top and get some crazy distortion out of it... where is tplyons when you need him? :) he should know...
 
#9
I use an EM, and it does stop short of "melting face syndrom". I find it especially cool, cus if you leave the bass at 12 o'clock you don't lose any, but if you raise it it calms down on the fuzz, and really provides some nice grit. One thing to note is that what you might think is "unity gain", probably isn't. When I recorded my chorus->EM->comp rig the first time I really had to raise the master volume! All-in-all you can get some really great tones.

Oh, BTW, I haven't used a hot tubes, and I also forget who does on here :o , sorry...
 
#10
Both these pedals are guitar pedals and as such the EQ response is more suited to guitar than a bass. The EM has a standard Fender Bassman circuit so with everything at 12 O'clock you get bass and treble boost and a pronounced 15dB dip at just above 1kHz. Flat response is with bass and trebel right down and mid almost right up.

I've had my EM apart and am in process of building a new EQ sub-board to the same spec as a Trace V8 or an Alembic F1X.

When I've got the EM working fine I'll have a go at the Hot Tubes.

Also because they are both guitar pedals, the inputs are over sensitive for active basses so I've been trying different tubes to see if I can delay the onset of overdrive. So far so good.
 
#11
The Hot Tubes doesn't have low-end loss.

Actually, I used it on a friends guitar the other day for fun? I had to turnt eh Bass setting DOWN, 'cause it was too boomy on guitar.

On bass, it does give some nice grit tot he signal, and will go all theway to the 'melt your face distortion' settings.

I use Hot Tubes for gritty Overdrive, and a Russian Muff for Fuzz...
 
#12
On guitar I've found that "flat" on the bass and treble knobs seems to be almost completely counter clockwise, just under the small hole marker. Turning the bass up high results in a cool White Stripes-esq lead tone though.

The tone controls on the Hot Tubes are weird, they are more like active filters than anything else I've used...
 
#14
The English Muff'n becomes a slightly different animal when you change out the stock 12AY7 tubes for 12AX7s. I've found that I like the tone better with the higher gain tubes, but a lower gain setting on the pedal. Cranked up with the "X" tubes, the sound is pretty wicked - too much for my taste, but I'm sure some people would love it.

As with most OD/distortion/fuzz pedals, I've found that I need a pretty big volume boost when the EM is on. If not, my tone disappears in the mix.
 
#15
old thread but just checked out the EHX hot tubes, the one with the two real tubes, and it is pretty over the top if you want it. you can also get a really good semi-clean blues tone as well. i thought it sounded terrible at first until i really played with knobs, and you really have to play with the controls a lot and the drive really does something unlike many pedals that you can barely hear a difference. the drive and gain are very sensitive with a very large range so a slight change can affect all other levels. you can get almost any tone with it, from a slight clean low boast to a full on distortion pedal that makes those metal pedals look limp. think of it like a big muff made with tubes. :D

if you want a pedal that you can just plug in and just use the limited tone provided without tweaking the knobs, this in not for you and probably why it was discontinued.

if you like a cleaner tone with lots of low end, try the mesa boogie bottle rocket.
 

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