SWEET tube drive find!!

I had one of these years ago and I remembered the only reason I didn't have one was because it GOT STOLEN. So yeah, impulse buy.

Behringer VT999 yes yes I know behringer is fashionable to hate on, but this thing RIPS! Metal housing and "true bypass." It's not a 3pdt switch but it does work without power, etc.
I swapped the stock tube (honestly not bad - bugera 12ax7c) for an RCA 12at7 I had lying around. holy nerts! This thing has an awesome saturation characteristic.

I plugged it into the line-in on my firepod (bypassed its preamps) and used it like a DI box here. Clean is 10 master, 0 gain. Mild dirty is 2 gain, above that is pretty fuzzy. Bass is 10 most of the time, mids @ 5, treble between 5 and 10. Some finger playing, some pick. I jump around in settings and playing styles really. @1m30 I turn on some heavy EQ and compression to give you an idea how this can sound in a mix. It's very warm and responsive to dynamics. The tone shaping is nice, just a hair of fuzz around the edges and a nice warm bump in the low mids. The mid control is a bit high for most bass usage but nicely set for guitar. You could change that by patching in a different cap in there (a la Bitmo mod)

Sound demo with my rickenbacker 4003.

So like $70 + $15 for a better tube (which I just had lying around) gets you a dang fine overdrive pedal. The noise gate is quite functional too. It sounds even better through the Buster. Also excellent on 6-string guitar. It's huge but I'm definitely going to have some fun with this.

/rant