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The Sushi Box FX Secret Society

#2,101
When you are so obsessed with TOOBZ, even your Christmas stocking has to have them! LOL

My wife is an incredibly amazing and wonderful woman, to humor me and my obsessions!

AC53127F-E18A-4650-98F2-78A5F3A8363D.jpeg
 
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#2,105
So.. I have a Slampegg X on order for December. Nate is working on it now.. top Jack’s, no tube included... red with black knobs... turns out I have some expenses come up so I will need to pass on the pedal. I will sell my pedal (as is, can’t make any changes to it at this point) for what I paid (not looking to make anything on it.. $125 for the pedal,$10 top jacks, $30 x series upgrade- $165 total) and ask @Sushi Box FX if Nate can mail it to you instead of me (cont US only).. Nate is that ok? Otherwise I can have it come to me and ship it out when I get it.. just trying to speed up the process. Pm Me if you are interested...
 
#2,106
NickFromNY said:
So.. I have a Slampegg X on order for December. Nate is working on it now.. top Jack’s, no tube included... red with black knobs... turns out I have some expenses come up so I will need to pass on the pedal. I will sell my pedal (as is, can’t make any changes to it at this point) for what I paid (not looking to make anything on it.. $125 for the pedal,$10 top jacks, $30 x series upgrade- $165 total) and ask @Sushi Box FX if Nate can mail it to you instead of me (cont US only).. Nate is that ok? Otherwise I can have it come to me and ship it out when I get it.. just trying to speed up the process. Pm Me if you are interested...
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Yup, not a problem. I understand things come up and have no problem changing the shipping address for it. And if it helps, I haven't powdercoated yours yet, it will happen tomorrow, so if someone buys it before midnight tonight I'll let them change enclosure and LED color. Knobs are unfortunately already ordered and here, so I can't change that, but you can get a little customization.
 
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#2,108
Sushi Box FX said:
Yup, not a problem. I understand things come up and have no problem changing the shipping address for it. And if it helps, I haven't powdercoated yours yet, it will happen tomorrow, so if someone buys it before midnight tonight I'll let them change enclosure and LED color. Knobs are unfortunately already ordered and here, so I can't change that, but you can get a little customization.
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Would you also change shipping to Switzerland (I would of course pay for the extra)?
 
#2,111
Stubb said:
Where do you fine folks look for cool tubes these days? It's been so long since I was going through the 12A*7 family in my old Bassman 100.
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Reverb.com or eBay.

I used the tube depot and a defective kt88 blew the whole circuit board of my amp. I almost always but used tubes now.
 
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#2,114
So I bought that janky-looking tube OD from Little Bear on ebay, and it showed up today. Since it came up in the thread I thought I would give a short review.

It's surprisingly good, actually. Not too noisy, it needs a lot of power so that suggests high voltage to the tube, and the OD doesn't sound too bad. Its not too harsh or raspy or buzzy. Definitely not the dreaded box of bees. It sags a little when you hit a low note and there is a LITTLE bit of low-end loss (nothing too bad and nothing a little EQ can't solve). The build quality could be a lot better, but it at least feels like you can hit the stomp switch a few times before it breaks. Overall worth the $50 shipped from China, IMO, if you've got a couple extra bucks and want to roll the dice on a goofy OD with a 12AX7 in it. (and there is a little manual included that suggests tubes that can be rolled in it)
 
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#2,116
jbhaugh said:
So I bought that janky-looking tube OD from Little Bear on ebay, and it showed up today. Since it came up in the thread I thought I would give a short review.

It's surprisingly good, actually. Not too noisy, it needs a lot of power so that suggests high voltage to the tube, and the OD doesn't sound too bad. Its not too harsh or raspy or buzzy. Definitely not the dreaded box of bees. It sags a little when you hit a low note and there is a LITTLE bit of low-end loss (nothing too bad and nothing a little EQ can't solve). The build quality could be a lot better, but it at least feels like you can hit the stomp switch a few times before it breaks. Overall worth the $50 shipped from China, IMO, if you've got a couple extra bucks and want to roll the dice on a goofy OD with a 12AX7 in it. (and there is a little manual included that suggests tubes that can be rolled in it)
Click to expand...
@Sushi Box FX and I also got ones. He opened it up and poked at it: looks to be solid state drive into a starved tube.
I just got mine today; I wish there was a little more subtlety to the drive knob, it seems to jump pretty quickly from clean to gritty and that was @ 18vdc so shouldn't be a headroom issue; that said, I played with it for 20min and had some fun, and it does sound better on a guitar (the Tone knob actually seems to do something there, unlike bass I heard no difference myself).
The orange lights simulating a glowing tube are a little hokey, but I might have fun and swap them for orange-flicker-flame just for laughs.
I still don't get the placement of the on/off switch, and will probably open mine up purely to move (or remove) it.
 
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#2,117
NickFromNY said:
@Sushi Box FX ok... sold to 1983l2000. He will follow up with shipping. Thanks again for your flexibility
Click to expand...
Yup, got it squared away and the pedal will be finished in metallic black and going straight to Switzerland :cool:

jbhaugh said:
So I bought that janky-looking tube OD from Little Bear on ebay, and it showed up today. Since it came up in the thread I thought I would give a short review.

It's surprisingly good, actually. Not too noisy, it needs a lot of power so that suggests high voltage to the tube, and the OD doesn't sound too bad. Its not too harsh or raspy or buzzy. Definitely not the dreaded box of bees. It sags a little when you hit a low note and there is a LITTLE bit of low-end loss (nothing too bad and nothing a little EQ can't solve). The build quality could be a lot better, but it at least feels like you can hit the stomp switch a few times before it breaks. Overall worth the $50 shipped from China, IMO, if you've got a couple extra bucks and want to roll the dice on a goofy OD with a 12AX7 in it. (and there is a little manual included that suggests tubes that can be rolled in it)
Click to expand...

Pedalnetics said:
@Sushi Box FX and I also got ones. He opened it up and poked at it: looks to be solid state drive into a starved tube.
I just got mine today; I wish there was a little more subtlety to the drive knob, it seems to jump pretty quickly from clean to gritty and that was @ 18vdc so shouldn't be a headroom issue; that said, I played with it for 20min and had some fun, and it does sound better on a guitar (the Tone knob actually seems to do something there, unlike bass I heard no difference myself).
The orange lights simulating a glowing tube are a little hokey, but I might have fun and swap them for orange-flicker-flame just for laughs.
I still don't get the placement of the on/off switch, and will probably open mine up purely to move (or remove) it.
Click to expand...
So I got mine a couple days ago, and the first thing I do when I get a pedal (before plugging it in) is to take it apart. It probably biases my hearing-impressions, but I've discovered I'm an engineer first and a musician second :P

The first thing I noticed (because I put my thumb in it) was a huge sloppy blob of thermal paste. This told me there was something that was going to get hot that they didn't want to, which turned out to be a 6V regulator for the tube heater. You'll notice the input says 9-12V or 12V-18V, what they don't tell you is that there's a switch by the footswitch inside the pedal that you have to flip to go from one to the other. This changes the way the tube is heated, either parallel (uses 6V regulator and will pull 300mA) or series (uses 12V directly and will pull 150mA).

As for the circuit itself, as @Sonicblaze said it's a JRC4558 overdrive pushing a starved tube. There is no voltage boost circuitry anywhere so what you put in (9V, 12V, or 18V) is what you get on the plates. I have no problem with a solid-state drive pushing a tube stage (like the Lab Rat), but I personally don't like the sound of starved tubes. If anyone has one of these I will absolutely recommend trying 12AU7 instead of 12AX7 as 12AU7 reacts more smoothly to being starved, but a 12AX7 when starved sounds brittle and harsh in my opinion.

I completely agree build quality is not great. I had a big paragraph written about details, but it felt overly critical so I deleted it :P

As for the sound, it's not terrible. For $50 I would say it sounds good. Definitely a lot more usable on guitar, but not a bad one-trick-pony drive for bass either.
 
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#2,118
Sushi Box FX said:
Yup, got it squared away and the pedal will be finished in metallic black and going straight to Switzerland :cool:




So I got mine a couple days ago, and the first thing I do when I get a pedal (before plugging it in) is to take it apart. It probably biases my hearing-impressions, but I've discovered I'm an engineer first and a musician second :p

The first thing I noticed (because I put my thumb in it) was a huge sloppy blob of thermal paste. This told me there was something that was going to get hot that they didn't want to, which turned out to be a 6V regulator for the tube heater. You'll notice the input says 9-12V or 12V-18V, what they don't tell you is that there's a switch by the footswitch inside the pedal that you have to flip to go from one to the other. This changes the way the tube is heated, either parallel (uses 6V regulator and will pull 300mA) or series (uses 12V directly and will pull 150mA).

As for the circuit itself, as @Sonicblaze said it's a JRC4558 overdrive pushing a starved tube. There is no voltage boost circuitry anywhere so what you put in (9V, 12V, or 18V) is what you get on the plates. I have no problem with a solid-state drive pushing a tube stage (like the Lab Rat), but I personally don't like the sound of starved tubes. If anyone has one of these I will absolutely recommend trying 12AU7 instead of 12AX7 as 12AU7 reacts more smoothly to being starved, but a 12AX7 when starved sounds brittle and harsh in my opinion.

I completely agree build quality is not great. I had a big paragraph written about details, but it felt overly critical so I deleted it :p

As for the sound, it's not terrible. For $50 I would say it sounds good. Definitely a lot more usable on guitar, but not a bad one-trick-pony drive for bass either.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the informative and considerate review
 
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