Chandler Tube Driver

This is an easy pedal to get to grips with. There's a Level pot, a two band EQ (hi and lo but no mid....odd) and a TubeDrive pot. The overdrive on offer is of the highest quality and good sounds leap from the pedal no matter where you set the controls. The unit is equipped with two LEDs. One red to show it is powered up( this is always on) and a green one to show you that the effect is engaged.
I have no manual but it isn't essential. I know what sounds I wanted from the pedal and I had no probs finding them and quickly too.

The sound is top notch. If you are a fan of Dave Gilmour,Eric Johnson,Joe Satriani or Steve Lynch you'll love this. The onboard tube adds warmth to the distortion and it is a pleasure to use the pedal. It does crunchy,driving and screaming tones all with easeI use the tubedriver with a Tele or a Strat (check out http://nadzb.tripod.com/thepedallair/ for more info and pics.) there is a little noise in the sound but this is probabley down to mine bieng old and perhaps I need a new tube too.

the TubeDriver hasn't let me down yet. Good solid build and very sturdy. I have enough distortion pedals to back me up but I can't see this thing conking out yet.

Chandler are out of business now so this doesn't apply.

I really like using the Tubedriver. It records well and is versatile too. I love the warm sound it has but a mid EQ control would be cool. This is a feature on the rack mounted version but I hate racks. I probabley will never get the chance to get one again - its only the second one I've ever seen in England and at the price I doubt i'll top this deal for value. I have lots of distortion pedals to compare it too but the TubeDriver has a character of its own. Don't believe the hype about the new fangled Tubeworks version either - this is the real deal.

simple layout and easy to get great tube tone out of this pedal.

i use a strat with an hs-2 through a wah, tonebender, tube screamer, tube driver, digital chorus. it sounds great. realy smooth and buttery even with a bridge single coil pickup. i find the tube screamer really hums a lot when the tube driver is infront of it. all the effect sound great! the onl way i can get it too sound like eric johnson (my favorite) is too put my jtm 45 on 10. could use a better stock tube.

it is very sturdy, but a little to "hollow" of consruction though i would have no problem not having a backup at gigs.

it is a great asset to my live and studio rig and i'm really glad i bought it!!!!!

This is the 3 knob model - leve, tone, and drive. Very easy to use, just dial until you hear the sound you're looking for. I've found, though, that the only useful tones are around 4-6 on both the tone and drive controls. It's slanted so it's easy to hit the botton.

I use a lot of different guitars with various pickups (mostly duncan though). My amp is a Carvin XV-112 (all tube). Surprisingly, the unit is not very noisy even at high gains. I had some problems with feedback but then the problem went away - could had been something else. I don't use the adapter. I use the Voodoo Lab Power Pedal to power it and I can't hear any tonal differences.

I find that the unit sounds terrible with single coil pickups. I used an LP at the store when testing it. Brought it home and used a tele (with duncan stack tele pickups) and it just sounded terrible - thin and buzzy. When I used a humbucker equiped guitar (DiMarzio pickups I believe), it sounded much better - full with lots of body.

I'm giving it a fairly low rating because it doesn't sound very good with single coil pickups and also because it sound terrible when the guitar is not "wide open" (full volume and playing). When I try to play dynamically or roll the volume back, it sounded thin and "farty".

I do like it for rhythm. But it's not very good for lead. I tried using an EQ pedal after it for solo boost - terrible. I tried using a lower drive unit before it (Jekyll side of J&H) and that worked - nice saturation and roundness. But when you use it, you have to play at "full force". Some have told me that this might be due to it's design ("tube starvation" - low voltage across the plate).

I do like it's rawless and bite though - sort of like the Marshall sound but less on the upper, upper mids.

It also sucks tone (takes away highs) in bypass mode. I have to put it after the Jekyll & Hyde to use the buffer circuit - that helps a lot!

It seems pretty reliable. If it ever failed on me, I would just take it out of the chain and just some other pedals to compensate.

haven't needed it - don't think I can get support for this pedal anyway.

I play all sort of styles. I mainly use this pedal for rock... from 80s to even more modern styles. I use it only for straight out rock rhymn parts and boost it for solos (it by itself isn't that great for solos - see above). I wouldn't buy this pedal again, in fact, I'll probably replace it soon. It does, however, get the tone I'm looking for. But it's lack of versatility and dynamics is a big con for me.

I choose it because it got the sound I was looking for - fat and saturated... great for power chords and good low end respond (nice "thump") for muted playing. I didn't try other types of playing until I got it home.

I tried it out against a black tube works real tube pedal, pro co rat, pro co brat, and mxr distortion+. I think it sounds much better than those other ones. I've also tried out the ibanez tube king before - the tube driver also sound better than that. Much more body and fatness.

This review is for the rack mount version, I've never tried the pedal version. It is fairly intuitive except for the 'Bias' and 'Contour' knobs. I'm not even sure what these knobs do but I almost always run them full clockwise. Both of these knobs seem to have the most pronounced effect in the last quarter turn or so. When both are on '10', the tone is thicker with more midrange. I also almost always run the 'High' knob on '0' (full counter-clockwise). This knob also seems to add midrange and thickness when turned all the way down (the midrange and thickness are only affected in the last quarter turn or so, i.e. when turning the knob down from say 2 or 3 down to 0).

My signal goes like this: USA Strat with EMG's David Gilmour pick-up set into Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde into a Crybaby 535 (no Q) into the Chandler Tube Driver into a Deluxe Memory Man re-issue into a home-made 50-watt Plexi (using one of Doug Hoffman's board kits; absolutely stunning tone) into a '71 Marshall 4x10 cabinet. The Chandler is not particularly noisy unless you dime the Drive control. It's not as quiet as a Fulldrive II (which I recently compared it to) but certainly no more noise than the Jekyll & Hyde. The boost doesn't work on my Tube Driver so I can't comment on that. It does affect your tone when off but I just live with it (adds a just little distortion and darkens the tone a bit). Not as versatile as a Fulldrive II or a Jekyll & Hyde but if the boost worked it would be a little better. The Chandler Tube Driver gives a really nice grind without a lot of fuzz or buzz to it, not really for heavy metal. Even though I don't play a Les Paul, the tone reminds me of early ZZ Top.

It's old and not in the greatest condition but it has never given me any problems.

It's no longer made by Chandler.

I really like the Chandler Tube Driver. I've compared it to a Fulltone Fulldrive II, a Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde, a Boss Blues Driver, an old Tube Works Tube Driver (3-knob version), and a Tube Works Real Tube. They all sound different but the Fulldrive II and Jekyll & Hyde are the only ones to challenge the Chandler Tube Driver. Between those three, it depends on my mood or the song. All three are very good but different.

I bought this new in '86. It came with an instruction card. Pretty easy to get great sounds if you are careful with output vs. gain controls.

I use a Fender Super Reverb ('65) and a stock Clapton Strat. There is some noise but it's not distracting. I brought this out of "retirement" and was really pleased with the great low end grind this unit is capable of. I had been using a Klon Centaur w/a TS9 Tubescreamer. This box is especially good in the sound it delivers when you are playing chords. Especially open position G and C.

I want to make a special comment here: This unit got RUN OVER by a Corvette. It then laid out in a huge rain storm for a half hour before I found it. Except for the sturdy chassis being a little bent and one LED light out, it worked fine!! I give this a "Hall of Fame" level award for surviving this trauma. I would keep a back up for this unit just like I do for my tube amp. Since I have three OD pedals in my chain I'm set.

This is one of the sought after "Designed by B.K. Butler" Chandler models. They are no longer made but I bet you could get a hold of ole BK himself by contacting his current company, Tube Works.

I chose this back in '85 because there was nothing else like it around. I have used the Tubescreamer, The Boss Blues Driver, The Fulldrive II, the Vox OD pedal and the Klon. They are all good in their own way and I still use the TubeScreamer and the Klon. The Chandler just has this really "tubey" soft musical grind that works well with open chords.

It is simple. They are four buttons of adjustments, Level, Eq1 (Hi) Eq2 (Lo) and Gain.

It is simple. They are four buttons of adjustments, Level, Eq1 (Hi) Eq2 (Lo) and Gain. They allow to reach extremely good sonorities. From Pink Floyd (fundamentally), Led Zeppelin... It is a great pedal of Dist. I compared that unit with a MT-2. The MT-2 are terrible if compared him. I can get the sound of Hendrix to increase Level and to almost decrease to the minimum Gain (with a lot of Lo and Hi Eq). It is a pedal that has the true tube sound. Its four adjustment buttons allow spectacular and varied sonorities. If you look for fuller sounds, place the button HI and LO in the position 5. It is perfect.
I play Pink Floyd (mainly), Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin. That pedal is inserted perfectly to the sound types that I play. I use a CS-3 sustain, NS-2 suppressor, SD-2 Overdrive, MT-2 Dist, E.H. BigMuff Pi, TUBE DRIVER, BF-2 Flange, CE-5 Chorus, GE-7 Eq, and RV-3 Delay/Reverb. I use a to Fender Strat with an amplifier Palmer 1970's, Made in Brazil (I don't change that amplifier for any other model). With Tube Driver, I reach all the sounds that I want. It is great.

Peacefully, I can trust that pedal. It never caused me problem, although I have bought him already used.

I play guitar there are just 6 years, I could try few models of pedals (in Brazil they just exist for sale three or four marks of pedals in the market). But, surely, he/she would buy again if it went precise.

This pedal is very easy to use, especially if you're using a tube-integrated amp because it's mainly used for that, seeing how it houses a 12AX7 preamp tube inside the padal casing. I actually used to use it in my Fender Princeton Chorus amp, and it sounded very grainy because I was playing a pre-amp tube pedal through a solid-state. To sound like Eric Johnson it is best to have a tube amp and get that smooth tone that can only be achieved with those vacuum tubes. The controls are pretty easy to figure out. It's actually four knobs: Volume, 2 equalizers, and drive. To get the bast sound, leave the e.q. alone and only adjust the vol. and drive; this lets the amp do all the work. It's a great pedal; took me forever to get one as old and in as good condition as I wanted it. This tube pedal is similar to that of Tube Works, but this one is the hard-to-find model by Chandler Industries discontinued circa 1988. Nothing else compares. The inner-tube can also be replaced with different tubes to get a different tone.

My chain of effects go as follows: Chandler Tube Driver, FuzzFace, CryBaby Wah-Wah, Maestro PS1A Phase Shifter, TC Electronic Chorus+, MXR Analog Delay, Maestro Echoplex

This pedal is great, but it can short out if it's overloaded to the extreme. It happened once when i played at a show in Madison, CT. There was a few more effects in my chain and I must have wired them wrong and the pedal quit on me during a solo, so I had to suffer and use my Rat instead. I wouldn't trade that pedal for the world, but it has its days

The company is no longer in existance. This makes the pedal all the more valuable for collection if you can find one that works well with no flaws

Very simple to use and operate. Has 4 knobs and 2 LED's (one to show its on, and one to indicate the drive is on)

Sound is pretty good. It dosent help much with the music i like (Metallica, Creed, Godsmack, Sevendust, etc.) but it is a very good pedal.

The casing the unit is in is very strong, but the power cord is the weak part. I bought this pedal at a garage sale for $5 cause the wires were pulled out and i would not come on. Luckily, i fixed the wires and it works fine now. Be VERY careful with the large power supply box, cause if you drop it and the cord jerks, its more than likely the wires are gonna break inside and its extremely hard to open that box thingy and fix it.

never dealt with them. all i know is that this model is discontinued, so good luck findin help from Chandler for it!

A very nice distortion pedal. It has served me many hours of enjoyment when there was nothing else to do. If i never had this, i don't know what i would have done without it. If you like "old style" rock then you'll like this pedal alot.

Very easy. only four knobs

The tube makes a peavey sound good. Congradulations Chandler. Crazy train is awesome one this pedal

It's got a tube but otherwise it's pretty good

Never dealt. Ithink they don't even make these any more

Great sound. Hard to find. Once you try it you'll love it.

No manual. No mystery. Output, Low eq, Hi eq, Gain. Set, Stomp and go. Requires lots of delicate tweaking to get a good tone, but that's part of the deal (and I'm pretty picky...)
Gotta plug her in...it has an honest to got tube (what a concept), so it needs juice.

I haven't been as thrilled with this as most other reviewers...The bandwidths they picked for the 2 eqs are not the greatest, and I've found that it tends to noticeably unbalance my tone. Take it easy on the Hi eq or you could have a real dental drill experience.
Part of the issue is (like with anything using tubes) finding the right 12ax7. I've used several different tubes with it, and they can drastically change the way this thing performs. Noodle with it enough, and I bet you'll like it better than other driver/distortion/overdrives/etc., but I wouldn't expect to take it out of the box (especially since you're not likely to find a new one...) and love it immediately.
I like a WIDE variety of tonal qualities at my disposal, and I've found it most useful in a setup like this: running a solidbody humbucker guitar (Gibson, Ibanez, whatever) into a high-wattage valve head at a beefy, but less than maxed overdrive, and back the guitar volume down a bit. Add the Chandler for increased gain, but not fuzzed-out distortion (unless that's what I want) to send it over the top. Cranking the guitar volume up in this setup can summon the national guard.
Don't bother using it as your "distortion" pedal with a solid-state amp. (hell, don't bother using a solid-state amp for anything but clean anyway...)
Mine is a bit older, so no wallwart. I found it pretty damned noisy, so I rewired it a little: I took the power/transformer unit out of the chassis to get it a few feet away from the pedal. It quieted down nicely. When I've got time, I'll re-do it right and just rig it with a real wallwart.

No problems. I've seen tougher, but it's built pretty sturdy.

N/A

I'm a sucker for sounds that aren't polished into sterility...warm, full, rough around the edges. So, I like it. If you want the supertight powercrunch, just save your cash and buy the damned Mesa already.