Electro-Harmonix Hot Tubes

because of the way it is wired, this pedal requires alot of tweeking. you should take notes on different settings that you like and maybe mark them in different colored permanent markers on the pedal. i did this and it helps alot.

i am using this and playing a 1994 hotrod fender strat with overwound pickups wound to 9.0, 9.4 and 10k. absolutely the best sounding distortion pedal i have ever owned in the 20 years that i have been playing.

care is needed when using a pedal with tubes and the setup should be done thoughtfully, and slowly. put it where it won't get kicked around and don't pull it across the room running around and you shouldn't have any problems.

i play rock. this pedal lets me stretch the definition of rock with its versatility. this distortion pedal is really a preamp on steriods. better than a big muff (which i consider to be a one setting pedal) by a longshot. creamy, rich distortion that can go from subtle, to over the top and still sound great. hope you like to play loud. this pedal isn't for quiet bedrooms.

change the gain and you change the perimeters of the treble and bass knobs, and you have to adjust them again to find the right setting, again. the manual is useless, so you have to toy with this stomp. you will get an oscillating signal at some settings. adjust the treble, or bass and it will go away. if you don't know this, you will go crazy trying to figure out how to quiet the pedal, or give up on it and say it is sh#t, if you are kind of stupid. the ac adaptor is kind of weird, and i would like to replace the tip with one i consider more stable.

This pedal is TRUE BYPASS (yay!), accomplished by means of a 12VDC DPDT relay operated from the 12V filament supply. As far as I could tell, the operation of the relay was noiseless. I confirmed true bypass by taking a direct reading from tip-to-tip on the input and output jacks with an ohmmeter.
Here's the *best* part, though...NO SAND IN THE SIGNAL PATH(read, this means not a single diode, or transistor makes the distortion... it is PURE TUBE distortion)... I mean nil point, zip, nada! The whole thing is 100% tube from input to output; the only sand in it is used for rectification and regulation. Probably why the thing sounds so damn good.

This is the pedal that started the all tube pedal craze five years ago.
Vox and others have copied this pedal, but none have really passed it. Many of them have diodes, and transistors and the tubes are just for show. The EH HOT TUBES is REAL TuBe DiStOrTiON, while others have tubes just for show. Creamy, creamy Real Tube distortion, even in its very extreme modes, and this is electro harmonix and by nature, leans towards extreme... the Hot Tubes pedal has one serious sh&tload of sustain. It's very smooth sustain, too...not the kind that jumps from level to level as the string decays. T-Nice. Very Good crunch, too. Don't let the price get you down, this pedal is distortion like no diode, or transistor can provide and is worth every penny. DD says Check this one out. SIX STARS...

no, this is not a particularly easy pedal to use. hence, it is more versatile. there is always a trade off, you know...

this thing gives you the creamiest distortion, and it is quite flexible... has that big muff miles of sustain in a more versatile, controlable package. perfect for my uses.

i have had mine for 5 years and while i changed the tubes a while back, there have been no other issues with this pedal.

the hot tubes is best distortion pedal i have ever owned. not a diode, or transistor to be found in it. the distortion comes completely from the overdriven tubes and your guitar signal. hand wired in nyc and ready to rock all of america. yes, it is alot more expensive than many classic analog transistor, or diode pedals. but, it is money well spent. works great pushing a tube amp, or as a straight distortion pedal.

Yes, easy to use.

tones were NOT great! too sweeping.
wasn't happy when used with a bass.

I Agree with most of these...power supply was CRAP!!!
Returned the unit within 1 month to get a new one and replaced the power supply twice in 6 months.....both chincy pins BROKE OFF within weeks!
THIS IS ROCK AND ROLL E.H.!!
Why NOT hard wire the power supply like the old ones OR at least OFFER battery as an option! EH should be ashamed!

Recieved a new unit within bringing it in.
Got new power supplies in the mail quickly.

This is for the 2005 version, with two vacuum tubes.

Pretty obvious controls: Master, Gain, Drive, Bass, Treble. All do what they say. Very low gain and drive gives nice slight crunch. Moderate gain/drive a good vintage distortion. High gain/drive don't really add much, in my opinion. Lots of range on bass/treble. A control for mid-range would have been nice.

Power pack is a piece of crud. It makes a lot of racket (audible noise, not electrical noise) and has a horrid cheapo connector that's too easy to pull out accidentally, with the risk of shorting.

Rickenbacker Dakota and Mexican Fat Strat, through the Hot Tubes to Fender Blues Junior. Very little electrical noise. Very nice tube crunch or vintage distortion available, and accessible at moderate neighbour-friendly volume.

Haven't had it long, but the pedal itself looks and feels quality. Power pack is rubbish, as already mentioned.

Achieves what I bought it for, very well.

I give this opedal high marks for ease of use because it has very few controls. Only the ones a player needs in order achieve a desired tone, and it doesn't lack a single control that it really needs to have.

The sound quality is fine, however, one thing about this pedal pisses me off. This pedal is little more than a pre-amp that prduces ditortion through two 12AX7 tubes. That being said, I am mystified as to why Elecxtro-Harmonix would put such crappy tubes in it.

With the stock tubes, this thing was noisy and the distortion consisted of either too much buzz or too much mud. When I replaced them with Groove Tubes, this pedal quited down very nicely and does exactly what I wanted it to do--give me a third, super hot, searing, smoking, ringing rocking channel.

I think this pedal work best if the bass and treble knobs are turned to 0, and then inched up (far more parts treble than bass) after the gain gets dialed into roughly the right zip code. But I don't inch them up too high. Bass is just a hair above 0 and treble is at about 9:00.

I don't use the "drive" knob, so I leave it parked just above 0. I find it adds little to the mix, but I use this pedal primarily with a Peavey Classic 50 combo, which has a post gain control through which I dial in whatever warmth I want in the tone.

I use the the pedal in the majority of the solos I play, setting the "master" so that it bumps my volume slightly. I really, really, really like the pedal. Far more than solid state distortion or overdrive pedals. It is great for rock and blues (i just saw Buddy guy in Monterey, and that cat played a Fender tele with humbuckers through a Marshall that producing some serious distortion).

But I'm still pissed that I had to drop an additional $30 into replacement tubes.

No problems thus far.

I play rock and blues, and I would replace this pedal if lost or stolen. Along with a Fulltone Wah, this is the only pedal I use. I use with a Les Paul through a Peavey Classic 50, and it producing a searing hot sound, but does not compress my guitar's tone to the point that it loses it character.

Have I mentioned that it pisses me off that players have to add $30 to $40 to the purchase price to replace stock tubes in a product called Hot Tubes?

this review is for the current model with tubes not the 70's one that sounds like crap. compared to decoding the rosetta stone it's pretty easy, but for a gain pedal it's pretty tweaked out. Every setting of every knob effects every setting of every other. You must observe it's ways untill the five knobs become one.

The eq is really a filter not an eq in the traditional sense. To hear the closest thing to your clean tone turn all the controls fully counter clockwise. Now bring up the gain until it starts to sound clear. At this point you've got a good clean boost going. With that as your starting point you can realize an ass batch o' tones with this beast.

The thing is that as you turn up the eq you must turn down the gain and drive controls to keep the same level of saturation. Consider that every knob is ADDITIVE to the overall level of gain so at a certain level of gain it just starts to sound like a big muff. It's not the pedals fault. You just went to far. (probably with the bass knob. The bass knob really MUFFles things up a lot). The trebles is almost like a resonance control. I don't think it is at all fair to call this a big muff with tubes though. Even at full big muff roar it is tighter, better defined and you can hear a chord through it even at square wave distortion.

this pedal is not kind to bright amps, but sounds really f-ing great with a class a/b fender type amp. Garage tones from heaven. I think it sounds like a cross between overdrive and fuzz as opposed to the big muff's distortion with fuzz.

knobs get loose and must be tightened. Hmmm....I've seen better build.

this pedal rulZZZZZZZZZ. you must give it time.Rock it for at least an hour by yourself. Don't expect a smooth mild mannered pedal. It is an electro-harmonix pedal after all!

Mine is an old 1970s model that is beat and bent and scratched all to hell. No tubes. Purely solid state. Ac cord means no batteries ever.

I play it with a solid state Fender Princeton and a 2000 American Series Fender Stratocaster. I use it in the church band every Sunday night.

I've been playing electric guitar since 1975 and this old thing is awesome. It makes all my DOD and Boss pedals sound dead.

It's actually a very mild overdrive yet the tone is huge. I don't know what words can describe it's tone. ah, BIG...ah, CLEAR...maybe, REAL...

Stevie Ray Vaughn would have loved this thing. Really sounds like Cold Shot. Also, the Rolling Stones songs....Midnight Rambler and Satisfaction.

Not really a wild solo device but playing Little Wing by Hendrix is an orgasmic experience with this pedal.

Big, Fat, Full, Clear, Dynamic, Rich, and best of all SUPER QUIET. I can't hear any floor noise! Amazing!

I feel bad for all the raving reviews I've given other pedals such as Boss, DOD, etc pedals as this thing is on another arena all together. It's like comparing black and white to color tv....huge difference!

30 years old and still works. AMAZING!

I've been playing since 1969 and on a daily basis.
I play blues, grunge, rock, metal.
I'm not waiting till it gets lost or stolen...I'm looking for a replacement now.
I've got a bunch of old overdrive pedals to unload now. My old favorites are just rubbish now.

No palm muting heavy metal with this thing but absolutely the best Grunge pedal I've ever heard. Absolutely perfect for classic rock and blues too.

EH Hot Tubes, bought new in 2003. Volume, Gain and separate Drive controls, Bass and Treble controls as well. Easy to dial in the tone your looking for, from relatively broken-up clean crunch to all-out over the top overdriven screamin' leads. The manual is for all practical purposes inexistant, but who neds one?

I play a Gibson LP or Tak GZ-300 solidbody, through a class-A tube amp. The Hot tubes is plugged into the clean section of my amp so I can get a different type of gain than my dirty channel. I usually have the gain and drive knobs turned to around 2 o'clock, and with my Les Paul I have to cut the bass quite a bit and turn up the treble to avoid muddiness. The pedal generates a lot of noise, so I use a Boss NS-2 noise suppressor to clean things up a bit. It is quite versatile in terms of how you can shape your sound, but it can get quite noisy (obviously) on hi-gain hi-drive settings, and you cannot use this pedal in my opinion for ultra-high gain scooped modern metal sounds. I kept the stock 12AX7's, and haven't yet tried swaping them to see how it would sound with JJ's or Mullards.

Built like a tank, the only thing that's an irritant is the wall wart, which should be made illigal for any serious piece of gear.

Never had to deal with 'em.

Great pedal, a definitely good-sounding overdrive pedal with lots of tone-shaping possibilities.

This is for the older transistor version. Very easy to use - 3 knobs + a tone bypass switch.

I use this with my Les Paul Electra copy w/ Gibson pickups. This distortion has the potential to sound amazing. I second the other reviews that say it doesn't sound too good at bedroom levels - however, I played this through my Fender Champ and cranked that up and got a beautiful crunchy, creamy sound that made the whole setup sound like it was being played thorugh a cranked Marshall stack...very vintage, huge sound. Lots of sustain and crunch at higher volumes. I use this with the tone bypassed because it seems to give the setup a bigger, fuller sound. I love this pedal and it sounds great for crunchy, raunchy rock 'n roll. However, you really do have to play this through a cranked amp or using another distortion pedal because on its own, at low amp volumes, it does sound thin and tinny.

Only had it for a few eeks, but so far so good. I may have an intermitent switching problem, but I plan on replacing the switch. Other than that, seems solidly built and has lasted a long time for an older pedal.

N/A

Great sounding pedal with a '70's rock mojo...but it needs to be used with an amp that is cranked up because at lower volumes, this pedal does not sound good. Crank your amp & the difference is like night and day and then this pedal sings.