Skip to content

a blog on effects

Menu
  • Home
  • collection (486)
  • Ibanez (111)
  • Danelectro (53)
  • DOD, Digitech (51)
  • Electro-Harmonix (40)
  • Boss (54)
  • Other Brands (177)
Menu

Ibanez TC999 Tube King Compressor

Posted on 20/05/2014 by mirosol

Ibanez-TC999

What is it?
Ibanez TC999 Tube King Compressor made in Japan in the 90’s.

It’s been quite long since i got this unit and took the photos (so sorry about the quality). Got this as semi-functioning unit in a trade. Problem was with the enormous amounts of hiss and interfecence when pedal was engaded. Dirk has posted a schematic up on his site, and i follewed that to see if power supply filtering had gone bad. Nope. Since the hiss was still there after i swapped the filter caps for new ones with same value, but higher voltage rating. Surely, the design isn’t meant to be used with a battery, but it did occur to me to try out the simplest possible diagnostic for power supply issues. Run it with a battery and see if the noise goes away. Yup. It does. Problem solved. Do not use a crappy power supply with this one. Some noisy squish is still present on high sustain settings, but i suspect that to be a feature. Other issues with pedal were your standard non-pedal enthusiast home made fixes. Like fastening the jack with superglue after someone had taken the threads off from the jack. Never. I mean Never fix anything with superglue nor hot glue. Please. Two of the knobs are not original, but that doesn’t slow us down too much.

Ibanez-TC999-Guts1

Mini analysis of the design shows that the tube is there to offer the BA6110 VCA SIP chip the pre-compressed tube sound input that a good compressor wants. Dynamics of the voltage controlled amplifier is better (at least in theory) than with the standard silicon amplifier. No, the tube isn’t creating the compression. The tube is there to provide enhanced dynamics for the otherwise near standard modern Maxon/Ibanez compressors with VCAs. For the controls, the Sensitivity is basically a gain control before the tube grid. This sets the amount of signal passed to the tube. Attack and Sustain are controls for the VCA parameters, more or less the same as we’ll find in Soundtank compressors. Master is your overall volume control. The stomp switch for Boost sets the input gain of the tube for two different settings. Pretty straight forward.

Ibanez-TC999-Guts2

Two stacked boards look like most Maxon designs from the 80s and 90s. Neat, but somewhat dull. Overall, it is a compressor that has some good thinking and engineering involved in its design.

How does it sound?
Loud and mellow compression, with some noisy squish when sustain is maxed. The boost isn’t as clean as i hoped, but it’ll be enough for many purposes. Design part left me a bit puzzled or hoping to get more out of it. Guess it’s safe to assume that new ideas do not necessarily go hand in hand with “better”. It’s not bad sounding compression, but you’ll be better of with Ibanez CP5/CP10/CPL, Digitech Main squeeze or Marshall Ed. But yes. It has a tube in it. You’ll need to weight if its Mojo or brutal usability you’re after. You’ll get a better sounding booster out of almost any cheap boost pedal.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

/usr/bin/locate

/usr/bin/whoami

here used to be a short description of me. however, it wasn't exactly accurate anymore. so i'm replacing it with this placeholder for now. and yes. it's been a long time since my last post. but let me assure you. i'm very much still alive.

Found an error? One of my assumptions is dead wrong? Something else is just not right? Let me know! Leave a comment to a post, or drop a line to mirosol at kapsi dot fi.

I do mods, repairs and custom builds too. For inquiries, use the email address above.

/var/lib/collection

  • Electro-Harmonix (40)
  • DOD, Digitech (51)
  • Other Brands (177)
  • Boss (54)
  • Danelectro (53)
  • Ibanez (111)

/var/lib/tags

Amp Autowah Bass Boost Booster Chorus Compressor Delay Distortion Echo Envelope Filter EQ Filter Flanger Fuzz Harmony Loop Modulation Noise Gate Octave Overdrive Phaser Pitch Power Preamp Reverb Special/Multi Synthesizer Tremolo Tuner Utility Vibe Vibrato Wah

/usr/lib/comments_recent

  • zix on DOD FX55-B Supra Distortion
  • Ali Imran on Ibanez MF5 Modern Fusion
  • Ali Imran on Ibanez MF5 Modern Fusion
  • Schlunzo on Ibanez MS10 Metal Charger
  • Jefferson on Ibanez MS10 Metal Charger

/var/lib/archives

  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • September 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
© 2025 | Powered by Superbs Personal Blog theme