Overdrive

The Jose mod without a soldering iron: a Frog Amps pedal with a 12AX7 running at plate voltage and two gain stages, one full-on and one softer with a little more compression, used alone or stacked in front of the amp. He runs it into a Studio Classic, a custom ‘69 Plexi and a modded JCM800, where it takes the Marshalls into higher-gain territory and each gain stage shifts the EQ slightly, and his bass went through it into the Axe-Fx. The wish list is easier tube access, some tone shaping, and unity gain at zero rather than around ten and one o’clock. Think about every high-gain amp after the JCM800, he says, and it is basically a JCM800 with something like this in front of it.

Marshall’s 1991 try at Clapton’s JTM45 combo from the Beano album, in a box with three knobs: gain, tone and volume. It sold poorly and was discontinued in 1998, and then John Mayer put one on his board around Continuum and English-made originals went past $2,000. Its circuit became the starting point for the King of Tone, the Morning Glory and David Barber’s Midnight Standard, and Marshall has reissued the original for $199. The argument is that it failed at recreating an amp and, almost by accident, created a new kind of overdrive, one whose descendants brought transparency into the pedal lexicon. Analog Man is filling orders for customers who joined the King of Tone waiting list about seven years ago.