Pedal Roulette #1 : Limited Edition Tube Screamers
| TS808 Red | TS9 Gold | TSV808 | |
| Original Price ($) | $285 (#2) | $150 (#1) | $450 (#3) |
| Current Price (μ) | $330 (#1) | $385 (#2) | $1750 (#3) |
| No. of Controls | 3 (#2=) | 3 (#2=) | 5 + 2 intl. dips (#1) |
| Numbers Made | N/A | N/A | c2,000 |
| Affordability (now) | #1 | #2 | #3 |
| Ease of Use | #1= | #1= | #3 |
| Obtainability (Rvrb) | #3 (8) | #2 (11) | #1 (25) |
| Practicality | #1= | #1= | #3 |
| Versatility | #2= | #2= | #1 |
| Quality | #2= | #2= | #1 |
| Uniqueness | #2= | #2= | #1 |
| Value | #2 | #1 | #3 |
| Desirability | #3 | #2 | #1 |
| VERDICT | #2 (22) | #1 (21) | #3 (24) |
$ - Pricing in $USD
μ - Median value for Current Resale / Second Hand Price
So if you want to rank these Quantitively then you simply add up the individual rankings by criteria / category - and the lowest total wins (VERDICT) - i.e. thee TS9 Gold. All of that still involves some Qualitative appraisal - so you can skip the maths if you wish - and simply go by gut feel - or ideally a combination of both approaches! Note that we had to exclude ranking for ’Numbers Made’ as there simply isn’t the data to support that - hence mostly N/A. Finally, you can also rank overall by most number of #1 rankings - which hands it to the TSV808 (6).
Not that for different themes and groupings some of the criteria will likely vary - especially pedals which are in current general supply - don’t need the Median (μ) Current Resale Price,
For me and my preferences - even though the pricing and a few of the categories are against it - I have the TSV808 as my own personal overall winner in this context and contest even - funnily enough it also has the most availability on Reverb.com - silly pricing currently though - so even though it’s the one I want the most - I’m almost entirely unlikely to get one within current prevailing conditions!
Do analyse the above data set yourselves and draw your own conclusions and extrapolations / interpolations - and report them in the comments below. I’m looking to do a series of these 3-way head-to-heads - and the pedals covered of course need to be within a comparable theme - so let me know what further episodes you might like to see of these. I’m thinking I might do Boss Fuzzes next - probably FZ-1W, FZ-2 and TB-2W! Or possibly FZ-1W, FZ-2, FZ-3 if you prefer! Or just the super rare ones - FZ-2, FZ-3 and TB-2W - you decide!
It’s funny how poor the Internet still is on some details - all 3 here are obviously limited editions, but I was unable to find official figures for how many were made - beyond a quoted 400 TSV808’s made for USA - not the global total. Also several brands are poor on the details we often need - in order to properly analyse the value and merit of each proposition - so there’s a degree of grey science here - and some of the data may not be entirely 100% accurate. Note also some rounding of figures for sake of aesthetics!
In any case - this is just supposed to be harmless fun and spark some lively debate - also leading to really cool visuals of course.
All of this is to be taken with a pinch of salt - i.e not taken too seriously - and latterly / eventually it will be more of group-think in determining what gets which overall rank. I do hope you enjoyed this first edition - here follow some salient demos! :
12 Degrees of Saturation 2023 Compact Edition
