Inspired by Jordan Ziff’s minimalist approach to guitar tone by using the overdrive to push his 1959 Plexi amp, we mixed the vintage tubescreamer bare essentials with careful sophistication to give rise to a versatile and powerful tone shaping tool. The Ziffer Overdrive is a sturdy minion, road-ready, and eager to perform in any instance, on stage or in the studio.
The TS8-JZ Ziffer Overdrive was developed for Jordan Ziff – lead guitarist of Hot Crazy, RATT, and guitarist in Marty Friedman’s band -, and is mainly derived from our TS8-MS Overdrive / MIDI Switcher pedal which he embraced as its tubescreamer choice. This time we removed the MIDI switching capabilities and added several controls which contribute to subtle tone-crafting and expanded versatility.
The Ziffer’s circuit is mainly tributary to the vintage 808 sound & feel, yet it features our extensive modifications which we now took even further. While still featuring the tri-option CLIPPING switch which modifies the overall gain structure to better shape suitable tones for a large variety of applications, it also brings a few more extras. Compared with the TS8-MS, the Ziffer Overdrive features a DEEP switch with an option for beefing up the lower end frequencies, a DRY/WET MIX trimmer to blend the clean signal over the wet overdriven signal, and a DRY EQ trimmer that acts on the dryline only, to mix back either flat clean or tilted frequencies on either the lows or highs spectrum. In fact, the Ziffer’s dryline processing is inspired by our Solo Boost which we are now partially bringing back for a very versatile, powerful, and synergic blend of drive & clean tones. Of course, you could also use the Ziffer as a clean boost or as a tilting equalizer plus boost pedal.
For Ziffer’s fabrication, we replaced the one-transistor buffers with audio grade op-amps which contribute to a lower noise floor (especially in the high-gain settings) and the “transparency” that we’re all looking after. We also employ very low-tolerance metal film resistors and high-quality Panasonic multi-layer plastic metalized film capacitors in the audio path. We build everything in a small and compact package on our high-quality Gold-plated tracing circuit boards, without loose interconnecting wires, for lifetime endurance.
The Ziffer Overdrive should be powered with good filtered and regulated external power sources (not included) in between 9VDC and 18VDC for improved transparency and high headroom. It can be browned out down to 7VDC for an even more particular tonal flavoring.
| Weight | 0.2 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 3.9 × 9.2 × 5.1 cm |
| Technical Specifications | Input impedance: 550KΩ |
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TS8-MS Overdrive
Micro Booster