Timmy pedal..yays and nays

[Hfan]

One popped up on my CL (I need to delete CL from my favs one day) , heard a few you tubes that sound cool.

 

I have a Jacques over tube 2 stage OD already...more of the same? I have been pretty much playing without pedals for ever, lately rediscovered my compressor and yesterday was playing with my son's micro cube on the Vox hi gain position..good fun.

 

Seems to be a few Timmy versions..I think this one has the toggle switch.

[JeffB]

After hearing so much about the timmy I had to get one.

I did not like it very much. I used it at one gig and did find a couple of spots where it seemed useful but not better than what I was using already.

It gets so much love on tgp that Im almost convinced I am wrong about how I feel about it and that I dont have good tone.

The good thing is you can sell it easily if you dont like it.

[Billgelder]

 

[Elviskarate]

Great Pedal. I picked up one is Seafoam Green. Really good tones. My other points of reference are Cusack Screamers/Screamer Fuzz, new and old versions, Lovepedal Kalamazoo, gold and silver, Analogman and Keeley modded Sparkle Drives and Boss SD1, Homebrew, Pro Co Rat, Analogman King of Tone and even a Digitech Bad Monkey. The Timmy is still on the board its versitile thick and warm. Of course my fave OD pedal is my early Cusack Screamer Fuzz.

[RJLII]

I really like the one I have. I use the lower end of the gain range normally. The overdrive is transparent and very natural sounding. The tone controls are very effective too. It sounds best (to my ears) with amps sharing Fender DNA. Works great with all my guitars.

[tsp17]

I have a Tim and like it a lot. Very musical.

[Gitfiddler]

Never owned a Tim or Timmy, but like many, have wanted to try one, especially since they are made by Heritage Amp designer/builder, Paul Cochrane.

 

Maybe if I crank my Patriot to '10' it will sound like a Tim overdrive pedal! I'm sure the local police will let me know one way or another.

[Kuz]

I might make a play for one used. I like the small foot print they have and the low-moderate OD they produce.

[slider313]

I didn't care for it with my amps. Briggs ordered one, so I stopped in to compare it with my KOT IV. We plugged it into his Two Rock and my non reverb blackface Deluxe. The Timmy was warmer but had this lower midrange "hump" we couldn't dial out. The KOT was much more transparent and even across the frequency range. Jack sold it about two weeks later.

[111518]

Cochrane should double the OD up with an echo: Timmy/In the Well

[JeffB]

I didn't care for it with my amps. Briggs ordered one, so I stopped in to compare it with my KOT IV. We plugged it into his Two Rock and my non reverb blackface Deluxe. The Timmy was warmer but had this lower midrange "hump" we couldn't dial out. The KOT was much more transparent and even across the frequency range. Jack sold it about two weeks later.

I had the KOT very briefly and did like it better than the timmy. But not enough to keep it.

It was those two ods that made me really stop and think about guitar sounds and how I might hear things.

They are both so hugely popular that I was sure I was missing something and my ears might be not hearing right.

[slider313]

I had the KOT very briefly and did like it better than the timmy. But not enough to keep it.

It was those two ods that made me really stop and think about guitar sounds and how I might hear things.

They are both so hugely popular that I was sure I was missing something and my ears might be not hearing right.

The KOT works well with small, lower wattage amps. It pushes them just enough to get more sustain, cut and just a slightly warmer tone (from the yellow side) without "coloring" the sound too much. There's not a lot of gain on tap and the sound stays pretty much true to what the amp sounds like.

 

For smaller rooms, where I need a bit more gain and overdrive at a lower volume level, I use an older Fulldrive 2 non mosfet.

[Trouble]

While I was studying circuits and building pedals (for myself) I looked over the Timmy circuit, as well as a lot of others. I never built one, there are a couple reasons why I never did that are not important for this but the circuit is very simple, I think Paul C. was trying to accomplish something without polluting the signal anymore than he had to.

 

There are a lot of people who love the Timmy, and Paul still builds them himself so there is more demand than supply, although the buzz is starting to fade a bit. I think anyone who has one 10 years down the road could make a pretty good profit, so you could look at it as an investment.

 

This might be a little off topic, but one of the companys that was very disappointing to me while I was studying different circuits was Lovepedal, almost all of there circuits are nearly direct copies of an old circuit, with minor component value changes, and the one design they have that isn't based on that old circuit is a nearly direct copy of the Timmy. I'm not trying to start a bashing or hate thread, but the fact is, nearly all of these "boutique" pedals are based in some point on old designs, the Tubescreamer, the Marshall Guvnor and Bluesbreaker, the FuzzFace and Big Muff were really the originals, and most everything after that is just someone else's take on that. There are just so many ways to clip a signal, so there is no way you can make a dirt pedal without using parts of these old circuits whether you want to be original or not.

 

The point to all of this is all these high end pedals share circuits with lots of other pedals, so I try to lead people away from the crazy expensive stuff and just look for something they like and don't worry about the hype. Paul C. ,David Barber and a few others build stomps that are as good or better than anyones and keep the prices reasonable.

[Trouble]

I'm not sure this will work here but just to illustrate...

 

 

Lovepedal Amp11/ Paul C. Timmy comparison.

[JeffB]

Hey Marty, you nailed it. Theres different flavors but essentially only a few designs. You missed ProCo Rat btw.

 

Been very busy. Im hoping to get things done Monday.

[RJLII]

Cochrane should double the OD up with an echo: Timmy/In the Well

Clever Lassie reference. Dating yourself?

[111518]

Clever Lassie reference. Dating yourself?

I own my geezerdom.

 

I was a pretty devoted Lassie viewer (after all, there were only three choices on TV). Had a toy collie named Laddie.

 

"Timmy stuck in the well" was such a recurrent riff on "The Simpsons" that l that I thought it had general cultural currency, but, maybe not.

[Trouble]

Hey Marty, you nailed it. Theres different flavors but essentially only a few designs. You missed ProCo Rat btw.

 

Been very busy. Im hoping to get things done Monday.

Yeah I did, also the Green Ringer was pretty original too. There are some builders that do some really original things though, and some that are honest about taking an old design and tweaking it. My point is there is no good reason to spend $200+ on a dirt pedal. Pedals like Strymon and Eventide are a very different thing, much more complicated and expensive to build, the Fulltone Tube Tape Echo is much more involved.

 

I can build a exact copy of a Timmy or the like for $20 bucks worth of components, the builder has to cover costs of paint, facility, employees so for a good quality stomp I expect to pay about $150 no more than $200. As a comparison I spent $185 on my Earthquaker Devices Organizer, a pedal that actually takes computer code to make it work.

[RJLII]

I own my geezerdom.

 

I was a pretty devoted Lassie viewer (after all, there were only three choices on TV). Had a toy collie named Laddie.

 

"Timmy stuck in the well" was such a recurrent riff on "The Simpsons" that l that I thought it had general cultural currency, but, maybe not.

 

I'm sneaking up on codger status myself. I had to laugh when I saw it. My wife and I are both from the same era. Our cat (Norton) is very vocal. He'll start yapping at us and my wife will enter into a pretend dialog: "What's that Norton? Timmy fell in the well again? Whatever will we do?" He just looks at her funny. Me too.