MusicRadar Verdict
If you want to add some warmth to your solid-state amp, this is for you.
Pros
- +
Valve makes solid state amps sound almost like a valve amp.
Cons
- -
The features beyond this aren't spectacular.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
Ibanez has a long history of producing great distortion pedals with the Tube Screamer series.
But the TS range were solid-state pedals designed to get the most out of valve amplifiers - the new Tube King is a very different beast.
We're always a bit sceptical of pedals with built-in valves. We're not engineers so we don't know just how much the valve contributes to the sound.
That being said, the Tube King made our solid-state amp sound like a valve amp and that alone must justify the humble outlay.
“It's transparent when not in operation, crisp when looping, and handles high-gain and complex audio sources with ease”: TC Electronic Ditto 2 Looper review
“Instead of pairing a new booster inside this new pedal, think of it as changing lanes inside the pedal”: Mythos and That Pedal Show team up for the Argo Boost Deluxe – an octave fuzz with a switchable boost
“I didn’t even realise it had synthesizer on it for decades”: This deep dive into The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun reveals 4 Moog Modular parts that we’d never even noticed before
