My ambition is to someday rebuild the newer five-knob version into a smaller box. Apart from that, dynamic and tone responses from both are nearly identical.īeing pedantic about noise issues, I would prefer the newer one, except that it's really huge, way too big for my regular pedal board. It's barely noticeable, but the older pedal tends to be somewhat more saturated on the mids and also has more hiss/hum, while the newer one is slightly more transparent and quieter. Consequently, setting the drive knob at different levels impacts the tone controls so that they respond differently on each pedal. To my ears, to get the equivalent of an Eric Johnson setting (treble knob all the way down) on the new version, you have to set the older pedal at treble 4, mid 4, bass 5. I've got a 12au7 in the old one and a stock tube in the new one (no idea what it is). They're both just as good and the range of sounds available from each are pretty much identical, except that the knobs have to be set quite differently on each pedal to achieve the same sounds. Then I bought the new re-issue version and had an A-B comparison. I wrote to Butler's company and a technician there verified it as a genuine Butler pedal, as opposed to the Chandler "fakes." The other is a newly made re-issue with bias knob and built-in transformer, as endorsed by Eric Johnson.įor years, I thought the older one I had was quite different and inferior to the new stuff. One is an older (80s?) version with a black chassis and bright-yellow lettering and lines, and which requires powering by an external 12 VAC source. I've got two of these BK Butler Tube Drivers.