Yum, Tube Screamer.  Everyone that ever said "man I wish this new tubescreamer sounded like the one I had back in the day" deserves one of these.

My TS clones are built to the old 808 schematic just like the ones that everybody loves so much. The only thing that I'm doing different from the a stock TS-808 is removing the buffered bypass part of the circuit and using mechanical true bypass. To drive down the cost I use a printed circuit board instead of perfboard for my ts clones... this saves me time, saves you money, and it wont change the sound at all.

There are a lot of mods out there and that is all good, but with a tubescreamer what you are really looking for is that original tone. I use stock value parts and it really gets me that old tubescreamer sound.

Clipping Options: If you really want  it, a popular mod is to put the clipping diodes on a switch... it can be set up to switch between symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping or it can be wired to switch between two types of diodes... for clipping diodes the popular choices are LEDs, Silicon, Germanium, Mosfets, 1nXXXs. Symmetrical clipping means that there are equal amounts of voltage drop on each side of the clipping circuit... some say this gives a smoother tone and personally I like it more. Asymmetrical clipping means that there are unequal amounts of drop... like if you have different types or amounts of diodes on each side... Some people say that asymmetrical clipping sounds raspy or "tube like" but I think it sounds a bit unnatural.

I have been using silicon diodes for clipping like the old tubescreamers, but I have tried and enjoyed LED and Mosfet clippers. If I was going to put a clipping switch in my TS it would be to select between Silicon diodes and LEDs. 

With a second switch I have set up tubescreamers with one switch to choose between two types of diodes and another switch to select whether they are symmetrical / asymmetrical... I felt like this was overkill.

We could also use a rotary switch to have many clipping options but we would have to house the circuit in a bigger box.

Tantalum Caps: Some people believe that the 0.22uF tantalum tone capacitors are part of the original sound while others replace them with film capacitors. I think the film caps might sound a little bit smoother but it's not an obvious difference. My tubescreamer has the tantalum caps and I love it. I'll build your with tantalum tone caps by default. 

Carbon Composition resistors: Some people think the carbon comp resistors give something special to the tone, but I'm not sure about that. They look cool though. I use carbon comp resistors in the signal path by default in my tubescreamers.

Internet mods: If you see a tubescreamer mod on the internet that you would like to try, email me a link to it and I'll share my thoughts about it and build one for you.

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