There are all kinds of Tube Screamers on the market. There are OG replicas, mini-pedals, hand-wired Ibanez limited edition versions, and more clones than we care to count.
After all, it is one of the most copied overdrive pedals of all time. That’s a lot of green boxes. In 2025, the Tube Screamer clone is ubiquitous.
Then you’d be interested, right? And you would be right to be. Because Source Code is one serious “next-gen” TS-style drive.
TWA Source Code Overdrive | Next-Gen Tube Screamer – YouTube
Well, this circuit has never been far from Tamura’s breadboard. Over the years, he has picked at it, pondered how it could be improved. Source Code is the result. It reimagines the Tube Screamer as a four-knob drive pedal, with dials for Bite, Level, Drive, and Tone.
The latter three are all self-explanatory and by now very familiar. Bite? That’s a particularly interesting addition to the TS format. As you turn it up it alters the “balance of odd and even-order harmonics”, which is to say that at extreme settings it goes from symmetrical to asymmetrical clipping and has the feel and saturation of a high-gain tube amp.
You can run this thing on 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply or battery, but it’ll take 18V if you’re looking for more headroom. Source Code also has some extra juice under the hood, too, with an onboard +6dB boost to hit the front end of your guitar amp hard without coloring your electric guitar tone.
Tamura has integrated a multi-transistor input buffer to the signal to preserve your signal, and there are top-mounted jacks and mechanical true bypass. At the heart of the circuit is an IC op-amp.
A quick aside on the build: that metallic green spray chop with the LEDs is… Chef’s kiss. Perfect. All of these are handmade in the USA. As such, they ain’t cheap at $299 but still, if you like Tube Screamers….
Head over to Godlyke Distribution for more details.
