The Arion Tubulator is cheap! How cheap? I got this one for $12. It maybe not the most durable pedal in its unattractive plastic shell but it sounds half way decent stock. It may not be the best sounding Tube Screamer clone but it's sound lands it in the ballpark alright. You defiantly shouldn't feel cheated. The cool thing is the price of course. An attractive platform for modding and bending. But you do get what you pay for in this "case." It may sound okay with a typical TS style circuit based on the 4558 but it is pretty damn flimsy. Plastic enclosure, weak pots, and crappy jacks. Plus the thing is ugly as hell. OK, I realize looks are subjective but I do not see a lot of people thinking this is a good looking pedal stock. The pink color for the battery compartment cover was a poor choice. I think the could have spend a little more time in design to make them more appealing. Plastic can be almost any color as far as I know. Maybe if they did they could get $15 a pop.
Anyway on to the mods. The first thing I did was add a third germanium diode for asymmetrical clipping. It made a moderate improvement more tube sounding for the tubulator. This pedal has a lot of room. Look at the disassembled image:
I fell it is always a good idea to mess about with clipping. With the room in this thing you could try a lot of things. AMZFX lab notebook has lots of clipping ideas including some with pots that could fit in this thing.
Next I installed a couple of bends/mods connected to on/off switches.
The orange wire connect pins of the 4558 together. It creates a really farty 8-bit kind of sound. The distortion and tone control in in tandem can become kind of a gate control. This was suggested else where on the web. The purple connect the diodes and the tone pot. I found this one by touching point together with a wire(do this at your own risk you could ruin something.) This really increase the volume put adds an edge distortion and seems to have kind of a top boost effect. I like the sound a lot. The tone of distortion pot seem to have no effect while this is switched on. Un fortunately the 2 mods do not seem to work together.
The red and black wire coming off the top of the board go to a LED in the battery compartment. The flash on the camera really washed the red glow in the compartment out. I always use and adapter so I did not need the compartment but i had to use it for something. If you noticed the picture in the first image and said, "What is all the crap in there," you were right on the money and didn't know it. It is just a bunch of components I removed form other projects, spare lengths of wire and an axial cap that digikey sent me instead of a radial(I felt there was no point in sending back $.98 worth of stuff.) Well, it all made for good decorations. It is a just a little space cramp with some very electrical looking stuff reminded of the Delorean in Back to the Future hence the name. I am sure the 80's colors helped along that reminiscence.
The piece the pots poke through is aluminum. I sanded off the paint with a dremmel. And mounted the 2 switches. The thing was a originally held on with ultra weak glue(once again you get what you pay for of some kind so I screwed it back on.
If you wish you could bend the hell of or this thing. And if something goes wrong hey it is $12. You could rehouse it and replace the flimsy components and it would still be fairly cheap. But if you do keep the original case I highly recommend taking advantage of the the battery compartment on top for something frivolous and fun. A mini Flux Capacitor would be cool.