Anybody plays/played one and can comment on how it sounds?
I'm talking about the "beige" USA made one.
Thanks

I have the TAN Ross Distortion ...

standard early 70's RnR tone. Really needs an OD/boost/compressor in front of it to drive it into a great place. Without the 'boost' b4 it, the Ross can tend to get a little bit 'bladey/metallic' on the finish of the distortion trail (if you know what I mean.. ), and it tends to muddy up some on chords without the boosts ability to tighten the signal. I have found few distortions that dont generally muddy up on chords tho, honestly.

it is a silicon based distortion, unlike say, a Soul-Bender, which is germanium. I replaced my Fulltone SB with the Ross for alot of reasons. Primarily, I found that I could get all I wanted out of the Ross and at less than 1/2+ the cost of the Fulltone. Tho make no mistake, as stand alone distortion, the SB is a far more evolved and better pedal, no doubt. and it is germanium, so it is gonna have that depth of tone and complexity of break-up that silicon just cant do, imho.

I also found, in a general sense, that most distortions sound better with a boost AFTER them too, or, more specifically, at chain's end. A SHO or even a straight clean boost generally gives a distorted signal a glorious complexity to the finished product.

the Ross TAN distortion is not a 'tone sucker' either, nor is it TB to the best of my understanding - just old school buffered I guess...

my chain:
foxx tone machine clone (geofex)-ebs multi-compressor-ibanez de7 delay-banzai FB2-ross tan distortion-boss dc2-boss dm2-zvex sho

I wished the Ross had a LED tho and a gain control.

otherwise, it is a great SOUNDING distortion when its shortcomings are offset. It does BTO/Frampton/semi Carlos/Allmans/psuedo M.Taylor era Stones/general late 60's early 70's RnR tone.
does most excellent blues too...

they go for 60-110 bucks used. pay no more than 85, imho. (buying advice no less! )

good luck

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Thanks for the great description. Sounds like it should do what I want. I would only use it in front/after a TS9 or FD2 or whatever is the flavor of the day regarding overdrives....

Big Star provided a lot of good information on the pedal, but I'll thown in my two pennies any way.

I have one of the tan ones also. It is a good rock distortion. But it's just got that feel to it that it could be better. I do plan on building a distoriton based on the Ross, but better in the near future.

In reasearching the pedal, I have found that there are several diffrent IC's used in both the tan and black models. Mine has a JRC4558, and sounds good. The other odd thing about this pedal is that it's real close to the DOD 250 and MXR distortion+ designs, but the Ross uses a dual op-amp, the others a single. The odd part is the Ross only uses one half of the IC. Leaves a lot of options available building something simular.

I've got a tan USA version. I just got it, mainly because I was missing the old, beat up Taiwan version I got for $20 several years ago. The Ross is a very cool distortion -- and I beleive it was designed to compete with the Distortion +. The unit uses a SPDT switch, which I replaced with a DPDT for true bypass. This makes a BIG difference -- like the old MXRs, the old ross pedals eat your tone in bypass. Plus, in bypass, the distorted signal "bleeds through" if the distortion control is set high.

As far as tone goes, the pedal has quite a range. It's very warm at the low to middle drive ranges, and it's buzzy and trebly at the higher gain ranges. I actually A/Bed the Ross with my Bennett Brown Sound and found the two to be remarkably close. The Brown Sound was a little rounder, however.

My plan now is to see if Robert Keeley can do some cool mods on this pedal for me.

RD

*****
"What are you people . . . on dope?"