TS808 narrow box (1979)

What Is and What Was  

Briefly, before the TS-9s and TS-808s we are familiar with, came a prelude.
Since these now cost thousands of whichever currency you use, they are not an everyday item so at a glimpse, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this as an early 80s 808 but look a little closer and the differences are fairly striking.

The first and most obvious difference is the overall width, yes that’s right … the 808 narrow is, well narrower than the standard 808 … who would’ve thought!
There is however much more, for example, the battery compartment is only accessible via removing the back of the enclosure (like an MXR pedal) whereas later models have a plastic-covered hatch.
The DC input is on the side next to the input jack and the volume knob on many is labelled “Balance”.

Internally there were slight differences of the circuit including two 1458 chips used as an early basic dual op-amp, others use the sort after (yet more common) 4558 type chips. Interestingly some had the Malaysian Texas Instruments RC4558P chip instead of the normal Japanese JRC4558 chip.

We’d like to acknowledge the Analogman & Tonehome websites for filling in some of the gaps on this ultra-rare pedal!

Compare the TS808 Narrow to other vintage TS808s and TS9s we have tonecaptured to see which tubescreamer fan you really are!