The Digital/Plugin Tubescreamer minimum gain thing

[pipelineaudio]

Whenever the SoyFace guru bots on youtube show tube screamers, they always say "in plugins and modelers, you can't turn the gain to zero like you do in the real pedals, so always set it to 1 or more"

Is this even true?

If so, why?

Is it the case that 0 is truly -inf? Then in that case wouldn't 0.1 be a fully CCW pedal?

 

[PLX]

the SoyFace guru bots

Great name for a band !

 

[FractalAudio]

If that's true then the model is wrong.

A Tube Screamer has a 51K resistor in series with the Drive pot so if you turn the Drive to zero it still has some gain (about 12 actually).

 

[laxu]

Yeah 0.1 would most likely work and 0 is basically "off", but it's easier to say "just turn it to 1" if there is no scale or anything.