Klone Army

EdGrip · August 2013

"I'm not gonna tell some kid who can just about afford a Joyo that what they really should ethically do is do without an overdrive pedal altogether."

I think this pretty much hits the nail on the head.

I particularly enjoy Catalinbread's "Fuck It, You Build It" kits. ^_^

At the point where the original Klon was out of production, it was entirely fair, reasonable, and obvious for people to start making them, and arguing otherwise seems silly. Unfortunately, if you're the kind of bellend who decides to make scarcity-of-supply and very high prices your business model, this is an occupational hazard. (I want Behringer to start making Dumbles - that would be delicious!)

If you have enough faith that your design would sell without artificial forum-hype, then you just get a commercial run going and sell 'em for Boss prices. Or sell it to Boss. Whatever. I tend to be immediately mistrustful of any analogue 3-knob pedal selling for more than £150, because beyond that you can only be paying for hype. If a builder considers hype to be a crucial component in their pedal, that's when we - and FSB - start to get really curious about looking inside. So often, it turns out that a very high price, or artificial hype, or plain old goop, is simply hiding the Emperor's nuddy bum.

And then when it turns out to be another TubeScreamer with a different capacitor, why aren't we allowed to make our own and sell it? Is "substantially different" measured in uF or pF? Or enough seperate pF's to make a uF? Or only if it's a new circuit? What if it's a circuit that's new to guitar pedals, but as old as the hills to mixing desks?

ICBM · August 2013

I do think there is a case for the cheap clones, yes - they aren't actually going to steal much market from the real thing, and they do offer the choice to someone who can't afford it. I still think people who want and can afford a real Tube Screamer will buy one, or a boutique near-copy, rather than a Joyo. I would, in fact - and it's not purely snobbery, I do actually prefer the real TS808/9 partly because it's buffered and partly because I genuinely think it sounds marginally better. And I admit, partly because it *is* the real thing.

By 'substantially different', I think you'd have start by defining a point where it sounds noticably different. Whether that means you can tell a difference when you directly A/B them into a clean amp, or where a non-musician can tell in a stage mix through an overdriven amp (!) or some other point in between, I don't know. Even then, this can be achieved by changing just one component, if it's the right one... and I would certainly not say that's a 'substantial' difference.

Using an existing circuit from some other audio application but which is new to guitar technology is definitely an innovation, but as with all the others I think it would be acceptable to market it only if the source is acknowledged. There's no legal problem with doing this since circuits themselves cannot be copyrighted or patented.

The Klon thing is very odd, to me. I've never played one, but I've heard good demos and to me it just sounds like an overdrive pedal. What's so special about it that only an exact (or near) clone of the actual circuit will do? I know it has at least one slightly unusual feature in that it has feedback from after the clipping stage - which is a distortion-style hard clipping to ground rather than a TS-style gain-limiting clipping in a feedback loop, if it matters! - to the gain stage before it. Using this idea in a different circuit doesn't seem such a big step. But apart from that, would it actually pass a "can you tell the difference from the audience in a stage mix through an overdriven amp" test?

(And I'm well aware that many of my "must have" things wouldn't either.)

stickyfiddle · August 2013

ICBM said:The Klon thing is very odd, to me. I've never played one, but I've heard good demos and to me it just sounds like an overdrive pedal. What's so special about it that only an exact (or near) clone of the actual circuit will do? I know it has at least one slightly unusual feature in that it has feedback from after the clipping stage - which is a distortion-style hard clipping to ground rather than a TS-style gain-limiting clipping in a feedback loop, if it matters! - to the gain stage before it. Using this idea in a different circuit doesn't seem such a big step. But apart from that, would it actually pass a "can you tell the difference from the audience in a stage mix through an overdriven amp" test?
(And I'm well aware that many of my "must have" things wouldn't either.)
God no. it's the kind of pedal that you just don't want to turn off. It's very hard to explain, but it just makes everything slightly more responsive, slightly more fruity (presumably more emphasis on harmonics). TBH it's nothing special once you turn the gain up to the point you can hear it clip, but at the spot just below that level it's pretty magic.

Equally, the other pedal I have that has a similar effect is the Alembic Stratoblaster clone I built a few months back, and that only cost me £25 of parts and an hour's soldering.

Dave_Mc · August 2013

randomhandclaps said:

Sorry Dave, I was not suggesting boffins shouldn't make money off important breakthroughs. Completely the opposite.
I was actually making the point that FSB took the attitude that we should know what's going on in the and published the build for people with not an ounce of electronic understanding to replicate - whether rightly or wrongly. The attitude that that Bill should either share his ideas for free or else he's a bad bloke in which case we should be able to take them anyway.
My only reference to the 'cure for cancer' argument is that if Bill had discovered a cure for cancer and was charging £4,000,000 a shot you could understand the 'Robin Hood' justification of pulling his ideas apart. He was however selling an electronic item for £300 - there are plenty of others making money out of their ideas and at the end of the day it's a guitar pedal. Sharing the idea will not change the world but will change Bill's and I could understand why he would be pissed. I'm not saying I agree with him, and in many ways as Juan said I think he's his own worst enemy.

Ah no worries, yeah that makes sense. Sorry for jumping on you.

I still agree with what juansolo is saying (if someone does something to facilitate understanding (or anything beneficial) and then someone else abuses that, that's not the original person's fault and doesn't mean we should stop the beneficial stuff). But sorry for ascribing something to you that you didn't mean.

randomhandclaps said:

It's those who have sat in the middle, slagging off hobbyist or small scale builders whilst ripping off designers that I have a real issue with. It's like poisoning the well after you have drunk from it.

Agreed

(I agree with the rest of your post too,just didn't want to make this any longer. And I especially agree with that bit.)

juansolo said:

But we're talking about a field that is morally bankrupt already in a lot of respects. There commercial outfits out there wholesale ripping off other builders left right and centre. Danelectro, Freakish Blues, Lovepedal, Vemuram and Tone Monk to name a few of the high profile ones.

Which brings us back to the beginning regarding the plethora of commercial and hobbyist Klones out in the world; why is it ok for all those people to make a Klone yet when the above made a Timmy (amongst other things) we get up in arms about it. If the world was a fair place occupied by good people and no-one (including the original maker) took the piss, then it wouldn't be. Sadly it isn't

Which is of course just my view.

Agreed.

2 wrongs don't make a right, but at the same time the person who did the original wrong hardly has the moral high ground to accuse the person doing the second wrong of not playing fair, either.

randomhandclaps · August 2013

No worries Dave. Can see how it read like that.

What's bizarre about the basic design of the Klon is that (as ICBM pointed out) it features hard clipping to ground. Fair enough. Then however, much has been done to negate the characteristics of the hard clipping. The selection of the germanium diodes, I would bet was far more a step to soften clipping than a eureka moment. Next you have the feedback loop after the diodes which just serves to further lower the gain and filter out the harsher high frequency fizz associated this kind of setup.

It could be shear genius but has always struck me far more as someone who started with a Rat or Dist+ style setup and set about removing the harsh distortion character and lowering the gain into more friendly overdrive territory. That's why I always find it funny that it is marketed as an overdrive, yet when you ask people what the like about it they point to using it as a booster on a low gain setting. At low gain setting it's functions as a pretty standard op-amp booster - ala MXR Microamp, albeit with some highs filtered out - given the perception or a warmer/fatter boost (and the Microamp is already know as a fattening boost). The low forward voltage of the germaniums to ground undoubtedly add the touch of dynamics stickyfiddle is referring to at low gain settings. Get above the clean boost with mild dynamics and start pushing those that opamp and diodes though and I don't see many people genuinely raving about it as a stand alone overdrive/distortion.

Dave_Mc · August 2013

^ LOL that's a good point. I've seen the schematic before but it mustn't have registered that the clippers were to ground. I think I was looking more at how the gain control worked

) Doesn't the pcb on the new version say something like "these are critical" next to the germanium diodes? LOL. Wouldn't be the first pedal to do that, either, the OCD and dist+ do that too with something to ground which is less harsh-sounding.

It also wouldn't be the first massively-hyped "game changer" pedal which has got what look suspiciously like ad-hoc approaches to tweaking the pedal's tone rather than the eureka moment you mentioned. But at least, to be fair, the centaur is an original circuit.

From what I can remember from trying one, it was really good... but as you said (and as I thought at the time), when used as it's often used as a clean boost, it didn't seem to do all that much that a (much cheaper) clean boost wouldn't do. It probably does sound slightly different (that's what i've heard from people i trust who aren't in the mojo brigade; I genuinely can't remember as it was so long ago that I tried it), but it's a lot of money.

EdGrip · August 2013

Sounds like there's a case for making a really small one- or no-knob Klon-boost, as an alternative to your SHOs and whatnot. Internal trimmers for gain and tone. Admittedly it's bit of a stupid parts-count for a booster, but if it's that good, maybe worth doing..

ICBM · August 2013

Dave_Mc said:

Doesn't the pcb on the new version say something like "these are critical" next to the germanium diodes? LOL. Wouldn't be the first pedal to do that, either, the OCD and dist+ do that too with something to ground which is less harsh-sounding.

They definitely are - the various versions of the Rat are all essentially the same pedal but with different clipping diodes (and OK, a few cap values as well) - but they're sold as completely different models, and sound different enough that you might not realise how small the differences are.

Dave_Mc · August 2013

^ Oh yeah they definitely affect the tone a lot, my mooer rat clone has the switch to go between vintage and turbo modes, which i'm guessing switches between silicon diodes and leds, and they make a massive difference. I just thought it was funny that what is a pretty well-known , even to rank amateurs like me (to be fair, that's now, maybe not so much when the klon was originally released), way to tweak a circuit's overdriven tone towards softer clipping is being advertised as the holy grail.

)

I also reckon pro co should release a rat with different modes. they do it on the deucetone rat but it's silly expensive, not to mention really big and I don't need two rats- just the two modes on the one pedal and I'm not buying two darn pedals (or one pedal which is the size and cost of two!) for that when the differences are so small.

To me, the mooer isn't so much a clone as a better (for me) rat than pro co makes. Admittedly, the fact it was £28 didn't hurt either. But if Pro Co offered a single-pedal rat at maybe £10 more than the bog standard rat with switchable clipping, I may well get one (probably would if I gigged).

Somehow I missed a bunch of posts in here yesterday. dunno what happened there...

EdGrip said:

"I'm not gonna tell some kid who can just about afford a Joyo that what they really should ethically do is do without an overdrive pedal altogether."

I think this pretty much hits the nail on the head.

I particularly enjoy Catalinbread's "Fuck It, You Build It" kits. ^_^

At the point where the original Klon was out of production, it was entirely fair, reasonable, and obvious for people to start making them, and arguing otherwise seems silly. Unfortunately, if you're the kind of bellend who decides to make scarcity-of-supply and very high prices your business model, this is an occupational hazard. (I want Behringer to start making Dumbles - that would be delicious!)
If you have enough faith that your design would sell without artificial forum-hype, then you just get a commercial run going and sell 'em for Boss prices. Or sell it to Boss. Whatever. I tend to be immediately mistrustful of any analogue 3-knob pedal selling for more than £150, because beyond that you can only be paying for hype. If a builder considers hype to be a crucial component in their pedal, that's when we - and FSB - start to get really curious about looking inside. So often, it turns out that a very high price, or artificial hype, or plain old goop, is simply hiding the Emperor's nuddy bum.

And then when it turns out to be another TubeScreamer with a different capacitor, why aren't we allowed to make our own and sell it? Is "substantially different" measured in uF or pF? Or enough seperate pF's to make a uF? Or only if it's a new circuit? What if it's a circuit that's new to guitar pedals, but as old as the hills to mixing desks?

Cheers and agreed

ICBM said:

(a) I do think there is a case for the cheap clones, yes - they aren't actually going to steal much market from the real thing, and they do offer the choice to someone who can't afford it. I still think people who want and can afford a real Tube Screamer will buy one, or a boutique near-copy, rather than a Joyo. I would, in fact - and it's not purely snobbery, I do actually prefer the real TS808/9 partly because it's buffered and partly because I genuinely think it sounds marginally better. And I admit, partly because it *is* the real thing.

(b) By 'substantially different', I think you'd have start by defining a point where it sounds noticably different. Whether that means you can tell a difference when you directly A/B them into a clean amp, or where a non-musician can tell in a stage mix through an overdriven amp (!) or some other point in between, I don't know. Even then, this can be achieved by changing just one component, if it's the right one... and I would certainly not say that's a 'substantial' difference.

Using an existing circuit from some other audio application but which is new to guitar technology is definitely an innovation, but as with all the others I think it would be acceptable to market it only if the source is acknowledged. There's no legal problem with doing this since circuits themselves cannot be copyrighted or patented.

(a) exactly (and I should probably clarify, when I say I have no problem with clones, I generally mean the cheap ones). Heck if I gigged I'd be using something better than a joyo. But for duffing about at home like I do, it's "good enough". You don't expect someone doing the school run to have to fork out for an F1-quality car and it's a bit the same here. If the original manufacturer doesn't offer a "good enough" option for the amateur player, then it's fair enough that someone else does. At least with an old, well-understood circuit like the tubescreamer which would be long out of patent if it even were patentable. Maybe it's different if it's a brand new pedal which required tons of R&D, then I don't expect them to give it away for nothing.

That being said, I really like the bad monkey I picked up recently. It qualifies under the "tweaked clone" thing you said, though, because it has the bass control (even if I dial it in like a tubescreamer 99% of the time, it's nice to have the option). I'd probably get the hardwire od (which is supposedly a "better" bad monkey, though I haven't tried it) if I gigged.

(b) agreed. I have no problem with slight tweaks either if they make a big difference- sometimes the difference between a good pedal and a great pedal is not all that much. But again, it's the honesty thing. If you've made a good pedal great by tweaking two components, admit it.

EdGrip · August 2013

Tantalum cap and the same red caps you find in Wampler and Catalinbread pedals, low-noise metal film resistors, neat through-hole construction, solid box.... this is up there with any Zvex or Catalinbread, simple as that. There is no reason not to gig with one.

- Ed

Dave_Mc · August 2013

I've just heard some people say that they're definitely built to a price. And fair few seemed to be DOA (none of mine, luckily).

Also there's the whole psychological thing- if it did die in the gig, you'd feel you'd cheaped out and deserved it. Or if you were getting paid and the person paying you said, "You're using pro quality gear, right?" it'd be hard to answer with a straight face. Admittedly, neither of those means that the joyo was at fault, and a more expensive pedal could have broken in the same way, too.

But I'd definitely agree that, as opposed to guitars and amps/cabs, pedals are the place to cheap out if you have to. A £25 pedal is an awful lot better than a £25 guitar or amp, lol.

juansolo · August 2013

It's because it's mass produced in China. Simple as that. It just isn't possible to compete with that as a small outfit or hobbyist. As for the electronic components on the board, they're by far the cheapest parts. Getting the board itself fabbed, the hardware and the finishing is what costs the money. Again not counting time.

Same goes for amps. To this day I have no idea how the small boutique amp builders make any money out of it. Component cost may not be that high, but the sheer amount of labour involved in making one just means that they're making f**k all on them in real terms. Again, they're not going to be able to compete in price with anything that's MIC. As just about everything is now.

randomhandclaps · August 2013

It's quite funny when people say that companies like Joyo cheap out on parts in a circuit like a Tubescreamer etc. To small builders a metal film resistor can be sourced for 4p as opposed to 3p for a carbon film and so on with other components. If you wish to purchase in bulk from the far east (where Joyos obviously come from) you can get compnents even cheaper and that is still with the suppliers making a profit.

The savings, like most of the world's cheap products, is made on man-power.

Do I think they are worth £29.99? Absolutely.

Having opened up quite a few though, they are poorly and obviously chain soldered. A few also had rust on the boards and components - this may be caused by the salty tears of the construction children. The other thing is quite a few were obviously re-worked after having components wrongly inserted which being PCB usually leaves some damage. Having said that, if yours works, what's the problem.

stickyfiddle · August 2013

randomhandclaps said:
The savings, like most of the world's cheap products, is made on man-power.
Do I think they are worth £29.99? Absolutely.
Having opened up quite a few though, they are poorly and obviously chain soldered. A few also had rust on the boards and components - this may be caused by the salty tears of the construction children. The other thing is quite a few were obviously re-worked after having components wrongly inserted which being PCB usually leaves some damage. Having said that, if yours works, what's the problem.

Dave_Mc · August 2013

randomhandclaps said:

Having opened up quite a few though, they are poorly and obviously chain soldered. A few also had rust on the boards and components - this may be caused by the salty tears of the construction children. The other thing is quite a few were obviously re-worked after having components wrongly inserted which being PCB usually leaves some damage.

Yeah that's what I meant.

ICBM · August 2013

EdGrip said:

Tantalum cap and the same red caps you find in Wampler and Catalinbread pedals, low-noise metal film resistors, neat through-hole construction, solid box.... this is up there with any Zvex or Catalinbread, simple as that. There is no reason not to gig with one.

Except that on that one the jacks are visibly badly soldered which could easily lead to it cutting out mid-song. (OK, I know I could fix that pre-emptively but not everyone can.) I've had a couple to repair with broken switches so far too, and one with a dead LED.

For those reasons I would still prefer to use an Ibanez or whatever that's built better and uses a better switching system even if it uses the exact same components in the signal path. The Joyos are excellent value for money but to say they're the same quality as the big Japanese or Taiwanese-made brands is stretching things.

randomhandclaps · August 2013

ICBM said:

The Joyos are excellent value for money but to say they're the same quality as the big Japanese or Taiwanese-made brands is stretching things.

Yes, have to agree that the quality comparison ends at the board components. Then when you consider the price of really good jacks, pots and switches and the fact you are paying £30 then it shouldn't surprise anyone.

EdGrip · August 2013

All very true, and good point about the jacks!

shobet · September 2013

I quite like the way my Les Luis sounds...

crunchman · September 2013

Was it JHS who stopped production of their Klone when the KTR came out?

I think it's one thing cloning something that is not available but to clone something that is in production for commercial profit??

The other thing I was thinking is when you get a "higher quality" clone of a circuit. There are boutique builders with marketing along the lines of This is pedal X as it should be without any corners cut.

I've got a Microamp build at home which uses much more expensive components than the bog standard MXR one. I originally built it because of the tone suck switching of the original which drove me up the wall. When I went to order the components I went for higher quality components. I guess someone could sell something like this commercially as an "improved" Microamp.

Sporky · September 2013

I think there's a fine line; if you don't acknowledge that you've built a clone then people are angry when they find out. If you do, people are angry that you're using the reputation of the original to sell your copy.

I've never been happy with cloning; while my pedals were related to classic designs none were clones, and all were more than a few extra ohms here or a few picofarads less there.

The other problem, which I've mentioned before, is that a lot of the cloners have a day job that subsidises their pedalmaking and makes those doing it for a living look like they're ripping people off. If all the pedalbuilders charged the same for their time as they make at work things would be very different.

Dave_Mc · September 2013

Sporky said:

I think there's a fine line; if you don't acknowledge that you've built a clone then people are angry when they find out. If you do, people are angry that you're using the reputation of the original to sell your copy.

Yeah that's the big problem- either way someone is annoyed. I'd rather they were up-front about what it is- but obviously that's me with my "consumer" hat on. If I had designed the original I may feel differently.

)

I suppose (and this is me just thinking out loud here, I could change my opinion in 5 minutes' time) you could make the argument that by not admitting it's a clone, you could well be duping consumers. Whereas at least being up-front, you're not (and if the original were such a groundbreaking design it'd have been patented, so cloning in most instances isn't illegal, so long as you're not using their pcb design and trademarks etc.).

Then again I suppose you could claim that making a clone and not admitting it is one probably isn't illegal either, so :-?

ThePrettyDamned · September 2013

What was that relatively recent "best drive in the world" pedal (typically, a low to medium gain transparent thing) that was made in Japan in a brass enclosure?

You know, the timmy clone for 400 quid or whatever it was.

It's a joke. I won't buy, for example, a fuzz face. There are so few components in it, I got them for around 25 quid with enclosure and built my own. Didn't even take long. And it's in a proper case, not a daft massive circle!

But this is what annoys me more than cloning. I mean, if I get a mooer or joyo it's okay - components are poorer. Pots might get scratchy quicker and the switch will almost certainly fail sooner. It's built to budget, but ideal for me. On the other hand, if I'm gigging, I'd likely try to get v2 visual sound pedals for the amazing reliability.

Freekish blues wasn't just that one pedal. They had a fuzz and some other bits, all just joyo or other pedals in a new enclosure. Such a nut.

Dave_Mc · September 2013

^ vemuram jan ray

)

Sporky · September 2013

ThePrettyDamned said:

It's a joke. I won't buy, for example, a fuzz face. There are so few components in it, I got them for around 25 quid with enclosure and built my own. Didn't even take long. And it's in a proper case, not a daft massive circle!

But you're not just paying for the components - a pile of sand and some lumps of copper and aluminium maketh not a pedal. The biggest cost is probably the assembly, and you did that yourself. That's fine by me, but if you'd worked out the time taken and compared that with what you earn per hour at work then the "real" FF might look better value.

When it's a hobby and you enjoy doing it then factoring in the cost of time is arguably a bit silly, but for all the people who turn the hobby into a paying hobby it massively distorts the end price because (as I've said before) the pedals are subsidised by your day-job employer.

Sporky · September 2013

Which reminds me... on the subject of expensive pedals, I ordered one of those ones that were all shiny and had beautiful lead dress and so on - can't remember the name. I was well aware that the price of the finished article was around ten times the cost of the bits, but I was also aware of just how much work went into making something to that level of quality.

As it happened they turned out to be a bunch of lying, incompetent, workshy twits and I got my money back, but I'm not sure that's the point.

randomhandclaps · September 2013

The Fuzz Face isn't really a great example as it's not an 'insert components A-G and get a great sounding fuzz' circuit. Hence that's why you don't get companies like Joyo mass producing great sounding Fuzz Faces using unskilled labourers.

Have a look at any DIY pedal site and you will see folks pleased with their home-made modded tubescreamer circuits with bass boost and clipping options whilst tearing their hair out over the nine components in a Fuzz Face.

The Fuzz Face circuit is more on a soufflé than a pot noodle.

Sporky · September 2013

But for someone like Joyo, matching pairs of transistors wouldn't be an expensive proposition. Just employ someone at 10p an hour and give them a component tester...

frankus · September 2013

Anyone can build a fuzz face but not many people are great shakes at matching the transistors, biasing them, selecting good quality parts and sourcing good pcb materials.

Germanium transistors sold in ones and twos can be of suspect provenance.

Dave_Mc · September 2013

Sporky said:

But you're not just paying for the components - a pile of sand and some lumps of copper and aluminium maketh not a pedal. The biggest cost is probably the assembly, and you did that yourself. That's fine by me, but if you'd worked out the time taken and compared that with what you earn per hour at work then the "real" FF might look better value.

When it's a hobby and you enjoy doing it then factoring in the cost of time is arguably a bit silly, but for all the people who turn the hobby into a paying hobby it massively distorts the end price because (as I've said before) the pedals are subsidised by your day-job employer.

Taking that point from the other way of looking at it, it sometimes annoys me when people who enjoy DIY/making things act like those who don't are lazy when they're willing to pay for someone else to do it for them. If you enjoy it, that's great, but not everyone does.

Don't get me wrong, it can go too far and you can rip the ass out of it (and there are a bunch of chancers, too), but yeah I agree that if something is genuinely made well (and designed well), then it's worth (far) more than the cost of the parts.

Sporky said:

Which reminds me... on the subject of expensive pedals, I ordered one of those ones that were all shiny and had beautiful lead dress and so on - can't remember the name. I was well aware that the price of the finished article was around ten times the cost of the bits, but I was also aware of just how much work went into making something to that level of quality.

As it happened they turned out to be a bunch of lying, incompetent, workshy twits and I got my money back, but I'm not sure that's the point.

LOL

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