are vemuram pedals any good?

contra65

have recently come across these Vemuram pedals..they look very cool but cost a fortune, are they worth the money?  cheers Greg

rico

Overpriced snake oil copies of existing pedals. Well, the Jan Ray is anyway. 

UnclePsychosis

They're...erm...controversial. 

The Jan Ray was found to be an insanely expensive Timmy clone with a couple of minor mods. Get googling and make your own mind up. Personally I'm staying well clear.  

Sassafras

The Jan Ray sounds very good but then again so does the Timmy, and that's about a 1/3 of the price.

Teetonetal

Depends on a lot on how you define worth and possibly whether you have enough money not to care.

I had a revelation when I picked up a boss sd1 for £15 and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I have a horrible feeling that drive pedals are one of the biggest scams industries going..

Adam_MD

Teetonetal said:

Depends on a lot on how you define worth and possibly whether you have enough money not to care.

I had a revelation when I picked up a boss sd1 for £15 and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I have a horrible feeling that drive pedals are one of the biggest scams industries going..

In some cases I completely agree but with something like Paul C’s Timmy I think it’s pretty decent value at around $130 considering he still makes them himself by hand but by the time you get to the Jan Ray at £330 it’s totally taking the piss.  

To be honest I used to think most ‘boutique’ drive pedals in the £180 + bracket were taking the piss until I started making my own and realised how much they can cost to build and the amount of time you can spend building them.  Now I think there’s tons of snake oil, bullshit and fancy paint jobs but there’s also some builders doing genuinely interesting things.  The difficulty is making your way through the hype trains and marketing to find them.  

webrthomson

Teetonetal said:

 I have a horrible feeling that drive pedals are one of the biggest scams industries going..

^ This. Pretty much summed up with the word Klon.

juansolo

Adam_MD said:

Teetonetal said:

Depends on a lot on how you define worth and possibly whether you have enough money not to care.

I had a revelation when I picked up a boss sd1 for £15 and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I have a horrible feeling that drive pedals are one of the biggest scams industries going..

In some cases I completely agree but with something like Paul C’s Timmy I think it’s pretty decent value at around $130 considering he still makes them himself by hand but by the time you get to the Jan Ray at £330 it’s totally taking the piss.  

To be honest I used to think most ‘boutique’ drive pedals in the £180 + bracket were taking the piss until I started making my own and realised how much they can cost to build and the amount of time you can spend building them.  Now I think there’s tons of snake oil, bullshit and fancy paint jobs but there’s also some builders doing genuinely interesting things.  The difficulty is making your way through the hype trains and marketing to find them.  

This and then some. In terms of costs it's impossible for a small/one man outfit to compete with Chinese or mass produced pedals. Also the more they concentrate on not cutting corners the less and less it's worth. The Timmy is a bargain, how he can feed his family at £130 a pop is beyond me, he must be shipping loads of them. But all power to him for not taking the piss. Anyone who sells you a custom built, one off, well made pedal for less than £100 isn't making any real money from it. Yes the cost of parts is cheap, but you're paying for the time it takes, any dev*, and the experience/expertise of the builder. But basically he or she will be paying themselves lower than minimum wage for it unless they've seriously streamlined their processes.

The problem is that there are a lot of chancers out there who build them cheap/shoddily and shift them at huge mark ups. They're why I consider boutique to be a dirty word most of the time, because that's how I think of it. They're mostly drives because drives are simple and easy for the most part, and they have the most amount of hype around them with regard to tone. So it's really easy to hype one up with marketing. Which is a shame because it makes it really difficult to differentiate actually new and interesting stuff from yet another Klon/Timmy/Tubescreamer clone with minimal, if any, changes.

*dev can equal layouts/PCBs and what have you. It can also be original effects, though people don't actually want original effects.

bingefeller

I know this guy is a massive troll but I think Boss pedals are the best value for money.  They are well built and sound good IMO.  You can pick up one of the best overdrives ever, the SD-1, for a mere £50 in most guitar shops.  The OD-3 sounds as good as any boutique pedal out there.

Teetonetal

juansolo said:

Adam_MD said:

Teetonetal said:

Depends on a lot on how you define worth and possibly whether you have enough money not to care.

I had a revelation when I picked up a boss sd1 for £15 and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I have a horrible feeling that drive pedals are one of the biggest scams industries going..

In some cases I completely agree but with something like Paul C’s Timmy I think it’s pretty decent value at around $130 considering he still makes them himself by hand but by the time you get to the Jan Ray at £330 it’s totally taking the piss.  

To be honest I used to think most ‘boutique’ drive pedals in the £180 + bracket were taking the piss until I started making my own and realised how much they can cost to build and the amount of time you can spend building them.  Now I think there’s tons of snake oil, bullshit and fancy paint jobs but there’s also some builders doing genuinely interesting things.  The difficulty is making your way through the hype trains and marketing to find them.  

This and then some. In terms of costs it's impossible for a small/one man outfit to compete with Chinese or mass produced pedals. Also the more they concentrate on not cutting corners the less and less it's worth. The Timmy is a bargain, how he can feed his family at £130 a pop is beyond me, he must be shipping loads of them. But all power to him for not taking the piss. Anyone who sells you a custom built, one off, well made pedal for less than £100 isn't making any real money from it. Yes the cost of parts is cheap, but you're paying for the time it takes, any dev*, and the experience/expertise of the builder. But basically he or she will be paying themselves lower than minimum wage for it unless they've seriously streamlined their processes.

The problem is that there are a lot of chancers out there who build them cheap/shoddily and shift them at huge mark ups. They're why I consider boutique to be a dirty word most of the time, because that's how I think of it. They're mostly drives because drives are simple and easy for the most part, and they have the most amount of hype around them with regard to tone. So it's really easy to hype one up with marketing. Which is a shame because it makes it really difficult to differentiate actually new and interesting stuff from yet another Klon/Timmy/Tubescreamer clone with minimal, if any, changes.

*dev can equal layouts/PCBs and what have you. It can also be original effects, though people don't actually want original effects.

I would never begrudge anyone selling self designed, well built, hand made pedals for decent money.

But there are far too many examples of rehashed, badly built copies out there. The market is a minefield

lustycourtier

webrthomson said:

Teetonetal said:

 I have a horrible feeling that drive pedals are one of the biggest scams industries going..

^ This. Pretty much summed up with the word Klon.

The case of a klon is/was sand cast. If you know about that process, you’ll know the initial cost wasn’t terrible (my mate bought 2 in early 2000s for about £200 each?) and that’s before looking at the actual circuit etc but I wouldn’t lump it in with some of the dubious pedals that have followed in off the shelf cases 

juansolo

Boss stuff is very good VFM and generally made well.

Teetonetal said:

I would never begrudge anyone selling self designed, well built, hand made pedals for decent money.

But there are far too many examples of rehashed, badly built copies out there. The market is a minefield

In a nutshell, yep. Shame really, but that's the way it is.

juansolo

lustycourtier said:

webrthomson said:

Teetonetal said:

 I have a horrible feeling that drive pedals are one of the biggest scams industries going..

^ This. Pretty much summed up with the word Klon.

The case of a klon is/was sand cast. If you know about that process, you’ll know the initial cost wasn’t terrible (my mate bought 2 in early 2000s for about £200 each?) and that’s before looking at the actual circuit etc but I wouldn’t lump it in with some of the dubious pedals that have followed in off the shelf cases 

The original Klon was actually a bargain on release because of it's enclosure. I think my mate paid $300 for his direct. It was the lack of availability and the sheer amount of hype that drove the 2nd hand prices to insane levels. But initially, for a one man, one card table operation using a completely bespoke enclosure, those things were VERY well priced. If he'd sell you one of course...

I doubt it'll ever happen, so I'll say that a couple of us on this forum considered doing a mini-klone in a scaled down version of the original enclosure. The sheer economics of it meant that if it was going to be a small number of them it would have been CNC machined cases at a high cost per unit, or for large amounds sand cast at a high initial cost, but low cost per unit provided the numbers were high enough. Even then, we were looking at having to charge £300 per box and probably not making enough on them to make the whole thing worthwhile. Indeed there being a very real chance we'd end up out of pocket, by a lot,  if the demand simply wasn't there. Interestingly the electronics side of it (me) would have been pretty cheap/easy comparatively, it was all the enclosure. Would have been cool as fuck though to have a cute mini Klone though... Still wouldn't mind doing a CNC'd one or two off, it'd still cost way too much though.

Adam_MD

juansolo said:

I doubt it'll ever happen, so I'll say that a couple of us on this forum considered doing a mini-klone in a scaled down version of the original enclosure. The sheer economics of it meant that if it was going to be a small number of them it would have been CNC machined cases at a high cost per unit, or for large amounds sand cast at a high initial cost, but low cost per unit provided the numbers were high enough. Even then, we were looking at having to charge £300 per box and probably not making enough on them to make the whole thing worthwhile. Indeed there being a very real chance we'd end up out of pocket, by a lot,  if the demand simply wasn't there. Interestingly the electronics side of it (me) would have been pretty cheap/easy comparatively, it was all the enclosure. Would have been cool as fuck though to have a cute mini Klone though... Still wouldn't mind doing a CNC'd one or two off, it'd still cost way too much though.

That would have been awesome a mini klon would have looked great.  I’m still very tempted to buy one of the ceriatone klon enclosure I think they’re about $85. 

juansolo

I totally intend to drop our reference unit into one at some point Just for shits and giggles.

Adam_MD

juansolo said:

I totally intend to drop our reference unit into one at some point Just for shits and giggles.

Yup that’s my plan too.