Klone Army

juansolo

spacecadet said:

I think a lot of it is because Bill Finnegan is a cantankerous old git that by his own admission, made a living from making someone elses design. Yes he helped but an engineer did the legwork and the clever stuff. Paul C on the other hand is a genuine and honest bloke. Couldn't be nicer to deal with and has always sold his stuff at the right price. Even when Klon were readily available from Bill you would still pay £300 for one.

Going back to the beginning. £300 is perfectly reasonable. The case they came in alone cost a big chunk of that and went some way to justifying it. As a small maybe one or two man outfit, if you want to actually make some money out of it that's the sort of price you're gonna have to try and sell at. How Paul C makes any money at all out of the Timmy is beyond me as he sells it for so little. Which is another reason it doesn't get cloned. Why wouldn't you get the real thing? It'd still be good value at double the price!

Then after the Klon went out of production the first time and he started auctioning them off on ebay when he 'found' odd ones, then it became a little contentious.

However...

I can also understand him wanting to get a piece of the 'flipping' market. People were making shitloads out of them when they hadn't done any work at all. Now Bill could have met demand and nipped it in the bud. But he chose to let it run and we're in the daft situation we're in where people will pay amp prices for an OD... Which is stupid.

To this day I can't decide whether Bill is a marketing genius, the unluckiest man alive, or just a twat. It's a tough call. I guess we'll never know. But there is a fawning market out there for his effect. If only he'd actually build and sell it! Why he didn't sell the design to Roland or someone like that if he can't do it himself is beyond me.

The KTR thing, depending on what you read, looks to again have been his doing. So again it's out of production. In the meantime, the people Bill pissed off are meeting the demand he will not meet.

Is it wrong? Probably. Do I care? in this case, no, not really. The man is his own worst enemy.

stickyfiddle

Totally agree with @juansolo. The Klon is complex by OD standards, but it's still just a bunch of resistors, caps and transistors in a box- it's not magic. The KTR being out of production is hilarious. Bill is clearly a clever marketing man, but I get the impression he doesn't know what else to do. Any other product he comes out with is likely to be met with cries of "not as good as a Klon", so he can't win. 

And the ridiculous prices created by his lack of supply (despite his protests that the hype isn't his fault) make it very easy to justify buying a Klone, relative to the decision to buy a Timmy clone, for instance. 

randomhandclaps

juansolo - Totally agree.  Well balanced and a hell of a lot of truth in there.

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

Dave_Mc said:

A similar one with a cheapo pedal rehoused in a fancy enclosure but claimed to be some mythical new od would also be a nice experiment. Though I suppose you could claim that experiment happened already with the freekish thing...

It did - and not even rehoused, just repainted. Any fool with the slightest knowledge of pedals should have been able to tell what it was.

Yeah. I feel sorry for most of the people involved in that... "there but for the grace of God..." and all that.

That being said, there are some on TGP I don't feel sorry for- I remember about a year after that Freekish thing went down, it came up on TGP in a pedal argument and someone there swore blind the Freekish one had mojo while the Joyo didn't. He was being completely serious.

You couldn't make it up.

Not to take the thread off at a tangent (in my defence, juansolo made me think of it when he mentioned Bill Finnegan trying to get a slice of the hyped used market), but what also I find somewhat bemusing is how a lot of people who are totally anti-clone (because clones mean the originator doesn't get any money) have no problem whatsoever with buying "the real thing" second-hand.

How does that work? Last I checked if you buy something s/h, the original manufacturer gets no money at all.

Maybe they'd claim that the knowledge they could sell it on to someone else gave the original purchaser the shove they needed to buy the thing new (hence giving the original designer/manufacturer money), or maybe they'd claim that if people see the thing on their boards it gives the originator free advertising... but both of those are a stretch, if you ask me. Especially when they're so black and white about the cloning thing, to then have such a nuanced justification of their own purchasing philosophy is kinda hypocritical, if you ask me.

Just to clarify, I have no problem with people buying things second hand. I have no real problem with clones either, in most instances (as I pointed out already in an earlier post).

randomhandclaps said:

With Bill trying to shut FSB, although I would have hated to see it, I can understand him being pissed - would you not be?  It's not a cure for cancer that he should be morally obliged to share. 

I disagree entirely with that viewpoint. By that logic, the more important the invention/discovery you make, the less you deserve to benefit from it? That's messed up.

It seems to be a viewpoint which is quite prevalent currently- that the boffins can invent the important stuff for little or no reward (or taken further, teachers, nurses, doctors etc. should do it because it's a "calling"), while those doing the less important stuff can get on with making shitloads of money.

"What you're doing is too important to make money out of, you should be doing it out of the goodness of your heart. But what I'm doing, I should be free to make as much money as possible!"

Kinda convenient.

Don't get me wrong- I agree that if someone discovers a cure for cancer (or similar) that they better darn well share it pretty darn quickly. But by that same logic, to be logically consistent, that means any invention should be shared.

ICBM

Dave_Mc said:

Not to take the thread off at a tangent (in my defence, juansolo made me think of it when he mentioned Bill Finnegan trying to get a slice of the hyped used market), but what also I find somewhat bemusing is how a lot of people who are totally anti-clone (because clones mean the originator doesn't get any money) have no problem whatsoever with buying "the real thing" second-hand. 

How does that work? Last I checked if you buy something s/h, the original manufacturer gets no money at all.

Yes, I get where you're coming from there. I buy almost all my music secondhand, from which the artist also gets no money. But I still legally own the CD, so it's better than illegal downloading... or is it? Or therefore, is illegal downloading any worse?

Actually in my opinion it is better to own the CD, even if I bought it second hand - *someone* still bought that copy new, which is quite a lot different from someone buying one copy and then uploading it so thousands of people can get it for nothing.

My viewpiont on clones is that making a straight copy of something which is currently manufactured, for commercial profit, is wrong. But I agree, it's shades of grey - and I don't think that making a slightly modified clone - as long as it's "substantially different"* in some way - is wrong, providing you acknowledge the source and don't indulge in the sort of "we spent years R&D'ing this unique circuit" crap that so many boutique makers do.

*Substantially different - in the same way as copyright law applies to music or other art which is derived from an existing work. Cue a large team of lawyers and an infinite budget...

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

Dave_Mc said:

Not to take the thread off at a tangent (in my defence, juansolo made me think of it when he mentioned Bill Finnegan trying to get a slice of the hyped used market), but what also I find somewhat bemusing is how a lot of people who are totally anti-clone (because clones mean the originator doesn't get any money) have no problem whatsoever with buying "the real thing" second-hand. 

How does that work? Last I checked if you buy something s/h, the original manufacturer gets no money at all.

(a) Yes, I get where you're coming from there. I buy almost all my music secondhand, from which the artist also gets no money. But I still legally own the CD, so it's better than illegal downloading... or is it? Or therefore, is illegal downloading any worse?

Actually in my opinion it is better to own the CD, even if I bought it second hand - *someone* still bought that copy new, which is quite a lot different from someone buying one copy and then uploading it so thousands of people can get it for nothing.

(b) My viewpiont on clones is that making a straight copy of something which is currently manufactured, for commercial profit, is wrong. But I agree, it's shades of grey - and I don't think that making a slightly modified clone - as long as it's "substantially different"* in some way - is wrong, providing you acknowledge the source and don't indulge in the sort of "we spent years R&D'ing this unique circuit" crap that so many boutique makers do.

*Substantially different - in the same way as copyright law applies to music or other art which is derived from an existing work. Cue a large team of lawyers and an infinite budget...

(a) I'd say it's a little better than illegally downloading because someone originally bought the real thing- granted, the same could be said for downloading, but until we have the technology to make digital copies of pedals for no money, it's not quite the same level of a problem, lol.

That being said, I'm not as anti-downloading as most people seem to be (or maybe that's just the media I'm reading and normal people don't care), though I don't illegally download either.

And you make a good point about the second-hand market supply being limited by the amount of things which have been bought new- if you don't have patience, you may end up having to go new. Though I'd say that, from a philosophical point of view, there's very little difference there logically, just it's the technology difference. The average person can copy a CD in a few minutes on their computer, whereas the same can't be said for most other consumer products (like a table, or a shirt, or a guitar, or whatever).

But really it's a whole big grey area, as you said/implied. That's why I don't like them bringing in sweeping laws (eg. about downloading) when, taken to their logical conclusion, they could make a bunch of other things illegal (or at least, being logically consistent, they should be) which we've taken for granted up till now should be legal.

Mainly I agree with the "This is my opinion on the matter, but I realise it's my opinion and you can have arguments against it that are perfectly valid" approach that several people in the thread have been saying.

(b) I'd agree, however, with the caveat "as long as the original company isn't taking the piss with the price they charge". Granted, that's a whole other grey area.

I'd also probably put in the caveat that as long as the cloner isn't really aiming at the original's target market, then it's ok, too. As I 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.

You could probably also make a case that making something which already exists cheaper is, in itself, some form of original thought. For example, if a company comes up with a way to make an existing product way cheaper, that's arguably innovation, too.

Granted, if they rip off a PC design and make savings only because they had no R&D costs and they're paying slave labour rates in the third world, that probably doesn't involve quite so much innovation...

randomhandclaps

Dave_Mc said:

  randomhandclaps said:

With Bill trying to shut FSB, although I would have hated to see it, I can understand him being pissed - would you not be?  It's not a cure for cancer that he should be morally obliged to share. 

I disagree entirely with that viewpoint. By that logic, the more important the invention/discovery you make, the less you deserve to benefit from it? That's messed up.

It seems to be a viewpoint which is quite prevalent currently- that the boffins can invent the important stuff for little or no reward (or taken further, teachers, nurses, doctors etc. should do it because it's a "calling"), while those doing the less important stuff can get on with making shitloads of money.

"What you're doing is too important to make money out of, you should be doing it out of the goodness of your heart. But what I'm doing, I should be free to make as much money as possible!"

Kinda convenient.

Don't get me wrong- I agree that if someone discovers a cure for cancer (or similar) that they better darn well share it pretty darn quickly. But by that same logic, to be logically consistent, that means any invention should be shared.

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.

 

juansolo

If I recall correctly when it was traced it was already out of production and 2nd hand ones were starting to get to silly prices. Also, the reason to take it apart was to see what it was and how it worked. Then if DIYers wanted to, they could build one for themselves. It was not to facilitate every man and his dog selling them.

randomhandclaps

It was already out of production, and there were certain builders - either in small runs or large scale making them.  Obviously it's not voodoo and anybody with a decent understanding of electronics who got beneath the goop would see what was going on.  I think the availability of schematics and layouts is fantastic for those who wish to learn and educate themselves, in the same way as tablature.  As a pedal or amp repairer it would be impossible to cope without them.

Personally I think FSB and Diystompboxes are both fantastic resources and communities that I both read and contribute to and would fight to keep them open.  It's great when people are out to learn, experiment and develop their own ideas.

If you take Brian Wampler as an example, it's common knowledge he started off modding and building clones as anyone would need capital to fund either their interest/hobby or start up a business and get their name known.  The publishing of schematics can have a positive effect for some builders, like Paul C, especially when you read short-sighted TGP mob etc sniping 'I opened up my Timmy and it's just a modified Tube Screamer'.  I also think it's helps real original thinkers and designers by exposing the re-inventing and overcharging of the wheel in the case of designs like the SHO or COT.  With these two particularly I think the builders get what they deserve as they are taking publically available circuits and claiming to have invented them.

Juansolo, on your Klone listing on EBay you even state where you can get the PCB.  It's very clear that I am purchasing your time, care and enclosure design from a relatively small output.  There is no point at which you are claiming it is anything other than what it is or making wholesale amounts of someone else's designs.  On top of this you website actively shares information and is another good resource.

Besides it though you have wholesale reproductions of Klons, making the very claims that you should be wary of amateur and hobbyists despite the fact that it is a copied circuit that would require no knowledge of circuit designs to construct.

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.  The original Timmys and Mad Professor pedal (just to name two) were built on perfboard or vero and hand finished.  In that way that could have been dismissed as amateurish but clearly aren't.  I don't really see a difference between this and large scale corporations trying to crush smaller outlets  who are actually trying to develop new concepts and designs with unfounded and ill-educated marketing or scare-mongering.

 

juansolo

I actively encourage people to build their own effects and some commercial builders are cool with this as it's how they started out. 

When you start selling the odd pedal (as I do...) it starts getting contentious. Is it alright to sell a few pedals to fund your hobby building pedals for yourself? Probably not in all honesty. I have my own rules as to what I will and will not sell and how I do that. I'm not keen on selling on eBay to say the least, but it's a necessary evil for the Klones. Everything else I do is BTO, usually for friends. It doesn't make it right, but I sleep fine at night because I feel that I'm not taking the piss.

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.

EdGrip

"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

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

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

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

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

^ 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

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

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

^ 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

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