5 Chinese mini-pedal overdrives/distortions compared

Megii

Just my thoughts on some pedals I've bought, and from my own, pretty biased standpoint, so not claiming anything I say as gospel. Still interested to compare my findings with other viewpoints though.

Over the past few months, I've acquired a small collection of chinese-made mini pedals, all bought via evilbay, and in the 15 to 25 quid price range (i.e. I am a skinflint). It would seem likely they are all clones, or near clones, of existing pedal designs - I make no apology for that. Personally, I do like the mini pedals, not just for the cheap price, but also because of the available space on my pedal board.

So, my plan being to have 3 drives on the board, I've spent some time messing about with the 5 pedals to see which 3 I like the most. The pedals I have are:

From left to right: A Tomsline brand "Dumbler" (Zen clone quite possibly), ENO "Trouble" (OCD clone?), Donner "Morpher" (said to be not dissimilar to a Suhr Riot), Andoer "Myomorpha" (rodent-derived one might guess), and lastly a Tomsline "Bluesy" (not sure re this last one, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's based on a Keeley-mod Boss Blues Driver).

I've not been a huge user of distortion/overdrive in the past, so I'm coming at this from a fairly fresh perspective I suppose. I have a setup with all my pedals in front of an absolutely clean (solid state or modelling) amp, and no amp drive involved at all - just to be clear how I'm using the pedals. I was after three basic kinds of drive - a very low gain, near-clean kind of thing,  a low to mid gain, smooth blues or fusion kind of tone, and a higher-gain, smooth singing kind of tone (again aimed at modern jazz/fusion use).

All the pedals seem pretty good at what they do to me, but I am just a bit surprised as to the three I've ended up liking the most for my needs. Going through the 5 pedals:

 

1. Tomsline Dumbler - I was expecting this to be my low to mid gain choice, but in the end, for me there is a nasal, slightly veiled/muddy quality to the tone, however I set the controls. I just felt the sound didn't seem quite lively enough. It's all subjective, and a lot of people might like the nasal thing, and feel it to be "smooth" rather than muddy.To be fair, it sounded very similar, and no worse, than my BigKnob ZD clone, but I guess it's just not my ideal sound somehow.

2. ENO Trouble - I thought this might be either my low to mid gain, or higher gain pedal. To me it seems not bad at all, but I thought maybe just a bit thin-sounding at times, and also there seems to be just a bit of a bass frequency cut, however I set the controls. So again, not quite ideal for me.

3. Donner Morpher - I've picked this for the higher gain pedal. It seems to do the singing sustain thing as well as any of them. At certain settings it can seem a bit processed and smoothed-off sounding, but get the tone knob in the right place and I rather like it. I've also found that for me, it's better with the gain not turned up too high (actually I found that with all the pedals) - too much gain seems to give an artificial, lifeless tone. 

4. Andoer Myomorpher - I'm certain this is the same pedal as an ENO brand Myomorpher - same name, and looks identical. Anyhow, this was the biggest surprise of the bunch. I'd say it's the least "life-sapping" pedal of all them - the sound is vibrant and alive. Also, it's the most versatile pedal and does low-gain as well as high gain. It would have made a pretty good choice for higher gain use, but I just got this great, big-sounding, low/mid gain tone from the thing, so it's the low-mid gain choice. In fact, to my ears it does nice things even when set at very low gain/near clean - responsive, and with this ballsy, fat quality, but without the nasal thing that I wasn't keen on with the Dumbler. A further surprise is that I seem to prefer it in the Turbo mode (even at low gain), although the Vintage mode is still nice. I like this pedal so much, I'm thinking about getting another one, given they can be bought for £17.50-ish on evilbay. I used to have an original 80s RAT pedal (sold to @hobbio) so maybe I should have kept that, but I must say the Myomorpher will do me very well.

5. Tomsline Bluesy - as I said earlier, I'm not sure if this is a Keeley mod Boss Blues Driver clone or something else. It really is pretty low gain - the setting in the pic above is still almost clean, just putting a bit of hair on things if I play a loud-ish chord. But I really like it for an almost clean, "enhanced" kind of thing. It can be set to just make the tone jump out a bit when required, and there is a fair bit of scope for varying the tone using both the bright-normal switch and tone control. Used like this, it's the sort of pedal one could have switched on all the time. I can still play jazz chords with this pedal on, and it just seems to soften the edges in a nice way, while allowing the individual notes to be distinguished.

Turn the gain up, and it does a gritty blues tone pretty well to my ears, and the tone allows you to dial in a fair bit of cutting edge if desired. I'm not planning to use it for this, but it's there.

 So there you have it - it's all just from my own point of view, and your mileage may vary as they say, but for what it's worth. Also I think what I call a medium to high gain drive sound might well be still quite low-gain to some people. I prefer the tones I get from all the pedals when the gain control is lower than 12 O'clock, but that's just me. I do have the option to stack the pedals of course - the Myomorpher into the Donner seems to work quite well like this if I do ever want to go properly high gain. Just to end, I decided to have a look inside a couple of the pedals (the Donner Morpher and ENO Trouble) and took pics. Not sure what it proves, if anything, but I could not help noticing the word "Solo" on the Morpher's circuit board, which might indicate some link with a Mooer product of that name - I leave you to draw your own conclusions...

EDIT - thought I'd better move this to the general "FX" section, rather than reviews, since I realised I'd not followed the guidelines set out for reviews. Apologies for that - this is just me waffling on really, so more of a discussion, and for whatever value that has.

Sarge

Excellent post!
A big regret sometimes for me was selling the Myomorpha, a really really versatile pedal, I loved it high gain, did QOTSA/Fu Manchu extremely well.
I also liked the Trouble/ocd but I had those noises with other pedals combined.
Have you tried the Eno Fuzz? I love mine, low gain gives a nice crunch, mid gain is a useable fuzz and full gain is just bonkers!
I'm currently rocking an Eno fuzz, analog delay, a donner pearl tremor phaser and a donner flanger, all have their sweet spots, but the space saved is huge!

Megii

Cheers @Sarge - yep, I'm likewise impressed with the Myomorpha - surprises me a lot just how good it seems, given it's based on such an old pedal design. But sometimes the old ones are the best it seems. I was pretty happy with the Trouble/OCD as well, had that one on my board for a few months - just that when I got the Myomorpha, I found it was more to my taste somehow. Haven't tried the ENO Fuzz, but the idea of something with a smooth-ish fuzz tone (a la Gilmour) might appeal. If there was a Skreddy P19 clone in a mini pedal case I probably would find it hard to resist. Not sure if the ENO would suit from that point of view?

thermionic

I had to look it up, but Myomorpha is a suborder of the order Rodent, which includes rats...

Good post.

Cookiemonster

Couldn't resist so just got the rat clone

Megii

thermionic said:

I had to look it up, but Myomorpha is a suborder of the order Rodent, which includes rats...

Good post.

Cheers - I just thought it was a typical weird name that the Chinese had come up with. So I've learnt something here today, and thanks for liking the post.

Megii

Cookiemonster said:

Couldn't resist so just got the rat clone

Hope you like it @Cookiemonster - I have a hunch you will anyhow.

Cookiemonster

Never had a rat so yeah excited. It was the fu manchu comment that did it

Megii

Cookiemonster said:

Never had a rat so yeah excited. It was the fu manchu comment that did it

That does illustrate the pedal's versatility as well, since Fu Manchu is quite a long way from the kind of tones I was after. But yes, it can do that.

Cookiemonster

Recently and surprisingly I have been getting into fu manchu and clutch.

Normally I am more indie and classic rock

Cookiemonster

I would like to try the mooer tender octave pedal. Just saw the aroma octpus. Wonder if that's any good. It's so cheap

Megii

I like a lot of indie to listen to, and also can appreciate a bit of classic rock. Playing-wise, I'm jazz/blues/fusion kind of stuff though - hence I thought the Zen clone would be in my top 3 (obviously thinking Robben Ford or Larry Carlton-ish tones) and surprise when the Myomorpha took that place instead.

Cookiemonster

Saw this btw that lists what the clones are

https://spartanmusic.co.uk/blogs/smblog/15841084-inexpensive-pedal-clones-a-list

Megii

Cookiemonster said:

I would like to try the mooer tender octave pedal. Just saw the aroma octpus. Wonder if that's any good. It's so cheap

Wish I could tell you - I use a Zoom G3 and MS70-cdr for everything except the drives and compression, so I've only bought overdrives and distortions in the mini pedals.

John_P

I've got a donner morphed in a drawer somewhere,  nice little pedal if someone wants a riot clone for very little cash.  iirc I paid about £20 which is crackers.

Megii

Cookiemonster said:

Saw this btw that lists what the clones are

https://spartanmusic.co.uk/blogs/smblog/15841084-inexpensive-pedal-clones-a-list

Interesting - hadn't seen that, cheers. I've been searching for something that lists what the Aroma/Tomsline pedals are clones of (assuming they are all clones) but I think they're too new for that to have been done. Some of them it's fairly easy to figure out, but others are not so obvious.

NickL

It's not on that list, but judging by the logo and colour scheme, I'd guess the last one is aiming at a Mk1 Marshall Blues Breaker rather than a Boss BD-2. It's probably quite similar to a Mooer Blues Crab.

Cookiemonster

Just looked on aliexpress some of these pedals are so cheap on there

Megii

NickL said:

It's not on that list, but judging by the logo and colour scheme, I'd guess the last one is aiming at a Mk1 Marshall Blues Breaker rather than a Boss BD-2. It's probably quite similar to a Mooer Blues Crab.

I think you're probably right there @NickL - I just had a look at a Mk1 Blues Breaker, and the similar colours and graphics style can't be a coincidence. The 2 position switch on the Bluesy was what made me think Keeley mod Blues Driver. So maybe it's not an exact clone of anything - based on the Blues Breaker, but with the additional bright-normal tone switch. I do find that switch quite useful I have to say - it has a reasonably subtle effect, and with a good range of sounds in each position.

Megii

Cookiemonster said:

Just looked on aliexpress some of these pedals are so cheap on there

I'll have to have a quiz myself, cheers. Not that I really need any more drive pedals at this point...

57Deluxe

Cookiemonster said:

Just looked on aliexpress some of these pedals are so cheap on there

I do this also from time to time. I just nabbed a Rowin Real Echo analogue delay micro pedal for £15...(inc del)
 I was looking at the Yellow Fall but that was like 50% MORE EXPENSIVE!!

Actually, after a lot of cross-referencing it seems many of these all come from the same factory/tooling