so many chinese clones these days

hugbot

This brand is new to me though. Tap tempo in a delay that cheap? They're all sub 20 quid on ebay and theres a ditto looper copy for 30.

freakboy1610

Kok Co??! I want one.

UnclePsychosis

I bought the Ditto clone (I think mine is branded "Rowin") for £28 delivered from China and as far as I can tell its absolutely spot-on. Really chuffed with it. 

hugbot

I see a speaker simulator, might be worth picking up for amp-dying-at-gig situations.

DesVegas

They are good for my wallet and good for my board. I have a rat and a klon from over there and they're ace.

Danny1969

The thing is the electronic  components used in a lot of pedals amount to no more than a couple of quid for your average drive pedal and that included the jacks. I can build something like an MXR Distortion + for less than a tenner, the Chinese can do it a lot cheaper so there's still a margin in it for them even though it seems ridiculously cheap to us 

professorben

UnclePsychosis said:

I bought the Ditto clone (I think mine is branded "Rowin") for £28 delivered from China and as far as I can tell its absolutely spot-on. Really chuffed with it. 

I've got the Rowin Phaser (MXR phase 90 clone/Mooer 90 Orange clone)
and the Flanger ( ElecLady clone) both sound superb. 
Only issue is the switches feel a bit flimsy but I use a loop switcher anyway. 
Happy days, both sub £17 delivered. 

DesVegas

I play through a nux modcore and Im guessing that is chinese too. How much an hour does a Chinaman earn for being in a factory and assembling them all day?

PolarityMan

Dude I know they are one of the most populated countries in the world but that's flat out racist yo.

siraxeman

Loving my xp booster for £14 (sp boost clone ).

professorben

PolarityMan said:

Dude I know they are one of the most populated countries in the world but that's flat out racist yo.

How so? 
Given the use of the term Chinaman as opposed to Chinese guy I can see what you mean but the question is pretty non racist, perhaps English is not his forte. 

Sassafras

professorben said:

PolarityMan said:

Dude I know they are one of the most populated countries in the world but that's flat out racist yo.

How so? 
Given the use of the term Chinaman as opposed to Chinese guy I can see what you mean but the question is pretty non racist, perhaps English is not his forte. 

I don't see the comments as racist but they're both definitely sexist in assuming that only Chinese people of the male gender are capable of making cheap, unreliable knock-offs.

Teetonetal

at least the Chinese don't pretend their clones aren't the next best thing and new innovation of drive pedals... 

english_bob

Teetonetal said:

at least the Chinese don't pretend their clones are the next best thing and new innovation of drive pedals... 

And they normally halve (or even quarter) the price of what they copied, not double it.

It's a very good point you make.

vasselmeyer

I have heard, either on Henning Pauly's YouTube channel (EtyschPi42) or perhaps on the Andertons channel, that there are a series of circuit diagrams circulating in China and a manufacture just pumps out a bunch of pedals using those diagrams. It began with Mooer, then you have some guy who was at Mooer setting up as Tone City (not just cloning the pedals but cloning the company!). After that  then you get other entrants to the market such as Valeton who make exactly the same thing.

The Chinese are great at repeating someone else's success but pretty short on innovation.

english_bob

Danny1969 said:

The thing is the electronic  components used in a lot of pedals amount to no more than a couple of quid for your average drive pedal and that included the jacks. I can build something like an MXR Distortion + for less than a tenner, the Chinese can do it a lot cheaper so there's still a margin in it for them even though it seems ridiculously cheap to us 

Exactly, and it's not like the boutique pedals are a lot more. They might use a few boutique-y "mojo" parts- Germanium transistors or branded op-amp chips (was pricing up bits for a Zendrive clone last night and the Burr Brown chip it uses costs £3-4 from legit UK sources), but as a small-time hobbyist building one pedal at a time, not bulk-buying anything I can still knock up most of the household name boutique ODs for twenty-odd quid in parts and a few hours soldering. 

If I was a chinese factory I could undoubtedly get far better prices buying thousands of jack sockets or 3PDT footswitches at a time (shit, I could save a pound per pedal just by buying unbranded jack sockets instead of Neutrik), and if I knew my shit with electronics I could almost certainly find some cost-cutting hacks to make even cheaper clones. 

What the price doesn't cover is all the R&D, but considering how many boutique pedals are closely related to other existing designs (lots of modified Tubescreamers out there...) it's easy to be cynical about just how long it really takes to "design" the latest TGP flavour of the month dirt box.

Danny1969

Electronic wise I can't any reason to use anything more exotic than an NE5532 in a pedal, and these cost about 40p in singles. There are opamps with faster slew rates, capable of driving more current on the output as well but all these features are irrelevant to a guitar pedal as a guitar doesn't have a wide frequency response and the next stage it's driving is unlikely to be less than 10K or so in impedence and the NE5532 can drive 100R or so quite happily

1\4 watt 1% resistors are a penny each, low value caps not a lot more.

The build cost of the stereo amp and stereo mic pre in my own product comes to less than £3 in electronic components. However building one unit per day is about all I can do as the drilling, PCB making and offboard wiring is time consuming. That's the bit the Chinese are great at ...... once they have the design they are superb at building it quicker and cheaper than we can 

hugbot

vasselmeyer said:

I have heard, either on Henning Pauly's YouTube channel (EtyschPi42) or perhaps on the Andertons channel, that there are a series of circuit diagrams circulating in China and a manufacture just pumps out a bunch of pedals using those diagrams. It began with Mooer, then you have some guy who was at Mooer setting up as Tone City (not just cloning the pedals but cloning the company!). After that  then you get other entrants to the market such as Valeton who make exactly the same thing.

The Chinese are great at repeating someone else's success but pretty short on innovation.

Not exactly, thats the interesting thing about it to me. Though the original circuits they're based from are all taken from other pedals the miniturization of them definitely started there.

So theres someone there figuring out how to cram them into increasingly smaller designs, mooer or whoever clearly have some kind of an R and D department.  But then that circuit, once miniaturized gets licensed/ ripped off/ used by a whole bunch of different brands, maybe from the same factory? I'd be really interested to find out exactly how the process happens. 

I've heard a lot of it is down to the chinese government, who don't give two shits about enforcing IP law since it gets in the way of building the economy.

absolutpepper

Should we get this thread back on track and talk about pedals, not the pros and cons and morals of the who China pedal cloning boom?  Surely there are other threads which have covered this?

professorben

absolutpepper said:

Should we get this thread back on track and talk about pedals, not the pros and cons and morals of the who China pedal cloning boom?  Surely there are other threads which have covered this?

That's not really in the true spirit of the forum now is it?!
firstly we discuss the topic, then one of us turns it ever so slightly towards some type of personal gripe, then we all pile in and have a good old rant about it. 
Then either @Drew_fx or @Sambostar pop in with a few choice phrases. 

Drew_TNBD

Die Ben. Die.