Pedal repairs

[mozz]

This is more of a question directed towards repair technicians or even builders.

Been getting more and more work lately, amps, pickups, guards, pedals. I only do this part time for extra $$. Been fixing electronics and building/soldering Heathkits since the 70's (w/my paper route money). One guy has been bringing me lots of various work and he dropped off a pedal. He says "have you ever heard of "XXXXXXX pedals and amps?" I said no but looked them up on the web and they have a nice page, make about 15 classic amps, pedals, reverbs, etc. Prices are high but not through the roof as some boutique types are.

Reason for the post is................... i think this guys work is crap. Picture is below. I'm not going to mention any names, reason later.

Reason for rant.................. I would not let something like this out of my shop, 3 different wire types, 9v battery floating around inside, circuit board not attached to anything, black electrical tape on back of pot so it doesn't short out to circuit board, probably more but i gave up looking and just changed the chinese switch with a new one. I told the owner how ever long the original switch lasted, this one is the same so don't expect too much. The repair was basically free as he had 2 amps and 3 pickguard builds in the total job. Soldering was ok, not too sloppy.

Reason for "boutique" ????............. You have to tell me all pedal and amp builders are not making junk and charging crazy prices for a 1 transistor pedal. Am I in the wrong business? The pedal works ok as a booster and the owner likes it and it's not really expensive (under $75) If i made a pedal for myself to test a circuit i may make it quick and dirty, but if I am going to sell it, and market it, it is going to have a decent build quality. Maybe my expectations are too high, end of rant.

[J M Fahey]

Welcome to Boutique Pedals World.

Hey!!!: that one is .... Point To Point Wired !!!!!!!!!!!!!

And TRUE Bypass !!!!!

What else do you want?

Seriously: boutique pedals arevthe most hyped up and overblown products in the market.

Basically sell and at high prices because they are "the secret weapon of some Guitar God" which of course is nonsense.

Doubt anybody plays better because he has SRV“s Tube Screamer or Jimi Hendrix“s Fuzz Face or Vox Wah, yet I have seen certain "Hermida something" distortion pedals being touted as "the secret behind Larry Carlton or Robben Ford sound" and lots of similar claims, while actual circuits are slightly tweaked conventional pedals, if that much.

That one seems to be some variant of Electra Distortion and not much else:



It might be worse, to hide the often cheesy o simply not different circuits:

Okko Diablo:


Klon Centaur:


this is not uncommon: a boutique pedal, repackaged + gooped to hide it was originally bought over the counter.




Joyo Ultimate Drive: $34 at Amazon, o probably $20/25 (tops) dealer cost.

What do they say about the Alpha Drive?:

The Thaddeus Hogarth Signature Pedal: Alpha Drive

Working closely with the east coast singer-songwriter, guitarist and Berklee Guitar professor, Freekish Blues has developed an ultra-sensitive, clear, amp-like overdrive pedal that cuts through where others fall short.

Thaddeus, an award winning guitarist has been using high end Dumble or "D-Style" amps such as the Two Rock Custom Reverb Sig 1, Ben Harper's 100 Watt Custom Reverb Sig 1, Bludo Bludodrive, and the Quinn SDO in his line-up for some time.

He had been in search of the ultimate versatile pedal that could deliver those tones along with a wider range of tones from rock to blues, from classic to contemporary and fusion. Even a relatively clean boost is possible with this pedal! The Alpha Drive has a very smooth but articulate quality that one will find pleasing.

This pedal has been played against some of the finest Dumble style amps and pedals on the market today. Pedals such as the Ethos Overdrive, Zendrive, Dumkudo & Zenkudo pedals. That being said the Alpha Drive at this price can't be beat.

I feel dizzy, the repainted $34 Joyo pedal is sold "at discount" for $168.

[nickb]

From small acorns big oak trees grow. Here is an Electro-Harmonix LPB-2 from way back - one came in here the other day.

[J M Fahey]

Ouch !!!!!!!!

[Justin Thomas]

To the OP,

I don't mind the three different kinds of wire, since they seem to be similr types for each area, but an unsecured circuit board is just plain wrong. And even in the original EH, a terminal strip would have worked wonders... and yes, some of these prices are heinous... then again, it might be worth de-gooping some of these $200 pedals, and cloning them cheap. Hey- I'm the one who took the time to do my "research" too, so I'm entitled to my fair share!

Justin

[Dave H]

Ouch !!!!!!!!

But it is point to point. The one in the OP has a circuit board

[Justin Thomas]

Juan,

Is it me, or was the Ultimate Drive's board just scratched off and gunked? Look, it'sone thing to clone a Fender 5E3, but to actually DEFACE and steal someone else's intellectual property AND manufactured product and sell it at ~400% profit is just plain @#$%ed up!

Justin

[nickb]

But it is point to point. The one in the OP has a circuit board

Yeah - those PCBs jus' suck dem tone electrons right outta da circuit. "PTP's the way 4ME".

[52 Bill]

A lot of the original EH boosters were built that way, but most were much better than that. That one may have been modified over the ages since it left the factory.

I see a lot of low quality build pedals now. Now it's hard to tell boutique from basement builds. Anybody with a soldering iron and an internet connection can be a pedal guru.

Part of the problem is that there are no one on one teaching resources anymore to teach the craft of soldering and assembly. Every year I get in three or four home built amps or pedals that need to be rebuilt in order to get them to work. I usually suggest that the builder look at photos of the original products to see how they should look when they are put together. If they are really interested, I will give them a 10 minute soldering demo to show them how to correctly solder a simple joint. Some learn it some don't.

[mozz]

A company like EH, i'm sure at one time had a production building making pedals and hired some people. Some people just can't solder and sometimes there is no quality control except "it works, ship it out".

I'm not saying all builders are careless, i have a few pedals where the guy must make $1/hour labor because it is so organized and a near perfect build, yet he signs the inside and gives it a serial number too like a sloppy builder.

Anyway, like was said, most circuits are just a rehash of a older design. I think the Fenders were taken from old Western Electric design book from the 30's 40's.

[Justin Thomas]

Hey Mozz,

I didn't miond the soldering work on the EH. It was morenthat "layout!"

As far as the circuit copying, in the pedal above it didn't justnlook like circuit copying, it wasoutand out defacing a product and butting another name on it. If I remove the Ford logo from my truck by filing io offnthe front grille, then write my own name over it, and then o and sell mybRamger for $50k instead of $20k, I think that's a little higher up on the crime scale than if I buy all of the parts aftermarket and assemble them myself and then call it a "Justin Danger, a clone of the Ford Ranger." What insaw above was outright theft of a whole different degree.

Justin

[Steve A.]

Basically sell and at high prices because they are "the secret weapon of some Guitar God" which of course is nonsense.

Doubt anybody plays better because he has SRV“s Tube Screamer or Jimi Hendrix“s Fuzz Face or Vox Wah, yet I have seen certain "Hermida something" distortion pedals being touted as "the secret behind Larry Carlton or Robben Ford sound" and lots of similar claims, while actual circuits are slightly tweaked conventional pedals, if that much.

That one seems to be some variant of Electra Distortion and not much else:

Juan, are you comparing the Electra Distortion to the Hermida Zendrive or to another pedal? Here is the ZD schematic:



What I find particularly interesting in the Zendrive circuit is the use of two 2N7000 MOSFETs in the feedback loop of the first IC stage.

BACKSTORY: Around the turn of the millenium Alfonzo Hermida designed the early incarnations of his Zendrive pedal to recreate the sound of Robben Ford's playing of "Golden Slumbers" on the "Come Together Vol. 2" guitar tribute to the Beatles. He showed his pedal to Robben who worked with him as his beta tester until he came up with the version which eventually went into production. (Robben still uses a Zendrive when playing through a Fender Twin or Super Reverb if he didn't bring his Dumble ODS.)

When Hermida could not keep up with the demand for the Zendrive the used prices skyrocketed to $600 or even more. Eventually he contracted with Lovepedal to build his design which they sell new for $239.

Mooer makes a ZD clone in a mini-enclosure with no room for a battery which they call the Rumble Drive which itself has been cloned by Rowin as the Dumbler LEF-315- both of these pedals sell new in the $50-75 range. My friend Felix says that the Dumbler gets 90% of the sound of his Zendrive at 20% of cost new (the difference is probably in the specific op-amp used in the clones.)

Here is a link to a thread here in which I recommend the Dumbler pedal:

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t42847/

Juan,
Is it me, or was the Ultimate Drive's board just scratched off and gunked? Look, it'sone thing to clone a Fender 5E3, but to actually DEFACE and steal someone else's intellectual property AND manufactured product and sell it at ~400% profit is just plain @#$%ed up!

FWIW the Ultimate Drive is the $35 Joyo clone of the Fulltone OCD pedal which originally retailed for ~$169.

While the Alpha Drive does use the PCB and case of the Ultimate Drive, modifications were made: resistors were added to the outer terminals of all 3 pots to restrict their range to what they considered to be the "sweet spots." Here are the mods done by Freekish:

Just so it's clear, if you are modifying the Joyo pedal, the changes are as follows: 330K resistor in parallel (solder across outside lugs) with "OD", 1K5 resistor in parallel with "T", 470K resistor in parallel with "V". Change capacitor "C9" to 100n (104). Done.

freestompboxes.org ? View topic - Joyo JF-02 Mods ?

Are Instructions To Make Alpha Drive Available? | The Gear Page

Note: Analog Mike recommends skipping the 1K5 resistor in parallel with "T".



Steve Ahola

P.S. Juan, I uploaded the Electra Distortion schematic in your post to the MEF repository just in case the original link is deleted or moved. I was not familiar with that circuit which was installed on-board in some of the Electra guitars from the early 70's.






Here are some links about the Electra Distortion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/diypedals/c...ra_distortion/

Electra Distortion | Telecaster Guitar Forum

https://woodylaboratories.wordpress....ra-distortion/

And here is the article in Premier Guitar explaining in great detail how to build one:

Build Your Own Stompbox! | Premier Guitar

Here is a link to download the 33-page PDF file from the article:

http://www.premierguitar.com/ext/res...e_Final_R2.pdf

(I tried adding the PDF fiie to the MEF repository but it didn't work.)

Thanks for heads up on that very influential design!

[Justin Thomas]

Hey Steve,

I think Juan's contention is that Freekish Blues bought the Joyo pedal for $34, scraped the Joyo information from the circuit board, and then gooped the board AND the scratched-off section in the lower left corner, to hide the fact that it was A JOYO PEDAL, sold at 5X the price.

Look, I've cloned a Spitfire circuit. What I <DIDN'T> do was buy an actual Matchless Spitfire, paint the faceplate, remove the logo, cover it in tweed instead of tolex, scrape Mark Sampson's (or whoever) initials off the inside and cover the scratching with fresh paint (poorly!), and then sell it at some ridiculous price after putting MY name on it. No, I did a point-to-point build in a discarded Stromberg PA in a toaster case, recycling as many of the vintage components as possible. I might have stole the circuit, but at least I wired up my own parts!

Justin

[Steve A.]

Hey Steve,

I think Juan's contention is that Freekish Blues bought the Joyo pedal for $34, scraped the Joyo information from the circuit board, and then gooped the board AND the scratched-off section in the lower left corner, to hide the fact that it was A JOYO PEDAL, sold at 5X the price.

Look, I've cloned a Spitfire circuit. What I <DIDN'T> do was buy an actual Matchless Spitfire, paint the faceplate, remove the logo, cover it in tweed instead of tolex, scrape Mark Sampson's (or whoever) initials off the inside and cover the scratching with fresh paint (poorly!), and then sell it at some ridiculous price after putting MY name on it. No, I did a point-to-point build in a discarded Stromberg PA in a toaster case, recycling as many of the vintage components as possible. I might have stole the circuit, but at least I wired up my own parts!

Justin

I wasn't disagreeing with what you and Juan had to say about the Freekish Alpha Drive/Joyo Ultimate Drive scandal, just adding some of the technical details which explained how he got away with the fraud until some DIYers degooped the pedal and discovered what it actually was.

I had first read about that scandal last month when researching mods for a friend's Ultimate Drive pedal (IMO the unmodded Ultimate Drive has way too much gain and bass.) Like you and Juan I was shocked at what Freakish Blues had done.

My disagreement was with Juan's dismissal of the Hermida Zendrive as hype so I added some details about it (Robben Ford uses the pedal and was involved with its design as the primary beta tester.) I really do appreciate Juan's heads up on the wide influence of the Electra Distortion design although I did not see its resemblance to the Zendrive.

Steve Ahola

[52 Bill]

...I did not see its resemblance to the Zendrive.

Steve Ahola

I'm sure that Juan will clarify, but I thought that he was comparing the original circuit in the OP's first post with the Electra circuit.