Vertex

Moe_Zambeek

Vertex....are they the new vemuram / freekish blues / add ripoff boutique brand of your choice?

Seems likely (allegedly) their uber expensive wah is basically a bbe potted in a block of resin.

How they can charge 300 quid for a boss fv500 with fewer components than the original is a mystery too.

JDE

As the threads on TGP have vanished, it's hard to comment on the wah thing. After years of buying/selling/collecting pedals the only thing I've "learned" is that there's nothing wrong with non-boutique pedals. At all. They normally don't need mods (apart from things like the SD1's signal bleed etc). At all.

There's so much bullshit around hyped pedals. I'm sure those Ford fans who stumped up for the wah will be pissed, but I can say there's no way he ever looked inside the wah. Nor did Thaddeus ever look inside an Alpha Drive. They're all too busy playing.

allicio

Which threads were these? I was looking at a vertex wah!

Catthan

iirc they got a followig with a modded version of the 2-ch. plexitone which seemed to be quite good. Apparently they are well established building boards for hot US guys, Henderson, Ford and the likes so maybe they charge more for brand name and rep.
Same debate as whether a suhr strat really sounds £1500 better than a MIM fender.. I'll choose the suhr every time for several reasons if I can afford it but i don't think it sounds all that better on the bandstand

photek

I had one of the modded plexitones and it was fantastic. There was a hell of a lot of work done to it so I guess the profit margins weren't great. Much easier to just scratch a company name off a board and change a value or 2

Dave_Mc

I saw at least part of the original thread before it got nuked (I don't trawl TGP much, but guys on another forum I'm on flag up any lulz threads).

IIRC I don't think it was 100% conclusive (though was very suspicious), but let's just say I would be very wary (considering previous cases of similar stuff happening) and I won't be buying one any time soon.

Catthan said:

Apparently they are well established building boards for hot US guys, Henderson, Ford and the likes so maybe they charge more for brand name and rep.

Yeah it's the usual TGP thing. Get your kit into the hands of the couple of the golden boys and you can charge what you like.

JDE

Catthan;300596" said:

iirc they got a followig with a modded version of the 2-ch. plexitone which seemed to be quite good. Apparently they are well established building boards for hot US guys, Henderson, Ford and the likes so maybe they charge more for brand name and rep.
Same debate as whether a suhr strat really sounds £1500 better than a MIM fender.. I'll choose the suhr every time for several reasons if I can afford it but i don't think it sounds all that better on the bandstand

From what was "implied" it was more along the lines of putting a Suhr decal on a MIM Fender. And filling the control cavity with epoxy, of course.

Dave_Mc

^ LOL

Apparently there was an even more incriminating thread overnight, but it got nuked before I saw it.

And just to clarify, when I said "Lulz threads" above, I meant the threads are quite entertaining- I absolutely don't think that this kind of BS is funny, at all. If true, it's ridiculous and verging on fraud (in my opinion).

JDE

The thing is, if it's not true, that poor bugger's defamed, and possibly could lose their business.

Basically, if builders stopped gooping their pedals, people would be happier. I have a few epoxied pedals and I always get suspicious. It's a bloody wah wah - it's not the Da Vinci Code.

dunstanmus

I have a wah. I dont know what is inside but it is awesome.

allicio

I have a rule about not buying any pedal that's gooped so I'll be staying well clear!
No matter what bullshit is sprouted it always has the same outcome!

Dave_Mc

^ To be fair, I think the klon was gooped and original. But yeah other than that the odds do seem to be in favour of what you said... )

JDE said:

The thing is, if it's not true, that poor bugger's defamed, and possibly could lose their business.

True. Problem is, if it is true and genuine legitimate questions and debate are shut down, a lot of buyers will feel (with some justification, in my opinion) that they've been rooked. And worse than that (again, in my opinion), that they've been not only rooked but that TGP turned a blind eye and even enabled the rooking by nuking threads where these questions came to light.

JDE

I think TGP are just avoiding legal issues brought against them - they have always covered their arses. Not sure why, must be a lot of lawyers on their forum . Mike Fuller is the only builder I can think of who's crazy enough to sue them. I am a moderate scanner of the effects forum there but find some of the content so borderline obsessive that it's overbearing. I also hate the "flavour of the week" feel to so much of it. Before the inevitable hate when people realise, oh shit, it's a TS808!

allicio

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1458484
The opening comment pretty much sums it up.
Some threads ride for ages some shut down straight away. Weird place!!

Heartfeltdawn

JDE said:

The thing is, if it's not true, that poor bugger's defamed, and possibly could lose their business.

If he is defamed at TGP, then he's in the right forum to find a lawyer...

The Vertex artist list... It reeks of men seeking bloooze authenticity through the medium of overpriced pedals. 

https://www.vertexeffects.com/artists

Dave_Mc

JDE said:

I think TGP are just avoiding legal issues brought against them - they have always covered their arses. Not sure why, must be a lot of lawyers on their forum . Mike Fuller is the only builder I can think of who's crazy enough to sue them. I am a moderate scanner of the effects forum there but find some of the content so borderline obsessive that it's overbearing. I also hate the "flavour of the week" feel to so much of it. Before the inevitable hate when people realise, oh shit, it's a TS808!

I dunno. I have some sympathy for the "I don't want to be sued" argument, because I don't want to be sued either, and always try to word my posts in such a way that (I think/hope) I won't be. But (a) if they're that concerned about being sued, why start a forum in the first place? and (b) as allicio says, some threads are allowed to stay open (plus after one of the previous fiascos they actually relaxed their rules a bit and said they were going to let things stay open and warned users that they were responsible for what they posted).

dano

Every time i see one of these '$20 pedals dressed up in a $200 boutique box shenanigans' I'm on step closer to buying a batch of joyo tubescreamers and rehousing them in a box my kids have hand painted and filling it full of bath sealant..... you have been warned !

JDE

Personally I don't understand their "one rule for some, another for others" policy. I know some dudes (Analog Mike springs immediately to mind) know that their circuits are "heavily derivative" of existing designs and are happy with that. You can't replicate a Fuzz Face or Rangemaster and moan that people be teefing your ideas after all. I do think that TGP have been warned in the past over certain things. If Vertex have issued a similar warning then that would explain the thread kill. I used to frequent the FDP and under no circumstances could you slag the sponsors. Not saying that it's the same with TGP, but hosting costs count when you're running a site that big and aren't funded by Musicians Friend. For example, obviously!

RaymondLin

I am not a fan of them purely because of the horizontal nature, it makes it awkward to palce on the board when you only have 1 of these.

allicio

Turns out its a gooped bbe wah.
Can't say I'm surprised.

photek

allicio said:

Turns out its a gooped bbe wah.
Can't say I'm surprised.

I can't find much else on there now but is this bit not true:


- The Axis Wah is manufactured in California.

- The only thing the Axis Wah shares with Barcus Berry's is the unloaded PCB.

- For the Axis Wah, we source our own components by how they sound in the context of the circuit and for their consistency, stability, and reliability.

- Our pots are all custom made for us with the specific values and tapers we dictate for both the NOS and Standard version of the Axis Wah.

- *The Halo inductor is hand-wound, in house, one at a time. We make our own inductor kits (not a pre-made Halo inductor), which allows us to designate our own cores, wire gauge, wire type, potting, wiring patterns, and saturation point. All of these factors greatly influence how the Wah sounds and distorts and could not be achieved with an off-the-shelf version.*

- All transistor gains are sorted and matched for the exact values necessary to create the voicing of the Axis Wah (most wah transistors aren't sorted for gain which creates a high variability in voice and can influence the sweep)

- The Axis Wah enclosures are sourced and powder coated in California.

- The external control alters the input impedance (a feature on included on any other wah that I'm aware of).

- The DC power jack limits current to emulate a carbon battery (also a feature not included on any other wah that I'm aware of).



If so then it is not just a gooped BBE.