NPD Rotosound RBF1

MattG

So basically i bought this bad boy at the beginning of the month as a birthday present to myself took it out tested it and then put it away until today, close enough to the big day xD
anyway to recap a previous post about it took it out the box the top of the volume knob comes off, easy enough to glue back on but on a £250 pedal? Really?!
The size makes it board unfriendly, the jacks are the wrong way round, it can only run off batteries and there’s no LED.
It sounds absolutely killer though perfect clapton, Hendrix, Stones and Page which was enough to forgive these faults, until today.
I opened up the back to put a battery in it close it back up plug it in aaaaaaaaaand no sound.
swap batteries over and yet again no sound, so the back comes back off to have a quick peak and the wire that connects the positive off of the battery snap to the PCB has come clean off!
The wire was soldered onto a small lug with no hole or catch to hold the wire it was literally just soldered straight on to small metal cylinder on the PCB with so little solder that in changing the battery i managed to knock the wire clean off!
Its not going to be a hard fix except that it would void my warranty so off it goes back to Rotosound with a request that they actually put some solder on the bloody thing this time and they can glue that knob back together while they’re at it.
i don’t expect these issues with a JOYO let alone a British hand wired pedal with a £250 street price!
This whole thing has left me wondering A) where the hell does the money these things cost go because it sure as hell wasn’t on construction and am i better off getting the damn thing rehoused? As i am left with serious doubts that it would survive one day on the road.
Needless to say that if i had paid anywhere near the street price i would be demanding a refund.
Rant over but head my warnings this pedal sounds unbelievably good but is terribly built and poorly designed, consider me one disgruntled customer.

ThePrettyDamned

Hate to say it, but the money goes to labour (it's pretty time consuming) and... Well, hype. If they were cheaper, they'd probably sell less. Price doesn't equate to quality.

Might be worth seeing if there is a clone or different boutique company selling the same circuit.

JayGee

There's no excuse for the poor soldering but the mechanical issues, the lack of an LED, and the absence of a PSU socket are basically down to "vintage correctness". That's just the way pedals were back in the day, right down to the flimsy base plates which had to be removed to change the batteries and the metal tops coming off the knobs. I wonder what happened to my old "pre-jumbo" Coloursound Tonebender...

I suspect that (apart from the level of hand assembly) a big chunk of the cost will be down to the use of "select on test" components up to and including those old-school Germanium transistors [1] to get the thing to work properly and sound the way it does. That stuff takes time and time costs money...

[1] https://www.smallbearelec.com/HowTos/FuzzFaceFAQ/FFFAQ.htm

MattG

Dunlop manage these things on there hand wired fuzz faces which cost alot less and are much more hard waring as are the coloursound reissue pedals.
If half the units Rotosound have shipped out are of the same qualiy as mine then its going to cost them a fortune in basic repairs where they have either cut corners on materials, man power or QA earlier down the road.
Also given that the new price on mine was sub £100 i get the feeling that most of the reason for the high price is to make it feel exclusive so they have massively jacked up the rrp,
I want to love this pedal i really do but given that ive had iot for a day and making the simple repair to the circuit myself will void the warranty im already having to pay out to ship it back to rotosound for repairs

ThePrettyDamned

It's advertised as a vintage circuit with modern appointments and this sounds like that's bullocks.

MattG

i cannot see a single modern appointment on it from what i gather if there is one then it is not one of the usefull ones unlike the dunlop reissues that have put LEDs and dc power or there modern reissue pedals
although i think its true bypass which is in its favour...
and your old cloursound is probably in some vintage store with £200 odd sticker on it gathering dust

JayGee

MattG said:

i cannot see a single modern appointment on it from what i gather if there is one then it is not one of the usefull ones unlike the dunlop reissues that have put LEDs and dc power or there modern reissue pedals
although i think its true bypass which is in its favour...
and your old cloursound is probably in some vintage store with £200 odd sticker on it gathering dust

[I can't believe I'm carrying on a conversation with my son over a bulletin board...]

On the basis of the description on Roto's website what they've actually done is to recreate the original as closely as they can but substituting new equivalents for the passive components (capacitors, resistors, etc), more generally available equivalents for the active components (i.e. transistors), and relaying out the circuit accordingly.

My take on it is this: The (relatively) modern goodies (like the true bypass switching, passive components which don't cost a fortune and aren't old and failure prone, etc) are all present and correct under the hood while retaining vintage correct appearance and functionality , hence no battery hatch, flaky knobs with alu/chrome trimwhich can fall off, inconvenient in/out socket etc and no LED (which would give the game away like modern wheels on an otherwise well executed AC Cobra replica). No PSU socket because they've tried to stay true to the original circuit configuration with PNP transistors, meaning positive ground, which in turn means that it can't share a non-isolated PSU with modern pedals without Tears Before Bedtime - if you want to run it from a PSU then something like this...

http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/Virtual-Battery-VB-BC.html#SID=24

...is what you need, possibly with a replacement baseplate (Grandad could probably knock one up in his shed[1] in an afternoon) so you can lead the wires out without spoiling the original. 

To reiterate though, I'm right with you on the dodgy soldering and subsequent unreliability - the other stuff's a bit like complaining about the 7-1/2" fretboard radius and 6-point trem on a vintage correct Strat. Just part of the package and it is what it is...

[1] Which contains lathe, milling machine, sheet metal bending kit, welding gear, small forge, etc, etc you get the picture - he actually builds working bonsai steam locomotives in there when he's not knocking up bits for guitars, racing motorcycles, valve amp chassis and the like for us... :-)

Jackobean

Is getting your money back an option at this point? Construction issues sound pretty unacceptable, especially when there are guys like Ghost effects and Jimmy Behan doing killer fuzzes at half the price.

ICBM

MattG said:

i cannot see a single modern appointment on it from what i gather if there is one then it is not one of the usefull ones unlike the dunlop reissues that have put LEDs and dc power or there modern reissue pedals
although i think its true bypass which is in its favour...

That's not a modern change either - old fuzz pedals (at least anything remotely based on the Fuzz Face/Tonebender circuit) are all true bypass, because they have to be… the circuit is so crude that fuzz leaks into the bypass signal otherwise.

Sadly it sounds like a typical boutique "use an old circuit, make a virtue out of building it badly, and charge a fortune because it's hand made" emperor's undergarments product.

No matter how good it sounds.

ThePrettyDamned

ICBM said:

MattG said:

i cannot see a single modern appointment on it from what i gather if there is one then it is not one of the usefull ones unlike the dunlop reissues that have put LEDs and dc power or there modern reissue pedals
although i think its true bypass which is in its favour...

That's not a modern change either - old fuzz pedals (at least anything remotely based on the Fuzz Face/Tonebender circuit) are all true bypass, because they have to be… the circuit is so crude that fuzz leaks into the bypass signal otherwise.

Sadly it sounds like a typical boutique "use an old circuit, make a virtue out of building it badly, and charge a fortune because it's hand made" emperor's undergarments product.

No matter how good it sounds.

THIS! 

TGP would love it

MattG

Well its been sent off for repairs and an email is acompanying it requesting that they toughen up the rest of the soldering abit but frankly even with all the issues i just love the sound of it so i will hang onto it untill somebody builds a good version of it, you know something dc powered in a compact box with an LED then i'll cut it loose on the bay.
but untill then i'm getting some pretty damn cool fuzzy tones from the mighty valve sporker although this now means untill the return of the fuzz im OD/boostless and am sadly unable to get close to the right sound for satisfaction

stonevibe

I have one of these and mine has no issues at all.

Pretty good little fuzz and build quality seems more than okay on my unit. I do also own a lot of other fuzz pedals and I reckon out of all of them the Proctavia and the Fulltone '70 are the best made in terms of build quality.

I have a few other hand made / boutique ones and they are well made to like my Euthymia ICBM.

My original old early '70s Sola Sound Tone Bender was a bloody nightmare build wise however it sounded great. I bought it for £35 in the early '90s and used it for years with no major issues live.

Here is a gut shot of my Rotosound. Is the build consistent with your one?

MattG

haha no not even nearly! if i hadnt sent mine off already i would send you photos of mine.
the lack of solder left it almost invisible to the naked eye and one of the feet was wonky as i descovered upon replacing it to send it off, yours on the other hand looks quite sturdy.
that is what im hoping to see when i finally get mine back.

stonevibe

MattG said:

haha no not even nearly! if i hadnt sent mine off already i would send you photos of mine.
the lack of solder left it almost invisible to the naked eye and one of the feet was wonky as i descovered upon replacing it to send it off, yours on the other hand looks quite sturdy.
that is what im hoping to see when i finally get mine back.

They must have made yours on a Friday afternoon fella!

This is the problem with 'hand made' stuff I suppose. But you would have thought whoever 'Quality Controlled' it would have spotted the issues before they passed it. These aren't exactly cheap and they weren't made in China, so no excuse really.

You should ask for some strings as compensation.

Let us know how you get on mate.

stonevibe

Lets hope that they sort out their quality control soon as they are about to release this lot.

Looks like one of his knobs caps has fallen off...

ThePrettyDamned

Oh god, a hand-wired analogue delay from them. Can't see those being reliable...

I bet they sound nice though. I'd love a proper analogue delay sometime, but they generally have a horrendous noise floor, regardless of manufacturer or cost. Digital emulation has gotten too good for it to be an issue.

It'll be interesting to know what the other circuits are. An eq with 3 knobs could be different, and I love a fast phaser on my clean sounds.

MattG

well i certainly wont be getting any of them!
mainly because i dont want any more pedals of this damn size and that use batteries otherwise i would have grabbed the roland phaser that was for sale on here.
still waiting on the return of my fuzz though :S

stonevibe

I used to own one of those Roland phasers pedals. Takes 2 batteries and sounds of its time.

Bit large though.

Dave_Mc

Those boxes are massive, surely? I mean a pedalboard made up of those would take up an awful lot of room.