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Also there's the whole psychological thing- if it did die in the gig, you'd feel you'd cheaped out and deserved it. Or if you were getting paid and the person paying you said, "You're using pro quality gear, right?" it'd be hard to answer with a straight face. Admittedly, neither of those means that the joyo was at fault, and a more expensive pedal could have broken in the same way, too.
But I'd definitely agree that, as opposed to guitars and amps/cabs, pedals are the place to cheap out if you have to. A £25 pedal is an awful lot better than a £25 guitar or amp, lol.
It's quite funny when people say that companies like Joyo cheap out on parts in a circuit like a Tubescreamer etc. To small builders a metal film resistor can be sourced for 4p as opposed to 3p for a carbon film and so on with other components. If you wish to purchase in bulk from the far east (where Joyos obviously come from) you can get compnents even cheaper and that is still with the suppliers making a profit.
The savings, like most of the world's cheap products, is made on man-power.
Do I think they are worth £29.99? Absolutely.
Having opened up quite a few though, they are poorly and obviously chain soldered. A few also had rust on the boards and components - this may be caused by the salty tears of the construction children. The other thing is quite a few were obviously re-worked after having components wrongly inserted which being PCB usually leaves some damage. Having said that, if yours works, what's the problem.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Yes, have to agree that the quality comparison ends at the board components. Then when you consider the price of really good jacks, pots and switches and the fact you are paying £30 then it shouldn't surprise anyone.
I think it's one thing cloning something that is not available but to clone something that is in production for commercial profit??
The other thing I was thinking is when you get a "higher quality" clone of a circuit. There are boutique builders with marketing along the lines of This is pedal X as it should be without any corners cut.
I've got a Microamp build at home which uses much more expensive components than the bog standard MXR one. I originally built it because of the tone suck switching of the original which drove me up the wall. When I went to order the components I went for higher quality components. I guess someone could sell something like this commercially as an "improved" Microamp.
I've never been happy with cloning; while my pedals were related to classic designs none were clones, and all were more than a few extra ohms here or a few picofarads less there.
The other problem, which I've mentioned before, is that a lot of the cloners have a day job that subsidises their pedalmaking and makes those doing it for a living look like they're ripping people off. If all the pedalbuilders charged the same for their time as they make at work things would be very different.
I suppose (and this is me just thinking out loud here, I could change my opinion in 5 minutes' time) you could make the argument that by not admitting it's a clone, you could well be duping consumers. Whereas at least being up-front, you're not (and if the original were such a groundbreaking design it'd have been patented, so cloning in most instances isn't illegal, so long as you're not using their pcb design and trademarks etc.).
Then again I suppose you could claim that making a clone and not admitting it is one probably isn't illegal either, so :-?
You know, the timmy clone for 400 quid or whatever it was.
It's a joke. I won't buy, for example, a fuzz face. There are so few components in it, I got them for around 25 quid with enclosure and built my own. Didn't even take long. And it's in a proper case, not a daft massive circle!
But this is what annoys me more than cloning. I mean, if I get a mooer or joyo it's okay - components are poorer. Pots might get scratchy quicker and the switch will almost certainly fail sooner. It's built to budget, but ideal for me. On the other hand, if I'm gigging, I'd likely try to get v2 visual sound pedals for the amazing reliability.
Freekish blues wasn't just that one pedal. They had a fuzz and some other bits, all just joyo or other pedals in a new enclosure. Such a nut.
When it's a hobby and you enjoy doing it then factoring in the cost of time is arguably a bit silly, but for all the people who turn the hobby into a paying hobby it massively distorts the end price because (as I've said before) the pedals are subsidised by your day-job employer.
As it happened they turned out to be a bunch of lying, incompetent, workshy twits and I got my money back, but I'm not sure that's the point.
The Fuzz Face isn't really a great example as it's not an 'insert components A-G and get a great sounding fuzz' circuit. Hence that's why you don't get companies like Joyo mass producing great sounding Fuzz Faces using unskilled labourers.
Have a look at any DIY pedal site and you will see folks pleased with their home-made modded tubescreamer circuits with bass boost and clipping options whilst tearing their hair out over the nine components in a Fuzz Face.
The Fuzz Face circuit is more on a soufflé than a pot noodle.
Germanium transistors sold in ones and twos can be of suspect provenance.
Don't get me wrong, it can go too far and you can rip the ass out of it (and there are a bunch of chancers, too), but yeah I agree that if something is genuinely made well (and designed well), then it's worth (far) more than the cost of the parts.
LOL