JOYO Pedals

[Jon Rep]

I have just ordered JOYO 1. British 2.American 3. AcTone pedals to test mainly due low cost & how good they sound on YouTube Videos and I am interested in the Voice Knob and all the different sounds that they produce for the amp they emulate. Just thought if anyone has any opinions on these pedals.  They are extremely cheap and rebranded as Harley-Benton in Europe.  Thanks     PS. So cheap that their not worth building.

[toddvirgil]

I have an AC Tone. It does give you a lot of flexibility in tone, for sure. Its never gonna make a transistor amp sound like a tube, that's for sure, but man, for the price, they are pretty solid little pedals. I'm a big Joyo fan... I just bought a programmable 8-channel switcher made by them, and it is fantastic for the price. They're power supply bricks are really solid too, and a quarter the price of comparable units.

[Jon Rep]

Todd, thanks for the positive comment and other info. I will report back my thoughts here on these pedals in a week or two after I get them. After I purchased them cheaply on EBay I also noticed a Chinese Electronics Wholesaler site also selling them very cheaply and the items you mentioned ePathChina. http://www.epathchina.com/     Thanks.

[borntwisted]

If i could remember where i found the info I'd give them credit (but my brain is like a sieve), hence I keep notes. Apparently this is a list of Joyo pedals and what they are clones of.

I've not tried any yet myself so can't comment on them.

JF-01 Vintage Overdrive = Ibanez TS-808
JF-02 Ultimate Drive = Fulltone OCD (or Rip off Freakish Blues)
JF-03 Crunch Distortion = Mi Audio Crunch box
JF-04 High Gain Distortion = Marshall Shredmaster
JF-05 Classic Chorus = ?
JF-06 Vintage Phase = MXR phase 90
JF-07 Classic Flanger = ?
JF-08 Digital Delay = ?
JF-09 Tremolo = Diaz Tremodillo
JF-10 Dynamic Compressor = MXR Dyna Comp.
JF-11 6 Band EQ - MXR 6 Band EQ
JF-12 Voodoo Octave (Fuzz Ultimate Octave) = Fulltone Ultimate Octave
JF-13 AC Tone (Tech 21 character, Liverpool = VOX AC30 amp)
JF-14 American Sound (Tech 21 Character, Blonde = Fender Amps)
JF-15 California Sound (Tech 21 Character, California = Mesa Boogie Amps)
JF-16 British Sound (Tech 21 Character, British = Marshall Amps)
JF-17 Extreme Metal = EHX Metal Muff
JF-31 Noise Gate = ISP Decimator
JF-32 Plexi Drive = Wampler Plexi-drive
JF-33 Analog Delay = MXR Carbon
JF-34 US Dream = Suhr Riot
JF-35 Pocket Metal = ?
JF-36 Sweet Baby = Mad Professor Sweet Honey
JF-37 Analog Chorus = 1980's Boss Chorus
JF-38 Roll Boost = MXR Micro Amp

HTH

[JaviCAP]

I have (and use very often) two Joyos: Vintage Overdrive ( Tubescreamer 808 clone) and US Dream (Suhr Riot clone) and they're not good, they're f*cking great and the cost, about 22 euros shippin included is just incredible.

The best prices that i've found for these pedales in:

http://www.donnerdeal.com/

Usual chinese service (free post, 12 to 30 days to arrive)

BR

[Vince]

Another to maybe check out are 'Biyang' I have the delay, phaser and chorus. All fantastic pedals

[johnk]

just an FYI. the analog delay isn't actually analog at all. it's a digital delay using a 2399 chip, so IMO, it's not an MXR carbon copy which uses BBD analog chips.

[Dave]

I've had the phaser and the 6 band eq, both were really good although both got sold because I didn't put them to much use. I also had the biyang fuzz which was also really good. Also check out mooer pedals for similarly high quality clones.
Thanks
Dave

[chuckflorist]

You can't beat Joyo for value for money when you think of transport cost from China as well.

I use the Compressor (mainly for vocals) and have their tuner pedal (JT-305) which I think is a clone of a Pitchblack. Would have liked to have the Boss Chromatic tuner but too expensive for me.

[mojo321]

I'm in the process of modifying a Joyo Crunch Distortion JF-03, which is the same schematic as the MI Audio Crunch Box. (which is based off the Marshall Guvnor)

Let me tell you something, this JOYO board has the thinnest copper layer I have ever seen.  It peels off like transparent tape.  

I was desoldering the tone pot so I can put a BMP tone stack in it, and one of the traces peeled up as I was wiggling the pot loose.  So, I had to run a wire direct from the clipping diode pad.  

My plan was to just tie into the holes from the old pot to a daughterboard tone stack and then wire the pot up from there.  So now, the whole thing is going to be wired into two different areas of the board.  Oh well.

I was also going to put a clipping selector switch, ALA Marshall Guvnor style, but now I am afraid to try and desolder any more parts!    

[Jon Rep]

I was so impressed with the ACTone, British and American Joyo Pedals that I also ordered the Extreme and California and likewise was very impressed with their dynamics and responsiveness and the way they emulate the different amps.   The Low, Mid, High controls have such a large range that I can put an original Proco Rat unmodified in front of any of these pedals and bring the Bright tone down to Bass levels easily.   Therefore if you build pedals that are too bright you don't need to modify them if you have one of these Joyo's in front of them in the pedal  chain.

I Had a look inside the ACTone and was surprised that  the Board was like that of a Computer Integrated Circuit.  Most of the Caps and resistors   are miniature ie  ~1mm with a few Black Electrolytes similar to what we use to build pedals.  The IC's  too are smaller.  Maybe that is why they are cheap ie. The way they are manufactured. Personally I would not try and modify these pedals.

I also pulled apart a Biyang Mouse  to compare it to the Proco Rat I built from this site and the components used are the same as the ones built from this site and they are easily modified and sound the same as a personally built rat.

The Joyo Pedals definitely have put more liveliness colour & styles in my playing.  I like them and the price.  

[tabbycat]

opinion seems to be (fsb and my experience) that the JF-07 flanger is a pretty much spot on clone of the classic ibanez FL9. i've got one and though i've never owned either an mxr, an eh mistress or an FL9, it does seems to sit neatly between the mxr and mistress at all but the extremes, and sounds identical to all the FL9 demos i've heard.

it has a lot of the metallic post-punk hardness of the mxr, but is not as ring-moddy or extreme at top settings. and it has decent helpings of the swooshiness of the mistress, but is not as watery at the max settings. so if you want something that covers both bases well, unless you are talking about the extreme ends, it can cover a lot of ground for not much money. metal enclosure, through-hole, true-bypass, etc.
there are gut shots at fsb (it's classic old-school bbd).

on tones alone, pre-trace, it was originally guessed to be an mxr clone or workalike. then, as gutshots were poured over, opinion seemed to converge on the ibanez as the clone. so i noticed that gap in the list and thought i would throw it in for completist's sake.

can also confirm that the joyo high gain distortion is an improved upon shredmaster, with added fet and pimped caps in all the important places (see fsb thread for details). the bass pot on the shred is replaced with a fixed 68K in the joyo (as it is in the jekyll and hyde) but out of curiosity i plucked the 68K and replaced it with a 100K pot, so i have the best of all possible worlds. i think the original shredmasters had a reputation for crappy switches and plastic jacks. not sure about true bypass. anyway, the joyo solves all that at a stroke, so not a bad toy for £20.

my favourite joyo by far is the voodoo octave (aka ultimate octave). it's a foxx tone machine clone but you have to rotate a couple of electro caps that are wrongly oriented on the pcb to bring it into line with the foxx schematic. do that (10 mins) and the things is a dream. true bypass, octave on a footswitch, metal enclosure, decent (possibly germanium) clipping diodes, through-hole components. a must-have.

[ham_phist]

I have the Ultimate Drive OCD clone. It's good. I don't own an OCD, and there's like 4 versions of it, so I can't speak to how it lines up with the OCD. But it sounds great. Worked well as a drive in front of my JCM800.

It's not an amp-in-a-box, but I have the analog delay. I noticed that it seemed to really suck the high end out of my tone. Other than that, great pedal. I don't think it was simply an instance of needing a buffer, I had an SD1 in the chain with it, so that should have taken care of it. But I may be wrong.

I hung on to it in hopes I could figure out what was causing it one of these days.