People are stupid...

[Heath]

I keep hearing people on pedal/equipment forums talking about the "legendary, desirable, esteemed, mythical" JRC4558D chips, as if Zeus sprinkled a precious few to the earth and only heroes of old who slew dragons might lay hands upon them.

One jackass sold his Tubescreamer and bought another one for about $100 more because it had a JRC4558D in it.

$0.10 from China, $0.50 from USA.  

People are stupid.

[Frank_NH]

For op amps, I agree fully.  There really isn't any mojo in old ICs that can't be found in recent versions of the same chip or one of many alternatives.  But then there is psycho acoustics involved here - seeing the vintage tube screamer = hearing sweet overdrive tones no other pedal can produce...

Everyone using op amps for musical applications should read this article:

Op Amp Myths and Facts

[rocket88]

Lol. It's like the diodes in the klon, which are made from dragon snot, and pixie bones.

[Frank_NH]

Well, I ponied up a whole $10 for a bunch of Russian D9E diodes for my Klon(e).  SO naturally MY Klone(e) is superior to any other Klon(e) out there!!  

Actually, I've been using my Klon(e) a lot recently as an always-on, preamp/boost (gain set to 9:00).  Works really well for that and makes any other pedals after it sound great.

[Travis]

The good thing about it is that you can sell shit to these guys. They'll buy like 20 tube screamers to see which one is the most transparent. Which one gives them those elusive "John Mayer live in the dentist lobby" toanz.

The bad thing is that you have to sell your soul to do so. They eat up the bullshit, so you gotta serve of a hot steaming pile of it. Most of us aren't assholes like that.. We have our pedal building peers to keep us in check. If I start selling $400 legendary SRV toan tube screamers you guys will laugh me off of the forum. I guess I could laugh on the way to the bank but I'd be one step closer to blowing my brains out.

[Frank_NH]

You don't have be unethical, just be straight with the buyer about what matters in these circuits e.g. building with quality components and wiring, grounding correctly to eliminate hum, etc.).  And if I were selling pedals, I would not have any problem selling them new for $100 - $200, depending on the unit.  Yes, the part costs total perhaps $30 - $50, but your time isn't free, and that doesn't include sourcing parts, testing, and a myriad of other things.  And if someone complained I'd point them to this site and tell them to have fun making their own pedals.

[rocket88]

I've done exactly that. I'm actually making a site/Facebook page to sell pedals and I want to up something like "I make effects for people that care about the sound they get out of their gear, not the bullshit they're told is good." But, then again I do have the magic dragon snot diodes, and fairy wing IC's they want, which I bought because I like them.

Some guys to crazy that you must have XX brand and model caps, and the cheap ones are garbage is a crock of crap. For example, I've read about how the electrolytics from tayda are cheap garbage, and you know what? I've pulled apart well know boutique pedals and found them right inside, for instance Black Arts Toneworks. Not to mention a lot of the pedals we love, vintage BMP, was built using the cheapest parts that Mike Mathews could get his hands on.

I'm not saying you should use the cheapest parts to sell, but I think it all goes back to the hype people make that don't know shit about electronics, use what sounds good. The biggest cost of building that has to be included in the price of an effect is the time and our expertise. I know, frank beat me to it, but it's true, especially if you do a custom one for someone.

But, then again all these gear snob people are the ones that cause problems when selling. I usually try to turn them away, even if I could charge more to them because I use some special part they want.

[Muadzin]

A fool and his money are always soon parted.

There is no arguing with toan snobs. I've tried that on a U2 forum where the toan snobs were wanking over the latest Death by Audio effects that the Edge was using. It basically boiled down to 'if I want to be ignorant, that's my God given right!' and 'some people (insert username of whoever was making this statement' just don't want to be bothered with soldering'.

Now I no longer bother. When I see a big board full of expensive pedals I'll just think I could have built those for a fraction of the money you paid for them. And laugh internally like a madman.

There really is no need for bootweekers to hide what they're doing with goop and lawsuits. Because the vast majority of guitarists will not touch a soldering iron to build their own pedals if their lives depended on it, and those who do were never part of their market demographic anyway.

[Frank_NH]

I'm a big U2 fan, but I would never want to play live with The Edge's gear - he has a complex rack system that at least six feet tall and has one of every kind of pedal ever produced.  Of course, he also gets roadies to hand him a new guitar for each song...

One of my best sounding pedals that I've built so far is a slightly modded tubescreamer.  I used greenie caps and regular carbon film resistors from Radio Shack - nothing special.  And it came out great.  The sound has more to do with the circuit than the specific components (within reason - you obviously don't want bad or out of spec components in your builds).

[Muadzin]

I'd LOVE to play with Edge's gear. Imagine the sounds you can conjure out of those two Twin Towers of Sonic Doom when you're not restrained to the confines of U2 'the Rock Band' and their 3 chord song structure? There is 19"gear in there that he only uses for one or two songs, surely more interesting sounds can be made from it. Hell, the dude made me want to build my own 19"rack tower of Sonic Doom. And I have it! Alas, as you said, without roadies to haul it around its just the world's most expensive paper weight.



I do think the components inside a circuits do affect the sound. Not so much the mojo of unobtainium parts, but more the tiny differences between parts, even of the same value. After all, isn't that what the myth of all the various versions of the Big Muff is all about?

[rocket88]

 oh no, not this discussion/argument again. I think it's the sum of the components, not the individual. Ie: replacing an electrolyic with a tantalum will alter the sound, but changing the value of the electrolytic will change the sound. I think it's all about hype. A 100nF cap is a 100nF no matter what material into made of.........

I do think that mojo parts look cooler, like tropical fish caps, but I don't think they change the sound of the effect because they're tropicsl fish caps instead of regular old poly caps.

[Frank_NH]

I suppose a lot of the mojo thing came from the germanium fuzz days when it DID matter what particular transistor you had (in terms of leakage and hfe).  But I would think that most manufacturers would want consistency and NOT mojo, since there would potentially be as many non-mojo pedals out there as there were mojo pedals (depending on how closely parts are check for tolerances).  

[Heath]

I imagine they look at it the same way as people who mod/deck out their PCs with lit fans, led tubes, and those big ass gorgeous copper Zalman cpu coolers.  A lot of that doesn't make a bit of difference as to how well it works, but when it's a passionate "hobby" people like to make it pretty/awesome/badass/etc.

I admit, I've got some old funky-looking caps that I save for those "Special" builds, just because it's cool. :p  I think can-style opamps are neat and nuclear submarine diodes make me happy.  

Sound different?  Not from looks alone that I've ever been convinced.  It's style and flair.  Nothing wrong with that as long as common sense and some personal education factor in somewhere.  I mean, shit, we've got the most amazing repository of information ever available on this earth, in most of our hands at all times, yet so many people can't be bothered to read up on something.

I also have some glowy blue fans on my pc, because, fuck it, I'm a grown up and I can do that shit if I want.

[Heath]

rocket88 wrote

 oh no, not this discussion/argument again.

Ha!  


To be honest, my original point got lost by the second post :p  I was mostly annoyed with people worshiping a chip that is so widely available and CHEAP as if it's somehow rare or difficult to get ahold of.  Not even getting into mojo or Klon type stuff, but a simple opamp you can get for $0.25 if any of these cockknockers bothered to even Google "JRC4558."  No mystery, no hassle, no unknowns... just inexplicable ignorance.

[rocket88]

Btw, I completely agree about transistors, especially Ge transistors. I'm was focusing on passive components like caps and resistors.

[Silver Blues]

As far as the PCs go though, having big copper CPU coolers actually does make a difference because the likelihood of this is that they will cool better which is always necessary and welcome. To be fair at this point in time a cheap all-in-one liquid cooling system will cool better with a smaller footprint and less noise than large air coolers but still.

Now LED fans and cold cathodes are just there to look cool

[Heath]

Silver Blues wrote

As far as the PCs go though, having big copper CPU coolers actually does make a difference because the likelihood of this is that they will cool better which is always necessary and welcome.

True enough, but I was thinking more of those near-works-of-art that Zalman and some others used to put out.  Totally functional but with some beautiful designs and those shiny copper pipes and such.  Far prettier than pure function would need.  There's was one that looked like a big copper butterfly.

[Silver Blues]

Ah yes, Zalman...