blackeye effects white pine

[kirshman]

I saw a guy playing this last weekend with a very similar setup to mine.  He was using a white pine and it sounded fantastic!  I was doing some digging online and a lot of people say its an exact copy of a crowther hotcake.  Can anyone confirm cause I'd really like that to be true so I can make one

[motterpaul]

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/blackeye-effects-trustworthy.1483744/

read this

[kirshman]

Nice.  The only thing I don't see in that gutshot is the 10k resistor in the right side of the board.  Thanks for the link, I'm glad I can make one!

[Muadzin]

motterpaul wrote

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/blackeye-effects-trustworthy.1483744/

read this

............................................________
....................................,.-'"...................``~.,
.............................,.-"..................................."-.,
.........................,/...............................................":,
.....................,?......................................................,
.................../...........................................................,}
................./......................................................,:`^`..}
.............../...................................................,:"........./
..............?.....__.........................................:`.........../
............./__.(....."~-,_..............................,:`........../
.........../(_...."~,_........"~,_....................,:`........_/
..........{.._$;_......"=,_......."-,_.......,.-~-,},.~";/....}
...........((.....*~_......."=-._......";,,./`..../"............../
...,,,___.`~,......"~.,....................`.....}............../
............(....`=-,,.......`........................(......;_,,-"
............/.`~,......`-...................................../
.............`~.*-,.....................................|,./.....,__
,,_..........}.>-._...................................|..............`=~-,
.....`=~-,__......`,.................................
...................`=~-,,.,...............................
................................`:,,...........................`..............__
.....................................`=-,...................,%`>--==``
........................................_..........._,-%.......`
...................................,

[Frank_NH]

I don't understand a business model that relies on veroboard layouts for "production" pedals.  Getting PCBs made would be MUCH cheaper.  Oh well...

And yeah, not acknowledging that you're ripping off a well-known circuit and selling it as your own...bad!!  

[Muadzin]

Frank_NH wrote

I don't understand a business model that relies on veroboard layouts for "production" pedals.  Getting PCBs made would be MUCH cheaper.  Oh well...

Probably a model where he looks at all these vero layouts and thinks 'I can do that!' but not one where he knows how to make his own pcb's and where to have them fabricated.

[motterpaul]

My guess is that the layouts are the easy part - it is making the pedals look professional that takes more time than you think.  All that paint and decals & stuff.

[rocket88]

Idk, I prefer to sell pedals I build on vero, nothing against PCB. Granted Im not making tons at a time, and each one is built specifically for a person, but I feel like if you're going to spend a bunch of money on an effect, as some companies get, it should be actually be built painstakingly by hand. Btw, I'm just saying that if the parts cost $30, and you change $150-$200 you have to justify that amount of profit, ie labor.

Also, remember a lot of companies basically sell clones, look at all the klon clones or big muff clones. It doesn't mean that you don't have the skill or knowledge to design your own, but building what people want. It's basic supply and demand. But, we've had this discussion before, mostly about JHS, that if you build and sell something mention that it's a tweaked "_______". Not to mention that nearly every effect is based on only a few pedals, they are just tweaked one way or another.

[Beaker]

BJFE pedals are all vero as far as I know. You don't hear many complaints about those, despite the price tag!

[Frank_NH]

I was just thinking that you COULD make the vero process more efficient by using jigs to make some of the labor intensive and error prone parts of the job easier.  For example, I use a dremel ball bit to make the track cuts, so a jig to make the drill process easier would cut time.  But you still need to test each board for solder bridges, and that takes time.  I suppose if you build in batches that could be more efficient.  

My build time goes something like this:  board prep (0.75 hr), solder jumpers (0.25 hr), solder components (2 hrs), solder control wires (0.5 hr).  So, about 3 - 4 hours total time from zero to a testable, unboxed circuit.  Of course, this can increase/decrease depending on the complexity of the circuit.

Boxing is a bit more effort, but it's usually comes in at about 3 - 4 hours per box, depending on the number of controls, component fit, and many other factors.

So, I invest nearly 8 hours per effects unit (not including testing/debugging time).  If you find a bug in the circuit, then your time obviously increases - perhaps by a lot!  

In contrast, my PCB builds are usually very straightforward and I don't encounter too many problems.  Boxing time is also reduced for circuits with board-mounted pots and switches.

If I were going to build commercially (or as a serious hobbyist), I'd use veros for "custom" and "one off" type circuits, and PCBs for "production" units.  Fortunately, I am just a rank and file hobbyist!

[motterpaul]

I think this is an interesting discussion.

Obviously, there are only so many ways to build a fuzz, overdrive, or whatever. They are all based on the electronic components that we have available.

Obviously, if anyone changes nothing in a schematic (not to mention a PCB layout) then that is a direct copy. The DIY community has rightly deemed this to be not ethical and something one should only do on a small scale, basically for personal use. (The Madbean approach). Friends qualify as personal use, I think.

But on the other hand - the world is full of "near likeness" products. Just look at guitars. The only time a maker was sued was when the copy was so close it could be confused with the original. So legally, with pedals, what one needs to look out for are cosmetic clones first - it is wrong to sell anything that looks just like another "real" pedal, including a near logo (same font, for example). It is also wrong to sell a pedal under the brand name. But using something close (as in the case of KlonE) is usually not challenged (hopefully the schematic is not a direct copy, but many times it is)

But really, when you look at the layouts even here, you can see how many are schematically based on the RAT or TS, and it is almost a joke. But then again, the same with tube amps - how many are clones of Marshalls or Fenders?

Remember that Park worked for Marshall, but he also had his own brand of amps that he sold at the same time and they were nearly identical.

[motterpaul]

I should add that most of the "amp in a box" pedals are taken directly from the amp schematics they are emulating - the only difference is that they use FETs for tubes - and some values have to be changed only because FETs react slightly different than tubes - but much of those designs are the sames as the amps - on purpose.

[Travis]

Marshalls ARE Fender clones, built with parts that were available in the UK. Leo Fender worked on radios and his amps were based on those circuits

[motterpaul]

I do know the story about Marshall being based on the Fender Bassman, but I wouldn't say clone. I actually just wrote an article on the history of Marshall:

https://reverb.com/blog/a-history-of-marshall-amps-part-i

So I did a fair amount of research into what was different and Reverb.com had the article fact-checked by a Marshall historian. They did switch out tubes, but they also did more, the changed tube 1 from a 12ay7 to a Ecc83 (equivalent to a 12ax7), they increased the negative feedback, and they changed the tone stack. They also used much different speakers and (I think) output transformers (which largely define an amp sound).

What people don't mention a lot is that between the first time they looked at a Bassman and the day they actually started selling the JTM-45 there were about five different prototypes.

[Beaker]

Schematics cannot be protected, as it is just a graphic representation of a signal path. This is the main reason why schems are so freely available. If someone comes up with something genuinely new, and try to patent it, then the schematic is automatically made available for public view by the patent office. This is so anyone else can challenge the patent if it is too close to their own product.

PCB designs can be protected. A direct reproduction (a photocopy) of a PCB is illegal, but change the layout slightly and you are ok.

The only builders who are reluctant to publish their schematics, are those who don't want anyone to know that their "Three years in development" pedal, is identical to others.

[Beaker]

The different components (valves, transformers) used in Marshalls were only done because of availability issues. American parts were hard to get hold of, and expensive. UK made parts were much cheaper, and much easier to obtain. A few resistor or cap value changes were needed to optomise these different parts.

Jim Marshall was trying to build a Fender copy - he got as close as he could, under the constraints of the day, before customer demand started drawing him away from his original template.

[Travis]

Exactly

[rocket88]

All schematics that have been reverse engineered from the actual part, they are NOT similar, but EXACTLY the same. And many, many, many big companies sell effects that are identical to the originals. The is no copyright on schematics, and effects. The copyright is on the design of the outside of the effect, name of the effect, and company name. The ethical issue is copying everything about a pedal, not the circuit, and when companies claim they spent tons of time developing an effect when its just a copy, which JHS is notorious for.

If copying an effect was ethically wrong why would there be 9 million fuzzface clones thst claim to be identical to the originals, or vintage big muff clones that claim to be exactly the same as the original. Shit, there's the company build your own clone, that focuses solely on letting people build there own clone of a famous effect. Big or small company it doesn't matter. What matters if you do, then state it is. All the big muffs I build are stated as big muff clones. Nothing wrong or ethically wrong with that, just be honest.

[motterpaul]

Of course you can't dispute that he was trying to do that at first. He opened up a Bassman and that was where he started. I'm just saying the first production model Marshall was not a Bassman clone. It was based on a Bassman, though.

But if players had wanted him to continue in that direction - people who were already starting to get famous - like Clapton and Townshend, they probably would have just bought Fenders.

But even Townshend says in the "Story of Marshall" that he didn't want a Fender, he wanted something ballsier. He urged Marshall to go a different direction, so Jim Marshall hired new engineers. Marshall did not design the amp that became the JTM-45, it took a few years and prototypes between the first day he opened a Fender and the days when his hired engineers introduced the first JTM-45, not to mention the Super Lead which came soon after and was based on EL34s, a different OT and a solid state rectifier.

Anyway - silly to argue about it. I see your point and I don't dispute it. I think we all agreed that most designs are originally based on something else.

[Frank_NH]

Actually ALL effects are UNIQUE because part tolerances can be 1% - 20% from spec (especially capacitors!).  

And if you believe in MOJO ICs, diodes, trannies, etc. they can be REALLY unique (e.g. the Klon).

BTW there are huge threads on the ethics of cloning.  I agree with Zach that as long as you're up front about the circuit origins (even if it's tweaked) I think it is OK.  

More here: http://www.muzique.com/clones.htm