JHS revives ROSS pedal brand

UtilityBeltFX

UtilityBeltFX

Well-known member

Sweetwater accidentally leaked the news early, probably the result of auto publishing at midnight.

Josh seems to be working with the Ross family to relaunch the pedal company with 5 pedals, each with 2 modes each.

One of these is a brand new Ross Fuzz! Honestly I think these soud great and look awesome. Curious to see the price point.
 
I've got an original Ross compressor in my workbench right now that I worked on for my cousin. I like it quite a bit on guitar and bass, it's certainly got its own sound.

Aion make a PCB for it (the Aurora) that also allows some extra functionality, but having a simple two knobber would be pretty nice. There's not a ton going on in there.

IMG_20230815_173905.jpg
 
I'm curious as to what version of the Phaser circuit the new one is based on. I've got one of the early revisions of the orange phaser that has the JFET chip on it and I also have a black Taiwanese built phaser which is the later version that uses LM13600 chips. Early on when I started getting into pedals I got the black one for a steal on eBay. Later I found a deal on the orange one and thought I would get it and let my guitar player (I play bass) use the black one, since the orange version "had more mojo" according to the forums. Turns out the black one sounded way better on bass and the orange was better on guitar, so I carried on with the black one sans mojo.
 
SchlegFace said:
I'm curious as to what version of the Phaser circuit the new one is based on. I've got one of the early revisions of the orange phaser that has the JFET chip on it and I also have a black Taiwanese built phaser which is the later version that uses LM13600 chips. Early on when I started getting into pedals I got the black one for a steal on eBay. Later I found a deal on the orange one and thought I would get it and let my guitar player (I play bass) use the black one, since the orange version "had more mojo" according to the forums. Turns out the black one sounded way better on bass and the orange was better on guitar, so I carried on with the black one sans mojo.
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well looking at this resource: http://home-wrecker.com/phaserguide.html
there were a few different versions:

- discrete JFET-based (schematic looks very similar design to MXR phase 90)

- AM97C11CN based - IC described as "MONOLITHIC ANALOG CURRENT SWITCH - JFET SWITCH" - guessing this IC was some sort of JFET array? - looks almost identical to the discrete JFET version.

- AM9709 based - "Monolithic Analog Current Switches" - another FET array

- LM13600 - OTA-based

so i guess it's either an OTA or FET based circuit.

incidentally i built a ross phaser clone not that long ago, based on the lm13600 version, using lm13700 chips. sounds great!
 
peccary said:
I've got an original Ross compressor in my workbench right now that I worked on for my cousin. I like it quite a bit on guitar and bass, it's certainly got its own sound.

Aion make a PCB for it (the Aurora) that also allows some extra functionality, but having a simple two knobber would be pretty nice. There's not a ton going on in there.

View attachment 54612
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I feel about as good about this as I did when they did that ill-conceived revival of Kustom back at the turn of the century.
 
peccary said:
I've got an original Ross compressor in my workbench right now that I worked on for my cousin. I like it quite a bit on guitar and bass, it's certainly got its own sound.

Aion make a PCB for it (the Aurora) that also allows some extra functionality, but having a simple two knobber would be pretty nice. There's not a ton going on in there.

View attachment 54612
Click to expand...
Lol what do we think the odds are the gutshots on these Ross repros will look *anything* like the originals? I’m gonna guess they’ll be like two square inches of SMD parts in an enclosure that’s 90% empty space
 
I wonder if some “simpler” pedals (read: less external knobs/controls) won’t be the next trendy thing. I know Ross isn’t “new” but between these and the new thing from 1981 I can already hear the YouTube influencers going on about how they’re “expertly tuned so they hardly need any tweaking” or “less time tweaking knobs leaves more time to make music” or “reacts so well to your playing that two knobs is all you need, the rest is in your hands” or so on and so forth. You know how it goes…just an aside anyways…

… that said I’d probably be up to build some if we got PCBs going cuz less knobs typically equals more cheap 🤷‍♂️
 
It is a smd board. If it was through hole it’d make them prohibitively expensive, specially with a custom enclosure. They’re offering it as a regular commercial product , not a period accurate reproduction, afaik. This isn’t as those Marshall reproductions. The side button is very JHS, Josh loves offering always a second alternative via a side button or small toggle.

Funny, with Ross, 3 main US brands of the late 70s (MXR, DOD and Ross) that were direct competitors (and copied the others circuits) are now available to consumers.

I always loved Ross enclosures, and the fact that the pedals are really simple.
 
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