You ever play an original AFTER building a clone?

coltonius

coltonius

Well-known member
I popped into GC today to see what fun new stuff they had in the used section and to my surprise, they have an original Fairfield Shallow Water! Of course I had to try it and see how my Low Tide compared..

In a word, Woof.

It's completely possible that the Fairfield needed some internal adjustments; the outside certainly looked like she'd been ridden hard and put up wet! Anyway, I could hardly get a usable sound out of it, let alone chorus. The Gate knob was perhaps a bit more useful than on my build, but the vibrato setting completely removed note attack and all high end so that was a bust.

Kudos to @Robert for his stellar work on the Low Tide!
 
A few times I have built a pedal then a friend has come around with an original. The only one I remember specifically was strangely enough a Fairfield Barbershop. This was before PedalPCB so I had built one on Vero. Mine sounded almost identical to the original, with parts tolerances explaining any differences. If anything I think we prefered the clone, although the difference was very minor.
 
coltonius said:
I popped into GC today to see what fun new stuff they had in the used section and to my surprise, they have an original Fairfield Shallow Water! Of course I had to try it and see how my Low Tide compared..

In a word, Woof.

It's completely possible that the Fairfield needed some internal adjustments; the outside certainly looked like she'd been ridden hard and put up wet! Anyway, I could hardly get a usable sound out of it, let alone chorus. The Gate knob was perhaps a bit more useful than on my build, but the vibrato setting completely removed note attack and all high end so that was a bust.

Kudos to @Robert for his stellar work on the Low Tide!
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Interesting question. I’ve been reasonably content with the stuff I’ve built and haven’t gone looking recently. The one example, and not a clear apples to apples, was when I bought a JerseyGirl Fulltender. I’ve built some YATSes. The Fulltender is not earth shattering, but it is a very nice overdrive and impeccably built. I’m curious to see what others say
 
mdc said:
en.wikipedia.org

IKEA effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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If I had a spare $250 (+ tax) I’d buy the pedal just to take it home and record how badly it sounded. I really hope it’s just out of calibration and its new owner has the wherewithal to dial it back in!

ps. I have never deluded myself into thinking my self-built IKEA furniture is superior to my Walmart furniture!
 
The vast majority of my clones were built before me trying an original. Tubescreamer, Rat, Memory Man, Deep Blue, Keeley Compressor, Small Clone, the list goes on. The most recent is the Soldano GTO, I built clones of that for years before finally snagging an original last year.

The only thing I can think of that I actually tried first and built a clone of later was a Bluesbreaker.
 
vigilante398 said:
The vast majority of my clones were built before me trying an original. Tubescreamer, Rat, Memory Man, Deep Blue, Keeley Compressor, Small Clone, the list goes on. The most recent is the Soldano GTO, I built clones of that for years before finally snagging an original last year.

The only thing I can think of that I actually tried first and built a clone of later was a Bluesbreaker.
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Similar experience here. I only recently got into building pedals and, although I’ve been playing for almost 40 years now, never really used much beyond a Boss overdrive and a Boss CE – 2 way back in the 80s. The only one of those that I have built a clone of is the CE-2 and I honestly can’t compare the clone to the original because I haven’t played the original since the late 1980s.

I did try a a Keeley Compressor Plus and ThorpyFX Fat General a few months ago, wanting to hear what they sounded like before I built clones of them. The General Tso I built sounds comparable to what I remembered of the Thorpy. As far as the Keeley pedal, I built a MBP Kompromat - I actually prefer the sound of the Keeley pedal better but that’s not a fair comparison since that MBP clone isn’t based on the specific model of Keeley compressor that I tried.

Mike
 
Haven’t built too many before playing the original, but I’ve definitely had a mixed bag of which one I like better. I prefer the original SD-1 over PedalPCB’s (could just be part differences), but through my main amp I prefer the PedalPCB RAT over the original. That’s what makes this such a fun hobby - you gotta try stuff out to see what really works :)
 
I have a Rockman X100 that I never play anymore after I built my own new-and-improved "remix" of it. I just keep the original for reference, and I guess I'll end up selling it one day. They seem to go for a pretty penny.
 
vigilante398 said:
The vast majority of my clones were built before me trying an original. Tubescreamer, Rat, Memory Man, Deep Blue, Keeley Compressor, Small Clone, the list goes on. The most recent is the Soldano GTO, I built clones of that for years before finally snagging an original last year.

The only thing I can think of that I actually tried first and built a clone of later was a Bluesbreaker.
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This right here. Sometimes I like the clone so much, I buy the original to add it to my collection.
 
I have built pedals specifically to modify them away from the original in some way - the Strawberry Red is a good example. I did change the LEDs to 1N4148 pairs but as it turns out I think it was the second pair of clipping diodes which really bothered me. Removed them on my version and ended up with a great pedal worked better for me.

Recently I heard a friend's Browne Protein pedal and was relieved to hear that it sounded just like my clones.
 
jimilee said:
This right here. Sometimes I like the clone so much, I buy the original to add it to my collection.
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i did exactly this with the ibanez/maxon ST-9 / ST-01.

the clone i built is just so impressive and outshines any other overdrive circuit ive ever used/built.
so i ended up grabbing a maxon st-9 pro+ (had to check out that low boost mode)
and then just the other day i actually found an original maxon st-01
BA6D351B-CCB4-4205-A9C2-71D6970FF634.jpeg
and yep, they all sound the same.
 
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