How close are teh clones???

[Sir Axeman]

Lots of pedals now are 'cloned' so last night I was watching a demo of someones pedalboard and thought the BB Preamp thingy sounded pretty damn good.....



Now, seeing as the BB Preamp is pretty expensive I stumbled onto this ebay listing when I was looking the real thing up on ebay...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3008216553...=p5197.c0.m619

Wonder how close this sounds to the real thing...worth a punt? Are these cloned pedals really that? Are they exact or close to? Or what?

[frankus]

Aren't the BB and AC variations on the Tubescreamer theme?
Riot is a Marshall Shredmaster int it?


So where are the clones?

[Sir Axeman]

The ebay link...is a BB Preamp clone did you not see/read my post mister?

[photek]

I have had a hell of a lot of clones but ended up selling them and buying the real thing. The ones that have been as near as damn it the same have been by Handsomerik, Thorpy on ebay and Karma FX. The main difference I have found in the others have been pot values where nothing happens until they are dialed up to about 75% and then the last 25% has all the sound. Other problems have been less output that originals.

The BB clone I had was very good but I didn't get a chance to try it against the original. I would say it is worth a punt as you probably wont lose a great deal if you sell it on.

Hope that garbled reply helps!

[fretmeister]

Timmyo tells me my KOT is very close to the original, the main difference being the tone pot values. Mine is a bit brighter for any given setting.

[photek]

Timmyo tells me my KOT is very close to the original, the main difference being the tone pot values. Mine is a bit brighter for any given setting.

Have you had a look inside yours? Mine had 2 little trim pots for prescence that made it bang on my V4. Worth a look.

[mudslide73]

Handsomerik, Thorpy

I've had great experiences with these two also.

[noisepolluter]

Aren't the BB and AC variations on the Tubescreamer theme?

The BB and especially the AC are like someone's taken the things I don't like about tubescreamers and fixed them, so for instance I find it very easy to dial in a low gain sound on the AC that matches a clean fender amp nicely. For me the AC effectively replaces a Liquid Sunshine that I moved along, equally it'll do the moderate gain bluesy stuff. The BB pretty much takes it from there.

You're welcome to try mine at some point. We really must sort out a meet up and noisemaking session in the new year.

[juansolo]

Depends...

It comes down to a lot of things. Getting the right parts (pot taper as mentioned can cause all sort of issues when it comes to comparisons). How the builder puts it together can have a big effect on some things when it comes to noise. Then you've got the accuracy of the schematic it's based on and then there are tolerances on the parts in question. However, if you have access to an example of a pedal you're cloning, it's not too hard to make the clone virtually indistinguishable with that particular example of that pedal.

Also it depends on your goals as a builder. I will sometimes bugger about with clone builds to make them more to my tastes (the beauty of DIY). In those cases it's possible to build something that you prefer to the original.

There's definitely no easy answer to that question though I'm afraid.

[Sir Axeman]

Not exactly the same here more of a MK I vs MK II but I've just received my Marshall Guv'nor MKI pedal today (off ebay) and compared it to my recently aquired MKII (GV-2)..and these pedals ARE different...but with different settings on the GV-2 can sound very similar. Sometimes this can mean its no big deal...if you can equalise the settings to get the same end result. I guess though if your setting preferences are on the extreme end of the scale then another pedals different pot tapers can mean it can't quite get there.