I was absolutely SHOCKED to discover this one thing a pedal maker doesn't want you to know!

david57strat said:
For me, it's a double-edged sword.

A cheap pedal may fail in a short period of time, but because it's cheap, it can often be replaced very quickly and easily, without any regrets. As mentioned by others, because of all the surface mount stuff inside, there won't be a lot of repair places wiling to invest any time in attempting to repair one. Easier (and more cost-effective) to just replace it.

A more expensive pedal may (or may not) fail), but more likely after a number of years of use. It will almost certainly have a warranty; but by the time it gets around to failing (if it ever does), it's almost certain to be well out of warranty, but will have given you a lot of use, over the years.

You kind of get what you pay for.

I own three Joyo pedals - The California Sound, AC Tone, and British Sound. These are all Amp-In-A-Box pedals.

The AC Tone was the most satisfying, sonically, and I even recorded a few things with it. But, at what little I paid for those pedals, I never really expected much out of them, in terms of build quality or reliability. They were worth the small investment, just to see what they could do.

I know none of them are wired for true bypass, so wiring up the three of them, in series, makes for a lot of tone suck, which is unacceptable to me, under most any circumstances.

B8aFcJK.jpg

They no longer reside on any of my boards. Actually, they never made onto any of them. I bought them before I built my first board, back when I was improvising a "board-like" surface, by flipping Grundorf rack case covers upside down, to place the pedals in them :-).

I've since replaced them with pedals that are more suitable for my purposes - but I don't regret having bought them.
SwMhVUB.jpg


I got some use out of the Joyos, and I can live with that. I'd gladly give them to anyone who would make use of them. I kept them in nearly pristine shape, like I do all of my pedals.

I've never owned a Behringer pedal, but for the same reason as newpedals, I don't feel comfortable buying a pedal with less than at least pretty decent build quality, and I just don't trust a pedal I'm going to be stomping on, whose case is made of plastic, to do the trick for me.

I do own one of their cable testers, though. I've had it for many years, and it's been great.

Csc3pOO.jpg


They Joyos had their time, and in a pinch, I might use the AC Tone again (as a stand-alone, and with a single bypass switcher, like the old Keeley, pictured below, when not in use). But, it's not likely I would ever build an actual pedalboard with any of them.

0TxaMw6.jpg


I bought one of Behringer's Virtualizer Pro 1-space units, that I purchased at Sam Ash back in 2000, that I used in my racks, for general purpose reverb. It was relatively cheap (about 100 bucks), and was alright, but nothing to write home about. It finally crapped out on me, after having it for about twenty years, so I can't complain. It served its purpose. Any of my reverb pedals would smoke that old rack unit, though. Digital reverbs have improved tremendously, over the years, and I tend to buy more serious reverb units, these days.
Click to expand...
I bought one of these a while back and it’s brilliant 👍
1744110156902.jpeg
1744110200201.jpeg

1744110242155.jpeg
1744110273668.jpeg
 
In the pedal world you definitely get what you pay for. At the risk of sounding like an old geezer, they don't make em like they used to. I went through a few Danelectro food series pedals that were operational even after I'd crushed the plastic enclosure. Chinese manufacturing is like a triangle, each angle being quality, price, volume. The rub is you only get to pick two, and they love to cut the quality in favor of cost saving and making a shitton of them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top