Build Your Own Clone Message Board

I recently bought a JOYO Classic Flanger - I think I may have posted about it already - when I got it, it passed signals in both bypass and active, but no flange.
I considered exchanging it with the supplier, but could not restrain my screwdriver. First thing - three screws came out OK, but the fourth was stripped and jammed solid. Finally got it out and found the BBD chip had jumped loose before, or while flow soldering was taking place - four pins were soldered in on one side the four on the other side were just hanging in space. I cleaned out the holes, bent the chip back down and soldered it in. Result - lots of thick juicy flanging.

I emailed the supplier to let him know and he was very nice about it - said he would have replaced it if I had not owned up to having opened it and offered me a discount on any other pedal. So I ordered a Voodoo Octave. I did some research before it arrived and found a report that another owner had found two of the electrolytic caps in it fitted the wrong way round.

When mine arrived I checked and found four electrolytic capacitors fitted the wrong way round. I corrected that and also found a 100K resistor fitted that was 47K in the original circuit. Two tone caps had their positions swapped. The PCB had not been cleaned after soldering and was absolutely caked in dried flux. On both pedals a really poorly soldered bit of flimsy ribbon cable had been tacked in to place between the main PCB and the foot switches.

The Voodoo Octave is a clone of the Fulltone Ultimate Octave which in turn seems to be a fairly close copy of the fOXX Tone Machine. I checked the Voodoo circuit against the General Guitar Gadgets circuit and also measured all the voltages across the electrolytics so I am certain now I have them the right way. I did find that C5 of the GGG circuit is actually drawn the wrong way round.

I have not yet identified the original that the Classic Flanger is based on. Following my experience with the Voodoo Octave I am prompted to open it up again to check for reversed electrolytic caps.

Based on my experience I would say that although the JOYO pedals are so tempting because they are so cheap, the typical lack of attention to detail and quality control you find with low end Chinese goods means if you buy one you are unlikely to get a pedal that is working correctly.
This is a shame because all the parts are of good quality and the pedals can be re-worked to be good sounding clones of the originals.

interesting report.

Thanks for sharing! Looks like they're using quality parts from what I've seen. But it looks like the quality of the build itself is lacking.

After looking at some gut shots and schematics I'm pretty sure the joyo flanger is based on the ibanez fl-9.

At least you didn't buy a freekish blues pedal, which is a barely modded joyo for a boutique price...

No well I already knew about the Freakish Blues farrago.

Even so I hope the re-branded Freakish Blues pedals would at least have been properly re-built with any problems corrected. In which case they perhaps aren't such a scam. You would be getting the benefit of a JOYO that has been fixed. A benefit that really represents the price difference between a crappy build and a careful re-work.

Hmm ... or maybe not. I have just taken another look at the Freakish Blues web site and they have pictures to 'prove' that the FB Alpha drive II is NOT just a re-painted Joyo Ultimate Drive.
Well I think I might believe them in what they have done is perhaps design their own circuit and contract with Joyo (or whoever it is that manufactures Joyo) to build it for them. Although other people have pictures of what they say are FB pedals with goop plastered all over the PCB to disguise the fact that they really are Joyo. So maybe the 'proof' picture on the FB web site is a later addition.

Unfortunately their picture reveals the same crappy Joyo build quality in their own pedal!