Chicago Stompworks

I haven't tried them, but I've heard of them. You should do a YouTube demo, there's not much out there demonstrating how The Green Thing sounds!

have you opened it up tos ee if tisa straight 808 clone or if its modded?

its nothing to write home about, much is made of the difference between the 808 and the 9 but its a few components, the biggest difference is the output impedance. I guarantee you that's why you perceive the 9 as harsh. The 9 was redesigned a bit to sound better with solid state amps, it was the 80s, the JC120 was everywhere. The 808 is more like the boss OD1 it ripped off, designed to go into a tube amp. its a ew component differences, really. It way over mythologized but that mythos allows small builders to charge an arm and a leg for soemthing and have a huge profit amrgin... at elast the fuzz face and related circuits have you tsorting and discarding a lot of germanium transistors with unsuitable HFE or elakage so i udnerstand why you're making a epdal that costs the same as an amp, I'm payingfor all the aprts you bought and discarded. The grandaddy soft clip OD, the boss OD1 has a special oddball opamp in its original version and that might sound different. The aprt is out of production so if you wanna charge an arm and a leg for an OD1 clone okay. But a TS808? There's nothing in there that's not in current production and the original 70s pcb layout is readily available for free.

that said, I just did a reverb search and CSW green thing seems to be pretty fairly priced in the used market. trades for 50 to 100 bucks which is what a tubescreamer is worth.

Ironically, you have a solid state amp and putting the 808 into it you're not really hearing the 808 the way maxon intended you to hear it since until the 80s they were designing for the reactive load from tube amp inputs and the x0x output sections were tuned up for that. The 9 series really was the redesign to accomodate all the new wave bands who were using roland and Ibanez solid state gear. I would guess that your 808 clone is super smooth through that champ due to loading from the amplifier inputs on the higher impedance output circuitry

Every time you post I learn something new

I aim to debunk electric guitar tech mythology.

It's working. I am an educated musician :P

If we're gonna go off on a tangent for this thread, I'd like to ask an opinion of you on the topic of drive. How do you feel about Klones, and what's your favorite? I have received word that my family gifted me a Celestial Effects Sagittarius for Christmas, a Klone/boost pedal.

oh man, the Klon…

I've used a real klon when finnigan was making them because I'm that old. I knew someone who bought a gold one right away, mailed a check his mom wrote, shit you not. I think the dude still ahs it. At the time I really liked it but I couldn't beleive he was charging a couple hundred bucks for it and there was a wait list. If I had known what they would be worth I woulda bought a few and sat on them until now. Coulda bought a new car.

in klones? I've only had the ehx soul food. I quite liked it, particularly into a fender tweed to brign out some extra britishness. but it has an enormous bass drop out like a lot of pedals. I feel like the original had that too. Hoenstly I felt like the soul food was close enough for me.

My problem with msot OD pedals is the extreme high passing. You need that tog et the distortion circuit not to fart out but unless I'm going to leave it on all the time tis a deal breaker for me. I don't care how much boost I give my output signal into the amp I still hear my bass fall away and no matter how good the circuit it sounds like an effect to my ear and it bugs me. The whole klone ideas was 'more of what you like about your amp'. I remember that was in the original guitar world ads. In always on distortions? Any old thign will do, really. The Klon s nice, but so is the tubescreamer, sd1 rat, sd9 etc etc etc. I have tons of them to this day. The Klone is really nice and is dead clean at 0 gain with only the bass cut as an artifact and that's cool. But that bass cut. when you take intoa ccount the treble control? Whoa dude. If its not always on its just as annoying as any pedal. If you don't give me a tool tomake up my low end after the clipping I don't want to use your pedal. It plays hell with sound guys who have to be ready to cut your lows every time you turn the dirt off (although most of them don't and so you sound like a weenie in the PA). Klone's would benefit from a 100hz bass gyrator circuit like onthe mx custom abdass. I also think they would sound better if the diodes to ground were diodes to bais potential like on the fuultone OCD, because the klon isn't very dynamic the way it rbeaks up, its a classic brickwall design, sort of a suped up distortion+ with some ideas from the rat. So's the OCD abut its got that dynamic version of ahrd clipping. If you put the 2 together it'd be a really amp-like OD for a diode clipper. REALLY REALLY amp like. No one does this. I would do i but I don't like building on PCB and with the charge pump and everything the klon could get really big and messy if you did it PTP.

This pedal is also pointless into a solid state amp. 50% of klon users use it as a clean to slightly dirty boost and that's a joke in front of another transistor device. The klon produces a reasonable amount of its own distortion as you crank the gain but its not soft like the tubescreamer so it is going to be harsh as shit without the benefit of a tube stage shaping it, compressing away the rough edges and smoothing out the top end a bit... if you don't have a decent tube amp don't bother.

I think the best bang for buck klone to test out is a soul food. I think tis a handful of minor components to get it accurate anyway. The thing is damned close. I think it lacks the secret sauce germanium diodes and ti chaps out ina few other departments that amy or may not be audible. If you like the soul food you like the centaur. The actual centaur (and probably the archer) just does it a bit better.

The Klon I'm looking at has a bass knob to add in some bass again, resolving some of the bass cut issues. I'm also planning an upgrade to one of those hybrid Music Man amps, I found a nice one that i might spring for.

I had a friend who used a couple different Klones in front of an old Fender Frontman 212r. It sounded pretty okay, and that's a loud 100 watt solid state amp... so I'm optimistic but not certain. Worst comes to worst can sell it.

The Celestial is hand-wired, and as far as I can tell the components are similar to the Klon itself, but just that little bit different.

I had a friend who used a couple different Klones in front of an old Fender Frontman 212r. It sounded pretty okay, and that's a loud 100 watt solid state amp... so I'm optimistic but not certain. Worst comes to worst can sell it.

go for it,maybe you guys want something different then I do or maybe I have overly discriminating ears. I'm getting less and less punk rock in my old age.

I would just leave the musicman alone, they're fine the way theya re. Nothing super special about them but if you want a balckface fender that stays pretty well clean and has a 'dry' sort of sound? that's it. really, its like a twin with less harmonic cotnent. And I doubt any modification will change that vibe. its just the transistorized version of the fenderpreamp is going to have less harmonc zazz as you crank it up. Stock though they take modern pedals better than any other old solid state preamp. They really do. I think Joan Jett stills wears by one. They're getting a bit collectible too, so butchering it may be a financial mistake.

I mean, I've been hacking up my traynor into the 'jim-watt', but its the least desireable traynor model, although a bit rare. An even better candidate for my mods would be the 50 watt traynor 'custom reverb' amps, but those are kinda cool stock and they're getting mroe valuable, it'd be a shame to take it apart and redesign it this way. The PA head? its a passable guitar or bass head stock but no one will cry that I made it the prototype for my 50 watt amp design. personally, I don't think tis cool to hack up old amps that already sound petty good for guitar nd bass stock without any glaring flaws.

Yes. I've been designing my own amp. Almost done. I might try to market it. Me and a buddy of mine came up with the name "Lo-Down Amplification Co" and the mdoel would be the ODB502, as in Old Dirty Bastard 50 watt, 2 input. My prototype is 2 channels but I was thinking of going to 1 channel for production so it'll fit in a marshall 800 chassis and head shell and you would get high and low inputs like an 800 instead of 2 channels with only high gain ins.... I would just take the bright channel and put it ona push-pull pot on the gain control to revoice the amp I guess.... its also suitable for abss via my excellent 'presence' control design that revoices the wholepoweramp to really thump when it goes below 5. You will want one.... but I have a feeling building them from scratch will be expensive just based on the high spec transformers and enormous power choke I'm using. If I use anything smaller and cheaper I think it'll lose the firm, clear tone.

but yeah, tuebscreamers, they're all similar... as is the SD1. Just a couple little parts value changes. People make much of it.

Ah, what I meant is ditching my transistor Orange practice amp and getting a real hybrid MM. I'm not gonna touch that baby. it's one of my favorite amps of all time and a total pedal machine. Excited to get some really varied tones.

And you know I'd rep an amp called the Old Dirty Bastard, right?

I couldn't possibly afford to build oen for free, its hundreds and hundreds of dollars in aprts just to build the most basic version with 2 band tone... the 3 band tone control design I haven't prototyped ebcause I'll need to order an expensive multi-tap inductor to do it the way I want. Without ordering 100 tranfromers the amp cost will begin with 300+ dolalrs just for iron for the 2 band toenstack and more 400+ for the 3 band. That's no chassis, tube sockets, caps, resistors, jacks, just properly wound, transformers and inductors with big, vintage grade iron cores. The choke on my prototype is amost as big as a lot of 40 to 50 watt tranformers in modern fenders and marshalls. Everythign is overspec and it contributes to the tone. I don't know how to design a cheap version.

I'll probably d some for cost plus a few bucks labor. Each one can be custom voiced a bit. A buddy of mine is thinking of having me build him a high gain version with a 1k mid scoop for metal, which will be easy. I can basically tweak anything within the circuit. I can do different tone control responses, whatever. But the stock tone controls I designed are really the sound of the amp to me. They're very much vox controls shifted to hit what I think are the important guitar ranges... and they don't suck for bass if you turn the presence down. But Ic an't afford to buy hundreds of bucks in components and then give the amp away, I would starve.

I'm not suggesting that... I'd buy the shit out of it :P if my wallet could handle it. When you finish it, I'd love to hear a demo.

With it being the holidays I have't had time to put up mics but I will soon.