I haven't been following all the Silver Pony/Klon discussion very closely and just briefly checked in on the Klone Science thread when I came across this article:
http://manticorefx.wordpress.com/2014/08/17/klonformation-in-need-of-klonfirmation/
I don't know if this guy is a poster here, but he should be officially titled Dr. Klon for his study on the topic!
And the price of OA126s just went up again, cause Jon's quote was used.....
Good read, though I had a little chuckle on the mispelling of "undoing".
Damn.
Quote from: GermanCdn on August 29, 2014, 05:20:46 PM
Good read, though I had a little chuckle on the mispelling of "undoing".
Haha, me too. Bill's UNDONG is serious business. ;D
Quote from: culturejam on August 29, 2014, 05:22:15 PM
Damn.
Quote from: GermanCdn on August 29, 2014, 05:20:46 PM
Good read, though I had a little chuckle on the mispelling of "undoing".
Haha, me too. Bill's UNDONG is serious business. ;D
I have zero desire to DIY anything that has to do with Bill's undong.
Wow. Great information here. Have to archive this!
Also great quote from Jon... ;D
I'm pretty sure Martin said he pulled the diodes before measuring. I guess I could email him and ask.
Quote from: GermanCdn on August 29, 2014, 05:20:46 PM
And the price of OA126s just went up again, cause Jon's quote was used.....
doggamn it.
Wait, so the OA126 diodes clip at twice the forward voltage as typical germanium diodes? that would put them at about 0.7V...which is the same as most silicon switching diodes (1N4148, 1N4001, etc).
:o
Quote from: culturejam on August 29, 2014, 05:56:35 PM
Wait, so the OA126 diodes clip at twice the forward voltage as typical germanium diodes? that would put them at about 0.7V...which is the same as most silicon switching diodes (1N4148, 1N4001, etc).
Jon's original post on the OA126 said:
Quote from: midwayfair on July 02, 2012, 05:47:29 PM
the clipping threshold is above .55v on all the ones I tested, and some were above .7v.
Nuts, huh?
Hey guys, that's my pedal blog. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone actually read that post. I don't have any formal background in klonology (my BA is in East Asian Studies), but I spend a good part of my work week at a desk, so I've been e-sleuthing as much klonformation as I can find.
My goal is to put together something like this Rat schem for the Klon circuit: http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=47993&g2_serialNumber=6
I should have the KTR and Soul Food traced within a few weeks. Keith said he would post some photos of his unit on the BYOC boards once he's done with some videos he's working on, so we'll get visual confirmation of that pcb.
Culturejam, can you get in touch with soulsonic? It looks like he hasn't been around since last year. I'm curious whether the 12k and 5k1 on his schematic were actually marked 12k1 and 5k11 or not. The degooped S698 is still too goopy to make out the resistor bands in the photo, and I've got a pic of what should be the 12k resistor peaking out of another unit's goop that looks like it either has all brown bands, or brown/red/brown/red/brown. But no black. These are the details that matter. That 1k is EVERYTHING. The study of Klon is the study of truth.
Welcome and thanks for posting. It's interesting reading and very klonformational.
Pretty much the best writeup I've ever seen on the matter. Great article!
Quote from: jubal81 on August 29, 2014, 11:21:02 PM
Pretty much the best writeup I've ever seen on the matter. Great article!
Yeah, that was good. It presented all the info without being overly klonfrontational.
If you stare intensely at the article for 2 min and then quickly look away you can see card tables! Works best if you look at a solid color.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Quote from: mremic01 on August 29, 2014, 08:35:57 PM
Hey guys, that's my pedal blog. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone actually read that post. I don't have any formal background in klonology (my BA is in East Asian Studies), but I spend a good part of my work week at a desk, so I've been e-sleuthing as much klonformation as I can find.
Are you sure? Your forum pedigree suggests otherwise.
Quote from: electricb on August 29, 2014, 05:04:17 PM
I haven't been following all the Silver Pony/Klon discussion very closely and just briefly checked in on the Klone Science thread when I came across this article:
Still have to read the article, but I'd say white pony is more appropriate, for all the mystique and bullshit surrounding the Klon.
Quote from: madbean on August 30, 2014, 12:33:04 AM
Are you sure? Your forum pedigree suggests otherwise.
Nice!
(I spent about four minutes staring at his profile going "WTF is Bean talking about...?")
Quote from: PhiloB on August 30, 2014, 12:06:07 AM
If you stare intensely at the article for 2 min and then quickly look away you can see card tables! Works best if you look at a solid color.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
In all the (well-deserved!) talk about how great that article is, I wanted to make sure this joke didn't go unappreciated either.
Interesting read there fella. It somewhat adds to the mystique though even though it sets out to clarify things, but the sentiment was there and it cuts through a great deal of the bullshit. However, if you read the article with your TGP head on: As it's now been shown that not all Klons are the same, which one is the best? Which one will become the holy grail of holy grails? Which one will you have to sell your car to buy? Which one will be worth the most when I come to sell?
Quote from: madbean on August 30, 2014, 12:33:04 AM
Are you sure? Your forum pedigree suggests otherwise.
(http://cdn.meme.li/instances/500x/52593768.jpg)
Quote from: juansolo on August 30, 2014, 09:23:23 AM
Interesting read there fella. It somewhat adds to the mystique though even though it sets out to clarify things, but the sentiment was there and it cuts through a great deal of the bullshit. However, if you read the article with your TGP head on: As it's now been shown that not all Klons are the same, which one is the best? Which one will become the holy grail of holy grails? Which one will you have to sell your car to buy? Which one will be worth the most when I come to sell?
Well, I'm still trying to figure out just how much the same they really are. The KTRs all seem to be the same, and support the S698 tracing. Instead of the whole 'Gold is better than Silver' spiel, the situation seems to be that Keith's Silver is just a weird one meant for review that got out onto the used market. Everything else supports Bill's claim that they're all the same under the hood. But we'll never know for sure until people start ripping their Centaurs apart. There's only so much you can learn from the edge of the goop.
So when I sign in under mremic01, I can only see the hosted support forums. Did I get banned for flying too close to the sun(king)?
Quote from: mremic02 on August 30, 2014, 04:26:26 PM
So when I sign in under mremic01, I can only see the hosted support forums. Did I get banned for flying too close to the sun(king)?
I think Bean just made a clerical booboo when he was playing with your other account ;)
This is why we can't have nice things.
Quote from: Scruffie on August 30, 2014, 04:31:34 PM
Quote from: mremic02 on August 30, 2014, 04:26:26 PM
So when I sign in under mremic01, I can only see the hosted support forums. Did I get banned for flying too close to the sun(king)?
I think Bean just made a clerical booboo when he was playing with your other account ;)
This is why we can't have nice things.
Huh, that should not have happened at all. Well, I removed the tag so everything should be back to normal now.
Cool, I can see things again.
Just pulled the trigger on a KTR for tracing purposes. You'll never guess the serial on it.
10001110101?
867-5309?
Quote from: juansolo on August 30, 2014, 06:10:44 PM
10001110101?
Dude, you're giving me subnetting flashbacks. Needs more octets.
It's KTR 0698.
Quote from: juansolo on August 30, 2014, 06:10:44 PM
10001110101?
Dammit, John. That song's going to be stuck in my head all day.
Quote from: jubal81 on August 30, 2014, 06:50:52 PM
Quote from: juansolo on August 30, 2014, 06:10:44 PM
10001110101?
Dammit, John. That song's going to be stuck in my head all day.
(http://forums.court-records.net/images/smilies/lettuceqg3.png)
Quote from: Scruffie on August 30, 2014, 06:15:30 PM
867-5309?
No, that serial appears on a special version with a multicolor enclosure. Two-tone to be specific.
Quote from: pickdropper on August 30, 2014, 07:42:02 PM
Quote from: Scruffie on August 30, 2014, 06:15:30 PM
867-5309?
No, that serial appears on a special version with a multicolor enclosure. Two-tone to be specific.
Would that be the rainbow unicorn enclosure that Bill discontinued because they were 'aesthetically flawed'?
This is my new favorite schematic: http://www.mylkstuff.com/USERIMAGES/Schematics/Schematics-klon-Centaur-buffer.png
^^^ That's a cool rendering.
I *want* some software that outputs schematics like that! 8)
I traced most of the Soul Food last night, and... uh... it's missing some parts.
The most interesting thing is that there's no R15 on the board, which would be R11 (15k) on soulsonic's schematic. This resistor is labeled R14B on the KTR board, and according to Bill, he added a resistor because of something something mids back in '95. Since the numbering of R14B makes it look like it was a part that was added later, could this be the extra resistor Bill added? Could it be that EHX took it out to make the Soul Food goldier?
Awesome post! I do a bit of professional copyediting if you want another set of eyes to go through that and undong some of the errors.
not to be a naysayer, but I began to question the whole klon thing when I read in the Premier Guitar interview that he was trying to design something that would retain his tone when he played his tele through his Twin in small clubs ???
Quote from: Blues Healer on September 05, 2014, 10:37:09 PM
not to be a naysayer, but I began to question the whole klon thing when I read in the Premier Guitar interview that he was trying to design something that would retain his tone when he played his tele through his Twin in small clubs ???
Pretty much, yeah. I don't know why questioning the Klon thing would make you a naysayer. We all know it's just an overdrive pedal, and for the most part, we know what's inside it.
Quote from: thesameage on September 05, 2014, 05:09:36 PM
Awesome post! I do a bit of professional copyediting if you want another set of eyes to go through that and undong some of the errors.
Thanks for the offer, but I'm not too concerned about quality. It was meant to be a collection of my notes in blog form for my own reference. I'm genuinely surprised any DIYers care. The undong was deliberate though. That was Mark Hammer's typo that I left in cause card table. I thought I caught most of the real typos, less one that I've been too lazy to fix. Are there that many more?
It's more than readable. Half my job is copy editing, so I'm probably seeing stuff that wouldn't bother most. Just polish, though. Doesn't take away from the post.
A wild klonologist appears!: https://klonserials.wordpress.com
All those innard shots, surely klonoscopy?
Remarkable for the sheer quantities of black goop used. What is that stuff anyway?
Quote from: catfud on September 07, 2014, 08:59:24 AM
Remarkable for the sheer quantities of black goop used. What is that stuff anyway?
It's some kind of epoxy. If your Centaur dies, Bill won't even repair it due to the goop. He just puts in a new board.
Quote from: catfud on September 07, 2014, 08:59:24 AM
Remarkable for the sheer quantities of black goop used. What is that stuff anyway?
Watch the X-Files episode about Tunguska...
Quote from: juansolo on September 07, 2014, 05:14:33 PM
Quote from: catfud on September 07, 2014, 08:59:24 AM
Remarkable for the sheer quantities of black goop used. What is that stuff anyway?
Watch the X-Files episode about Tunguska...
Bill Finnegan is a pseudonym for Alex Krycek.
*nods*
Impressive work considering he's only got one arm :o
Quote from: juansolo on September 07, 2014, 05:14:33 PM
Quote from: catfud on September 07, 2014, 08:59:24 AM
Remarkable for the sheer quantities of black goop used. What is that stuff anyway?
Watch the X-Files episode about Tunguska...
So extra-terrestrials may have been involved in the production of the Klon Centaur?
Quote from: catfud on September 07, 2014, 08:59:24 AM
Remarkable for the sheer quantities of black goop used. What is that stuff anyway?
Toan butter
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Quote from: playpunk on September 07, 2014, 09:11:41 PM
Quote from: catfud on September 07, 2014, 08:59:24 AM
Remarkable for the sheer quantities of black goop used. What is that stuff anyway?
Toan butter
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
What do you think his undong is for? The goop's gotta come from somewhere.
Quote from: mremic01 on September 07, 2014, 09:42:24 PM
What do you think his undong is for? The goop's gotta come from somewhere.
Shut down the thread, we've got a winner.
Quote from: lincolnic on September 08, 2014, 03:05:18 AM
Quote from: mremic01 on September 07, 2014, 09:42:24 PM
What do you think his undong is for? The goop's gotta come from somewhere.
Shut down the thread, we've got a winner.
You mean a wiener? An unwiener?
...I'll show myself out.
Here's some more (poorly inkscape'd) klone research: https://manticorefx.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/soulfoodschematic.png
...What happened to the original post on the blog?
Quote from: aion on September 10, 2014, 05:41:55 PM
...What happened to the original post on the blog?
I took it down. I've been getting a few people asking about why it's gone, so I'll just copy and paste what I wrote elsewhere:
I reread a lot of what I wrote and realized that it was unduly making other people look bad. I felt like a jackass. No drama, just wanted to avoid drama and fueling the rumour mill. And yeah, I know taking the posts down can look just as bad, but I figured that was better than what I was currently doing.
In the mean time, I'm keeping my klonology private just to be safe, and slowing down (it can get unhealthy). I know I said I'd share it, but it's also not fair for me to put stuff out there that can make or break other one-man kloning operations. The only one's I'm not cool with are PCE for his terrible customer service, and EHX for undercutting the one-man operations and putting out a perplexing product. Most of the other guys make a good pedal and do right by their customers.
In the mean time, I've got a Gold Centaur coming and I'm wrapping up my work with the Soul Food and KTR. I'm eager to put their boards back in the enclosures and actually spend some time playing through them. I might post some Klon stuff, but it'll be slower in coming and with less speculation.
Dude. F them. I thought your blog was awesome and just told the facts. If anyone is offended then whatever. It was the truth. Loved it. Glad I saved it while it was still up.
Don't be ashamed. This was valuable info and legit. Very good stuff. With your klon PhD, if be honored to design the best PCB available for the klon. Dropping some serious knowledge there man! Keep it up.
Quote from: rullywowr on September 10, 2014, 09:15:33 PM
Dude. F them. I thought your blog was awesome and just told the facts. If anyone is offended then whatever. It was the truth. Loved it. Glad I saved it while it was still up.
Don't be ashamed. This was valuable info and legit. Very good stuff. With your klon PhD, if be honored to design the best PCB available for the klon. Dropping some serious knowledge there man! Keep it up.
Thanks. But I do feel like I need to relax and back away from the card table for a bit.
Quote from: rullywowr on September 10, 2014, 09:15:33 PM
Dude. F them. I thought your blog was awesome and just told the facts. If anyone is offended then whatever. It was the truth. Loved it. Glad I saved it while it was still up.
Don't be ashamed. This was valuable info and legit. Very good stuff. With your klon PhD, if be honored to design the best PCB available for the klon. Dropping some serious knowledge there man! Keep it up.
Agree with this wholeheartedly. As long as it was factual, there is no possible argument they can have about it. It's Kitrae for Klons. Simple as that. I thought it was worthy.
As for people being put out by it and complaining, I'm with Rully, this is not your problem. One man business based on someone else's product... That's a bloody shaky business model regardless. Design your own product and shut the f**k up.
Put it back man, and send any complainers my way. I'll sort 'em out. In fact I'd happily host it for you on my site if you liked.
Two words, guys: google cache.
I totally respect taking a break if you're getting too deep into the rabbit hole and it's not fun anymore but I have to say this is really disappointing. I have been finding your Klon fact-finding mission as fun as hell - you are kind of like an archaeologist trying to document an ancient civilization from artifacts you find online and in other units. It's been really enjoyable and I hate to see it go away.
I don't even particularly care about the Klon. I love KitRae's site even though I am not a Big Muff user, and that ProCo rat schematic is great. RG's site has awesome info about Fuzz Faces, Rangemasters, Wahs, and Tube Screamers and Electrosmash has great documentation on Crybabies, etc. The DAM forum has excellent info on the lineage of most fuzz pedals. All that stuff is fun to read even if you don't care about those effects. You are doing great work, but the fact that its the Klon doesn't make it particularly special. If you were doing this for the Phase 90, or the H&K Rotosphere, or whatever, it would still be interesting and valuable to anyone who cares about the history of guitar & effects.
As for hurting other people's businesses, every single person making a Klon clone owes a massive debt to Chittum and the rest of the people who helped trace the original Klon. If you traced every Klone in the world, you would probably find that the vast majority are using that schematic as a reference, and I'll bet some are even using the incorrect 2008 schematic. I've seen some boutique Klon clones that use the exact vero layout you can Google in 15 seconds so whoever made that should be getting some kind of commission! If a business uses information they found in the public domain as the basis for their product, it is very unfair for them to cry foul when information about their product comes to light.
We don't even know if this stuff affects the bottom line of a given Kloner. If you check out any Rig Rundowns, you see a lot of Centaurs, but very few (if any) Klones. It's most likely hobbyists buying this stuff and they will debate the merits of a given pedal vs. another endlessly. Even if you post a thread on TGP asking "What's the best Klone?" you would likely get 30 different responses with each person touting the one that they personally own (at the moment). The most documented pedal out there is probably the TS-808 yet Ibanez sells a ton of these each year, Fulltone sells a bunch of Fulldrive 2s, Dunlop sells a lot of Green Rhinos, etc. People are going to buy an ARC Klone V1 because they want something that close to the original PCB, they are going to buy a Frederic Klone if they want an MXR-sized pedal, they are going to buy a Soul Food because it's cheap, and they are going to buy one of Pickdropper's builds because they want it in a 1590A. Consumer behavior is complex, and circuit variations are probably the thing (most) people care about least when making purchase decisions on pedals.
Sorry for the diatribe, I just hate to see good research and data go unrecognized.
Is hard to say anything new as electricb, rullywowr and juansolo hit every point.
I only write to show my support, what you we're doing it's valuable, it is knowledge and sharing it isn't wrong.
From my point of view, if any builder is afraid about someone studiyng and sharing how his product works then he should stop building or he should do it better (there are many known brand-owners/builders out there that support diy community and rely on the real value of the product they sell).
Thank's to people like you that take their time to look into things and an open/sharing community, technology and science world has been revolutionized in the last decades (think about the development of internet and how it would'nt been possible without the sharing of knowledge).
Said that, it's ok to take a rest from time to time.
If you ever decide to retake your work, count me in for anything needed.