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The modulation stuff tends to sell best which is also where I am focusing the most attention. But I should check and see what the current #1 is. It's been a long time since I looked.

Probably cos if you have the confidence to attempt delays/modulation you are probably more seasoned and less likely to require help..... not always though I guess...

Interesting. I find it so weird that the majority of help and build posts that I see on various DIY sights seem to involve dirt pedals. Maybe they are harder to build than modulation/delays?

I rarely post here...... but weirdly Dan pointed this thread out to me. I've posted this text elsewhere mainly in defence of Dan who is trying to stay out of the online discourse as it gets him down.

Here's  the thing Dan isn't out of the industry, Dan works with me and we are working on and will be releasing new circuits all the time. For legal reasons Dan could not use the original trade dress, circuit layout etc. Now whilst legally, cloning wholesale has become an accepted practice in this industry, it is only human nature to be aggrieved as a designer if you are not compensated for your work. It happens all the time in the music biz, but there people have protection and often people are compensated if their art is "borrowed"

I get it, people want the rare expensive thing and they want it as cheap as possible. But there is a LOT more complexity to this situation than is obvious from first glance.
People will rail on Dan without knowing him but I'll just say this, when you are beaten to the punch in making your own work more readily available and you can see others getting paid for that work (and you don't) then I defy anyone to be happy about that situation. Yes that is our fault for not moving faster, but my company isn't as big as others so there is only so much I can achieve in the 14hrs working hours in a day.

That being said, we are evolving these past gems, they won't just be 1:1 clones and they are cool. More importantly Dan will get paid for his work.

Ps. Dan tried to delete the comments, but you know screenshots save that stuff forever.... lol

FWIW Dan is one of the good guys in this world, he's a great mate of mine and would do anything for anyone in need.

Not sure how I missed this thread. 

Couple things:

1) Adrian is a real old-school DIY guy. And he's a decent human.

2) I consider getting a circuit traced the ultimate badge of honor and proof that you've done something important. I was very upset it took FSB so long to finally trace the Clusterfuzz. Seriously, that bothered me a bit more than I would like to admit. 

3) Innovate or die. You gotta keep moving or someone will, soon or later, steal your lunch.

thanks CJ, Appreciate it!!

All good dude. My original response to this thread was without any backup, I took someones word for it, and was probably on a grump myself.
The last few months Ive dealt with redundancy, new job, Mrs with a new job, moving house (chain fell twice), planning a wedding, and my dad getting Cancer. no excuses but sometimes what I write might benefit from of course fact checking but also a smiley or two.

Now you actually got me interested in the compressor! I love the OTC-201.
I have all the Lovetones, and the Dinosaurals (minus the last one he did as a dual boost thing), so beleive me I dont question the pedigree of the circuits you are developing either yourself or in collaboration.

I of course wish you all the best, no offence intended either. Its been an interesting discussion.

indeed it has. well i wish you some fairer skies ahead, sounds like you've been through the mill a tad so heres hoping things improve.

People should just trace the Thorpy stuff

His work isnt any more precious than any other, and people that want a real one will buy one.
Lets be honest,  I like the guy, I like his enclosures, I respect him as a veteran, but he is for the most part doing high end re-works of classic FX, with a small amount of innovation - some of which so far is driven by his collaborations with Dan Coggins - so he cant claim to be doing all the leg work himself. Plus, that particular pedal is a BigMuff, so...if he did cry about it getting traced, he needs to get a grip.

Ok, let me just reply here. I didn't "cry" about being traced, I save my tears for genuine life issues.  I'm just a bit gutted about it so soon into my professional making career especially considering the prolific nature of peer to peer cloning that is ongoing in the industry. I'm doing my best to inject some originality in all of our releases. However there is a lot of straight up ripoffs in the industry.

Should I be off limits? Probably not, I guess I was hoping for a little breathing room to allow my company to grow. I've only been building under this brand professionally since April 2015 and I only left the military in January 2018 (having been running 18hour days for three years) to do this full time, I guess the timing of this is particularly hard.

Whilst I understand very few of you know me, I'm a decent guy trying to make a go of this professionally in a massive market full of bear traps, Very much like madBean, CJ and Forrest have with functionfx.

Ask yourself this, would any of you clone a functionfx pedal and post it on the net? If not, why not?

I guess

As for my friendship with Dan Coggins, how do you know what is driving my companies development?

I'm still working on the collaborations with Dan, the first of which is only just being released, so please don't assume what I am doing with my company. You'll know which ones are collaborations with Dan as I will put a mark on the pcb and mention him by name in the manual.

Anyway, not crying, not salty, just a bit gutted especially considering the timing of things.

Hi Adrian

While you may be gutted that your pedal might be traced and the innovations you have appended to (presumably) a Big Muff variant would be splashed over the internet, you gotta consider two things.

1 - this shows you are doing something right! People wanna know how to get that sound. In the world of Big Muff variants thats a pretty lofty place to be, putting you alongside other luminaries such as Skreddy, Wren/Cuff, etc whose Muffs are sought after.

2 – You likely have enough brand recognition now for it to not damage your sales. The reviews in print and video are stellar, and it's always been the case that DIYers are such a small part of the market, there is little to no chance of this having a significant impact on your revenues. As I said already, those that want a "real one" will pay for one and support you.

For the record I never said you cried over it (that was  "thesmokingman"), and even if I did, it's simply a figure of speech. You don't deserve to be any more off limits than anyone else, I'm afraid. I can tell from videos I have watched you come across as a lovely person and this is in no ways personal, simply my commentary of my stance on cloning. Would any of us clone a FunctionFX pedal? Sure. I have. I didn't sell it, but I did make it for myself, and heck I even placed in a competition here because of how I executed the cloning (!). Generally the builders that get most respect from the DIY community are those that aren't afraid of it. See SmallSound/BigSound for example. There are many others. It's a shame but I would say your comments here do exhibit fear of the DIY community. Case in point ZVEX. Im still yet to see a proper clone of a Fuzz Factory, from someone like JOYO. From what you have said it appears this is the thing that really worries you, not DIYers building one for personal use. And yet eBay is flooded with people that will knock you a Fuzz Factory clone out for £50. And furthermore, Zachary Vex is I assume a multi-millionaire and his brand is one of the strongest in the world.... Something to think on. 

Regards your friendship with Dan Coggins,  there's been various mentioned on the web, including your own site:
https://thorpyfx.com/blogs/news/a-busy-summer-has-yielded-an-awesome-collaboration
https://www.pressreader.com/australia/guitarist/20171020/283626760288305

Dan's work with Lovetone is legendary (I was/am quite the fan, and corresponded with him) so I don't see the need to be as defensive as you are – I was simply saying from memory  Dan worked on the EQ section of the Muffroom cloud with you (edit - found the link http://www.theguitarmagazine.com/gear/thorpyfx-muffroom-cloud-review/ ), and its been publicly stated that new product development (the compressor you just put out?) is his design. So frankly I wouldn't say I am actually "assuming" anything on that point, and again GOOD FOR YOU working with Dan; if the Dinosaural  OTC-201 is anything to you by your compressor will be absolutely outstanding. If anything,  you should shout more about it because the OTC-201 is now cult like with various people (such as the GigRig bloke) and its ended up on various Pro and amateur boards while it was produced... and now is quite sought after 2nd hand.

Anyway a sigh at this point. I wish you no ill. Your pedals look and sound great. Your branding is lovely. I generally wish to support UK businesses, and I have a strong love for military and veterans.  I might even buy one sometime -  just my taste speaking, nothing against your designs at present  just nothing that I need from the current collection. Im looking forward to see some more modulation from you, or a delay perhaps. 

One last bitchy point that I hope will be taken in good humour – its meant to be tongue in cheek. In an interview you stated you made a Lovetone Meatball as a personal project. Where did you get the schematic ?! 

Ok, i really don't want to argue here, but..... i will defend myself a tad.  Firstly I don't have a fear of the DIY community, i have been a part of it for a longtime and yet much less so of late due to my lack of free time.

What I do have worry beads about is the unintended consequences of the DIY community, blowback if you will. There are so many people that  aren't willing to do the hard work, i.e. they scour the internet and wholesale steal IP, reboot it without any changes and sell it as their own property, often to the detriment of the original designer. what happened to MI AUDIO is a case in point here. I am sure I'm not the only one with these worries. What needs to be understood is that setting up a strong foundation for a business is vital to ensure long term survival, ZVEX, Fulltone et al were able to do their foundation laying in a relatively uncluttered market, this meant they can easily weather any storms from cloning etc. My company and other relatively new companies (FFX for example) don't have that luxury, so if i seem a be protective, its because I am, this business is like my third child

As for Dan, We are really very good friends, our kids are friends and we have a great business relationship too. Your statement about me having a small amount of innovation, some of which is driven by Dan was the bit that got under my skin at the end of a long day, hey I'm human.

I have worked very hard to grow this business into something I can run full-time (to the detriment of my health at times) and it is both me and my wife that have driven it to this point. Dan is a certifiable genius, absolutely off the scale and I'm really very proud to be working with him, i know there are many designers who would love to have that relationship, so i do not underestimate his contribution at all. The Fat General has only just launched and it is as you say an OTC-201 with a treble control, lower noise floor and more squish on tap. It sounds bloody ace and I will be shouting about it once i can get the backorders fulfilled and units into the hands of the demo guys.

As for your numbered points 1) yes indeed and I'm really stoked that this is the case.
2) Its not the DIY market that i fear. It really isn't, it is the companies that we all know that do this stuff without any concerns for others.

modulation is coming, this year... please hold me to that.

and as for the meatball...... what a great circuit, you can probably guess where I got the schematic... however i own an original too.

anyway, im less grumpy today, less tired and less caught off guard. i hope all is well your end, no offence taken by me and i hope none given.

all the best, Thorpy

I'm glad you chimed in Adrian. I think everything you said is perfectly understandable and reasonable. This isn't freestompboxes, after all. There's no agenda here other than DIY as a craft, hobby, or springboard into something else.

Since you mentioned me and FFX - actually, people have cloned the Clusterfuzz (as DIY) and I have no problem with that. I even confirmed the traced schematic right here on this forum. And I would do the same for any product we make (but, that's just the way Forrest and I operate - it's not something I would expect of every pedal company). Would I want someone to turn around and produce them commercially? Nope...and for all the same reasons you mentioned for ThorpyFX. And because, unlike 10 years ago, I now know just how frigging hard it is to launch an unsuccessful, I mean, emerging pedal company (yes, yes, self-deprecation and all that).

Also, glad to see you posting! You've been gone for a minute.

Yeah it's been a while, apologies for that but I've been running myself into the ground trying to do too much.  I emailed Robert too as a knee jerk reaction to this news which was brought to me having been snoozing on the sofa. My precious existence dealing with bombs and ieds makes me see everything as a threat, sometimes these can do damage, sometimes they can be exploited.

In all honesty, I could make a buttload of money developing explosive weaponry, I'm very good at it. However I love guitar pedals and would rather work with musicians than be involved in the defence industry.

Make peace not war!

People should just trace the Thorpy stuff

His work isnt any more precious than any other, and people that want a real one will buy one.
Lets be honest,  I like the guy, I like his enclosures, I respect him as a veteran, but he is for the most part doing high end re-works of classic FX, with a small amount of innovation - some of which so far is driven by his collaborations with Dan Coggins - so he cant claim to be doing all the leg work himself. Plus, that particular pedal is a BigMuff, so...if he did cry about it getting traced, he needs to get a grip.

Ok, let me just reply here. I didn't "cry" about being traced, I save my tears for genuine life issues.  I'm just a bit gutted about it so soon into my professional making career especially considering the prolific nature of peer to peer cloning that is ongoing in the industry. I'm doing my best to inject some originality in all of our releases. However there is a lot of straight up ripoffs in the industry.

Should I be off limits? Probably not, I guess I was hoping for a little breathing room to allow my company to grow. I've only been building under this brand professionally since April 2015 and I only left the military in January 2018 (having been running 18hour days for three years) to do this full time, I guess the timing of this is particularly hard.

Whilst I understand very few of you know me, I'm a decent guy trying to make a go of this professionally in a massive market full of bear traps, Very much like madBean, CJ and Forrest have with functionfx.

Ask yourself this, would any of you clone a functionfx pedal and post it on the net? If not, why not?

I guess

As for my friendship with Dan Coggins, how do you know what is driving my companies development?

I'm still working on the collaborations with Dan, the first of which is only just being released, so please don't assume what I am doing with my company. You'll know which ones are collaborations with Dan as I will put a mark on the pcb and mention him by name in the manual.

Anyway, not crying, not salty, just a bit gutted especially considering the timing of things.

this and the tiny whammy are on my to buy list, i wish the tiny whammy ricochet had an expression out though

Wow that is a hard but pleasurable fall

I am just amazed that so many people can be sucked in by another greedy politician. scottish or not. Alex Salmond is a shrewd operator, however he is just as bad as any other politician.- not to be trusted!!!!

ok, reflowed absolutely everything (again) taking particular care around the LFO. i noticed what may have been a microscopic solder bridge near the lfo. fixed this and now it is working as expected. very nice it is too. many thanks for the support guys.

i've checked all the values, i did do all the joints but I'm going to redo them now.....

Can I use a different type of chip? I have a bag of tl062cp chips and have tried two

Which section is the lfo driver

Sorry, I thought I'd described the issue- my error. The pedal works in bypass. When the effect is activated I get dry signal but no wet signal. The rate and depth knobs don't really do anything.

Update- I found a 330n cap where a 3n3 was and since changing that I have the ability to dial the trimmer into something but the chorusing effect still isn't there. The depth knob seems to do "something" since the cap change but the rate still doesn't work.

Overall it seems to want to do the wet thing but it just won't. The jumpers are set for mn3007.