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TweedBassman wrote:for those who might care or didn't hear, here's the story with my opinions and blabbering.

for years and years, boutique pedal makers have been taking standard major company designs (big muff, tube screamer, etc etc) and making changes here and there and calling it there own. sell, make money. there's a market for it, and it's completely legal (you cannot patent or copywright a circuit, only an exact printed circuit board, which would be the equivalent of the cover on a book, just copy the insides...).

some folks are honest about it, some builders try to hide their lack of creativity or circuit origins by covering up the circuit boards etc.

but occasionally, there comes along a circuit which is actually, relatively, original. it's just an op-amp or transistors and some parts like everything else, the same as a poem is just words, a song is just notes, a painting is just paint... but it's different. it usually comes from a single guy or gal working hard in their garage.

that would be the case with Paul C's 'Timmy' pedal, and also (although i know less about this one) Frantone's Peachfuzz.

Danelectro decided that, instead of designing something themselves, or re-working their existing stuff, they'd copy these pedals part-for-part, exactly. not the big guy getting back at the cloner, the big guy is now targeting the creative efforts of very small companies... who they KNOW have no resources or legal standing to fight back. made in china, sold for $39, completely dissing Paul and Fran in the process.

my stance is this: LEGALLY there's nothing they can do. and, MAYBE it will actually help those builders, although i doubt it. i personally feel that circuits, like poems or songs, should be able to be copywritten, and that's a whole other debate but it will never happen. but MORALLY for a huge company like Danelectro to actually go and find these pedals (or, more likely, the schematics online), and copy them fully knowing that each one literally puts food on the table for their respective designers, is shameful and weak. they literally took those pedal designs, knew exactly who and where they came from, and said 'fuck those guys, there's nothing they can do.'

it's not like one guy copying another, or a single person deciding to clone a toobscreamer... there was probably a big board meeting, mutiple memos and emails, trips to china just to get it right... all to fuck one guy trying to make ends meet. lame.

bigchiefbc wrote:Maybe its the legal training speaking here, but like you said, "boutique" builders have been doing this shit for years. They take a mainstream product, swap one freaking cap, and call it an original design.

jrmy wrote:

bigchiefbc wrote:Maybe its the legal training speaking here, but like you said, "boutique" builders have been doing this shit for years. They take a mainstream product, swap one freaking cap, and call it an original design.

I think the issue here is that it's getting pretty well established that the Timmy and Peachfuzz are actually original designs, not clones. If Dano were cloning clones and just making their money on the fact that they're manufacturing cheaply, that would be one thing. But what's going on here is probably quite different.

bigchiefbc wrote:

jrmy wrote:

bigchiefbc wrote:Maybe its the legal training speaking here, but like you said, "boutique" builders have been doing this shit for years. They take a mainstream product, swap one freaking cap, and call it an original design.

I think the issue here is that it's getting pretty well established that the Timmy and Peachfuzz are actually original designs, not clones. If Dano were cloning clones and just making their money on the fact that they're manufacturing cheaply, that would be one thing. But what's going on here is probably quite different.

But that's missing my main point. Dano is doing back to frantone and paul what the boutiques have been doing to the big companies for years. Taking an original design, and then just cloning it and selling it as their own. I wasn't contending that the peachfuzz and the timmy were clones. I know that they're not. I'm saying that no one ever complains when boutique builders clone a mainstream original product and sell it as their own, so why is everyone complaining in the vice versa situation?

morningstaru wrote:My issue is the fact that they didn't really change any values...they straight up cloned the timmy.

Everyone benefits when a pedal is cloned but values are changed. Boss had the same shitty designs for years but have recently begun adopting some analogman mods into their production units, something which benefits everyone.

Boutique builders have been cloning muffs for a long time, and EHX has started to introduce similar mods as new muffs. Once again, everyone benefits.

Hell the infamous TS is nothing but a modified boss od-1...obviously that was a good call (if you're into that sorta thing )

Dano is downright pirating the timmy. They've done nothing to improve upon Paul's design, and perhaps even made it worse (I don't own a dano, I don't plan on it...so I can't compare them).

If a boutique pedal maker made an exact clone of something I'd feel the same way...that is unless the original pedal is no longer made...in which case, clone away

PumpkinPieces wrote:I think it's a shame. It seems the peach fuzz and timmy or pretty original designs. EHX is a pretty good example of a big company that comes up with original ideas, granted a lot of their original ideas were a long time ago, they're still good enough for today. But even if EHX did it and they made better units, fuck them.

I don't support or have any "clone" pedals. I don't care if it's the little guy or the big guy, honesty is important, originality is gold. Makes me want to start a company called "Clone"

i could make the Clone Face, The Clone Stone, The Clone Clone...... the clone baby. The i could have a pedal and call it "Nickelback".

morningstaru wrote:Clones never work. Just ask the galactic senate.

bigchiefbc wrote:
OK well I got sick of assuming and hearsay, so I just went and read the thread over at freestompboxes.org where they actually traced it out, and it is NOT a straight clone. They actually changed two filter caps from the timmy. So this is exactly the same argument as all of the muff mods, the dod 440 filter mods, etc etc etc. http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4065&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=timmy#p46645

bigchiefbc wrote:But that's missing my main point. Dano is doing back to frantone and paul what the boutiques have been doing to the big companies for years. Taking an original design, and then just cloning it and selling it as their own. I wasn't contending that the peachfuzz and the timmy were clones. I know that they're not. I'm saying that no one ever complains when boutique builders clone a mainstream original product and sell it as their own, so why is everyone complaining in the vice versa situation?

TweedBassman wrote:those filter caps don't have any huge affect on the tone, just power filtering i believe. the 100uf value was probably chosen over paul's 47uf for financial reasons. now, the op-amp is actually different, and THAT will make them sound different... so all this might be moot.

PumpkinPieces wrote:

TweedBassman wrote:those filter caps don't have any huge affect on the tone, just power filtering i believe. the 100uf value was probably chosen over paul's 47uf for financial reasons. now, the op-amp is actually different, and THAT will make them sound different... so all this might be moot.