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I've recently come across a range of pedals by a Chinese maker called JOYO.

They seem to be re-badged as Valco and Harley Benton too.

I see there's a big controversy cos a Freekish Blues 'boutique' pedal - the Alpha Drive - appears to simply be a repainted Joyo Ultimate Drive?! And this Joyo pedal is clone of a Fulltone OCD or something?

Joyo do a 'Ulimate Octave' octave fuzz . Might be a clone the Fulltone UFO (Ulimate Ocatve) or the Foxx Tonemachine (Dano French Toast) circuits?

Joyo also APPEAR to do clones and ripp off of:

Tech 21 'character' series. e.g. 'AC Tone' = 'Liverpool'.

Diaz Tremodillo tremolo (note the animal graphic - a dog to look like the Diaz armadillo!). Light bulb circuitry? Interesting.

Mi Audio Crunch Box

MXR Phase 90

MXR 6-band EQ

Any others?

They have a real analogue flanger!


Can anyone confirm any of the above or expand further?


I see MBM Mike did a demo of the Harley Benton branded Joyo 'American Tone' pedal.


They look great value for money.

(Not - I am not affiliated with Joyo in any way or a retailer of their products)

Links to the Joyo range:

http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/joyo

http://www.joyochina.cn/newEbiz1/EbizPo ... 4453595046

I grabbed an Ultimate Drive a little while back. Sounds cool if you like 'amp in a box' pedals. I did the Freekish Blues Alpha Drive mod and added a switch and sold it on ebay. Board construction was ace. The external build quality wasn't 100% (just nuts put on wrong, lock washer in the wrong place) but otherwise these are ace for the money.

Thanks for that, Tim.

Can you tell me, please:

1. how does the Ultimate Drive circuit compare to any of the Fulltone OCDs? Is it identical or almost the same? Some of the places I've these seen advertised even say 'OCD'.

2. do you know anything about the Joyo octave fuzz circuit? a). Is the Freakish Blues ocatve pedal the same as it? b). is the Jayo octave fuzz that same circuit of any classic pedals?

thanks.

R.

1) I think the general consensus is that it's 'almost the same'. I try not to obsess about these sorts of things, and the Fulltone OCD isn't massively expensive or complicated so I'm sure you could buy an original or more accurate clone. Having said that, the Joyo sounds good and cost £25.

2) Not researched this I'm afraid. I was only interested in the Ultimate Drive because of the Freekish thing. Freekish used the Joyo Octave pedals for another of their ripoffs (Dave Knowles or something?), but I can't recall which one. There's a 99% chance it'll be based on a classic circuit, but I don't know what.

3) I used the word 'ace' twice in my first post. How bad is that?

4) Those cunts at Freekish Blues threatened me with legal action (again) and made me remove the juicier bits from my website (http://www.fredric.co.uk) but my hosts were actually very helpful in skirting the issue and helped with a bit a trademark law clarification. TDPRI just pulled all their Freekish content, told the whole school, and now everyone there knows the whole story too.

i'd probably grab a few joyo pedals if the shipping to canada weren't like $20-30. seems like thats the norm for most ebay listings/other sites.

The Joyo pedals are pretty good deals (as long as shipping doesn't kill the deal) as they are usually close clones of more expensive pedals and generally sound pretty good. The few Freakish Blues pedals that I've had come across my bench were indeed Joyo circuit boards with the enclosures repainted. There seemed to be some sort of attempt by Freakish Blues to try and hide this fact by scratching stuff out and putting some kind of goop/crap on everything that would identify it. Not cool!