Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: dave_mc on May 13, 2009, 10:08:09 PM
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... I thought I'd let you guys know, because I'm always very pleased when you let me know about good, cheap kit and I wanted to repay the favour. I should add that I'm not a major pedalhead, but they sound pretty good to me.
I was alerted to daphon pedals by a guy on the Tokai forum- apparently their overdrive is pretty similar to the tubescreamer. So I did the sensible thing and ordered the analogue delay and flanger instead (as they were cheaper). :lol: Anyway, they're not too bad at all, especially considering the price (i got the delay new for £17.50, and the flanger for £22.50, all in). There's a bit of noise with the delay with the time above half-way up, kind of a high-frequency noise, which means you're limited to, I think, around 150ms, but you can get a pretty nice slapback out of it, which is fair enough for £17.50. It also self-oscillates very easily, if you're into that kind of thing. As far as I'm aware, it's analogue, but if anyone wants me to check, I can do so (assuming I can work out how to determine it's analogue- i guess i'll try to get the model of the chip and then look it up online). The flanger's not too bad either, you can get a pretty subtle tone out of it, or the jet flanger van halen unchained type thing. A little noise at extreme settings, but only at extreme (everything dimed, more or less). Again, hard to go wrong for just over £20.
My advice/personal opinion about these would be that if you would like to have an effect which you don't use too much (or aren't sure if you'll use or not) and don't want to pay too much, these would certainly fit the bill, especially if you're after a slightly more vintage-sounding, more basic effect (as I said, I think they're analogue). They're not true bypass, but the buffer seems not too bad (and true bypass affects tone too, unless you're using 3-inch leads or something). The tone quality, to me, is similar, if not even a bit better (for more vintage sounds, anyway- a little more transparent and preserves your guitar tone a little better) than your bog standard boss/digitech style pedals- put it like this, my boss tremolo is off my board, as is my digitech digital chorus, because they don't sound natural enough, and the daphons are still there. Good heavy metal cases too.
Only thing is, the ones I've seen on ebay at the moment are around the £30 mark including postage... if you're patient and can hold out for the cheaper prices I got, they're worth considering, but at £30, personally I'd save slightly more and get a Biyang, which brings me to the next bit of this thread.
I did some research on the daphons online, and came across Biyang pedals- they seemed to be reasonably well-regarded at the gear page and HC, so I took a chance. I got the od8 overdrive, fz7 fuzz, and ph8 phaser (not all at once!). A lot of their pedals seem to be clones (or close copies at least) of various "classic" pedals, but with more features, true bypass, and a cheaper price (in the UK, anyway). They seem to be decent pieces of kit- most claim to be analogue (though I should add that I've read online that their delay may be a hybrid analogue/digital design, but i haven't personally verified this either way), quite nice looking chrome/metal casing (though not just as heavy as the daphons) over what looks to be black-painted metal, and would appear to be a step-up in quality and versatility from the Daphons. While the Daphons (which I've tried, anyway) are "good for the money", the Biyangs just appear to be "good". Better than the Toneriders which Twinfan brought to our attention? Hard to say, you'd need to try the exact same pedals from each of their lineups head to head, but they have more features, certainly, and the Toneriders are half as expensive again (though I still like my Tonerider chorus a lot, it's not going anywhere anytime soon!).
The only annoying things are that the battery access is via a thumbscrew underneath (not as bad as having to get the screwdriver out as you have to with most boutique effects, but more fiddly than boss-style pedals), and they have annoying feet underneath which make it awkward to attach them to a pedalboard- and there's not really much point in removing the feet, as the thumbscrew to the battery compartment sits proud of the base too. There was also no manual, which isn't a major problem (there's info on the Biyang website), but it'd be nice to have one. They're also slightly larger than standard Boss pedals, if space on your pedalboard is an issue.
Anyway, on to the pedals. As I said, I'm not a pedalhead, and don't have the pedals which these pedals are claiming to copy to hand to do a head-to-head test, but the overdrive (in TS mode and with the jrc4558D attached) does remind me very much of the tubescreamers I've tried, except it has the added benefit of 3 switchable modes (which make a useful difference to the tone), and 3 swappable op-amps (which also make a useful difference). The fuzz, in muff mode, also reminds me very much of the (modern) big muff I've tried, and the other two modes offer a useful difference in tone too. The different modes in both pedals (and the swappable chips, in the overdrive) are definitely usable, unlike in a lot of pieces of gear where you find your favourite and stick to it. Don't get me wrong, you'd likely have a favourite mode and/or chip, but the others are usable too when you want a different type of tone. I don't know too much about phasers, but the phaser seems pretty nice too, you can get some very subtle sounds, or some very crazy (especially when combined with distortion or fuzz), but this is the one place where a manual would be handy- my ears can tell that something different is clearly happening when I change the "Intensity" switches, but it'd be nice to know exactly what's happening technically.
I'm not trying to oversell these or anything- if you already have a good vintage pedal, or modern boutique pedal, you wouldn't want to swap it for one of these (unless you wanted a completely different style of pedal- say you already have a boutique overdrive which is completely different from a Tubescreamer, but would like a Tubescreamer too). But if, like me, you're not enough of a pedalhead to want to blow £200 on a pedal, but likewise don't want to be palmed off with the cr@p that a lot of the big makes try to tell you is your only choice at the ~£40 price bracket (or more accurately, the third option, which is what I used to do until recently, just not buy anything :lol: ), then these seem to be very nice pedals indeed. You can find them on ebay (new), sometimes with the daphons you have to search for the model name rather than the brand name, and there are soundclips of the biyangs on youtube (I haven't looked for daphon clips).
Sorry for the length, but if I made it any shorter I don't think I'd be describing the pedals properly. Any questions, comments etc., please feel free :)
Here are links (they didn't do my computer any harm, but I have pretty decent antivirus software, so click at your own risk, etc. etc. ):
http://www.daphon.com/
http://www.biyang.com.cn/Prclass.asp?Id=1
Thanks for your time. :)
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Seen the biyang ones before
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Sounds great Dave!
So you can only get them off of Ebay or did I get that wrong?
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^ ^ did you like them or not? or did you just mean you've heard of them? :)
^ i think the company i got them off also has its own website, but it had more of the pedals on its ebay store, and was slightly cheaper too... :)
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Bloody hell that's a post and a half!
I've been interested in the Biyangs for a while, in particular the Delay, the Fuzz and the EQ. Does the fuzz do light, subtle fuzz as well, or is it full on mayhem like Big Muffs? I'm looking to buy a fuzz pedal that adds a fuzzy flavour to the overdriven guitar, rather than a fuzz that acts as a distortion pedal.
I had a Daphon wah wah pedal and that was a POS. The whole thing was made from cheap plastic and it got really stiff after just a couple of week's use. I've not tried the others but I wasn't encouraged by the general quality. This was 4~5 years ago so things may be diffrent now.
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^ yeah, the daphon wahs looked a bit cheap, i chickened out with those. i think with the cheaper stuff like daphons, your best bet is to stick to the ones which are known to be good- and also try to get them as cheap as possible! (as i said, if you can only get them for £30, that's probably a bit much, when a biyang is only a bit more)
the fuzz seems pretty full-on. i've only really tried it so far with very low output strat single coils, and it seems pretty full on even with those. it reacts reasonably well with the guitar's volume control, but yeah. more or less full-on. the other thing is, the tone seems quite dependent on the volume and fuzz level on the pedal, too, so it can be quite muffled with those turned down low, to get a lower gain fuzz. I haven't messed with the fuzz too much yet (i've only had it, and the phaser, a few days, i've had more like a couple of weeks with the od and tried it much more), but i found myself setting the fuzz, and to a lesser extent the volume (as it seems to have a lot of volume boost available, so some of the volume setting was to get to the right volume) where i got the tone i wanted, more so than the amount of fuzz.
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It's too late to read your post, but I shall post to say it is a very long post anyways. You really can talk the talk when it comes to reviewing gear Dave.
And you said you were lazy, pff.
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bookmarked to read in the morning 8)
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The Daphons are rebranded and sold under many different names, but some of the DIY guys at Freestompboxes.org think they are ok and just ripe for modding. In fact Analogman has a delay pedal specially made in the Daphon factory in China because he was impressed by their standards.
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Nice book, I mean review. :)
True bypass has a lot of hype. You would not want a bunch of pedals with true bypass only in your rig; would sound like ass.
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It's great to put info up like this about cheap but good gear.
THat reminds me - I got a Danelectro Cool Cat CHorus last week - £25 brand new - what a GREAT pedal, not just for the price, but simply a great chorus. Metal case, chassis-mounted jacks and true bypass too ! Highly recommended !!
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Also check out the new Behringer stuff. Very good quality and close clones of what they are cloning.
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Also check out the new Behringer stuff. Very good quality and close clones of what they are cloning.
Anyone tried the deluxe memory man clone?
Regarding the Dano Cool Cat series, I heard the drive pedal uses a similar circuitry to Fulltone OCD!
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Nice book, I mean review. :)
True bypass has a lot of hype. You would not want a bunch of pedals with true bypass only in your rig; would sound like ass.
I agree but at least you know what you are getting with true bypass. Most modern pedals with well designed buffered bypasses are great but there are still the tone suckers out there that sound awful bypassed. I've sold at least 3 pedals because of the bypass tone (Boss SD-1, EHX micro Synth and EHX russian big muff). Electro Harmonix have moved to pretty much all true bypass now which is a great improvement, put a decent buffered pedal at the start of your chain, even a tuner and it will overcome any mechanical losses in the true bypass switching as long as you don't have 10+ pedals and your leads are good.
But I agree it is over rated and many that claim to be true bypass aren't anyway....
Back on the subject of cheap pedals, the artec ones look pretty good value also. I'm all BYOC at the moment though, just built the mouse and the quality is excellent, virtually no noise, even with the gain up there's hardly any hiss.
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Regarding the Dano Cool Cat series, I heard the drive pedal uses a similar circuitry to Fulltone OCD!
In theory it is similar. I also have the Dano Cool Cat Transparent OD, which is supposed to be the same as a Timmy pedal (for those of you who know their boutiques). However, I'd say it is in the ballpark but certainly not identical at all. I'd expect the same to be of their Drive pedal.
I have been impressed with the buffers and the low noise floor on these new Dano pedals too. Unfortunately, that is usually something that Behringer fall down on, bigtime.
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The Transparent is almost the same circuit. The difference is in - the Timmy has more bells and whistles (like 20db clean boost if the drive pot is at zero and switchable innards - and different pots, which means that the same settings settings will not be equivalent. Danelectro have about to pull the Transparent OD for a different circuit (which includes a 20db clean boost if the drive pot is at zero and switchable innards!) because of the similarity to the Timmy.
Listening to Gearmandude's shoot out the Timmy has more transparency and less compression, which is probably due to better internal components:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma6HjVb3doM&feature=related
As to the Drive - well, it is the Fulltone OCD circuit and sounds pretty similar if not exactly the same at the same setting: as the Gearmandude shoot out shows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XNXu3jvrSo&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXxIp9CYnp8&feature=related
The Transparent OverDrive is stonking pedal for the price - its replace the HBE Powerscreamer on my board.
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I had 1 of the metal cased Daphon Phasers a while, which cost me about £17.50 I think!
While the phase itself sounded ok, there was always alot of other noise happening that made the effect unusable for the most part because it masked the actual effect!
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ok, this is embarrassing... the fuzz pedal starting acting up today. :lol: couldn't have happened the day before I wrote the review or anything... :roll: the LED is flickering a bit even when the pedal is off, I've messaged the seller to see what he says. I'll let you know. :) It still seems to be working, but I don't want to use it in case I do more harm etc.
going through the posts (thanks to everyone who read my original post who I didn't single out, I don't want to do another mega-post!):
The Daphons are rebranded and sold under many different names, but some of the DIY guys at Freestompboxes.org think they are ok and just ripe for modding. In fact Analogman has a delay pedal specially made in the Daphon factory in China because he was impressed by their standards.
yeah, i meant to mention the analogman thing in the original post, thanks for mentioning it :)
It's too late to read your post, but I shall post to say it is a very long post anyways. You really can talk the talk when it comes to reviewing gear Dave.
And you said you were lazy, pff.
haha, maybe i'm just lazy with the stuff i don't like. :D
Nice book, I mean review. :)
True bypass has a lot of hype. You would not want a bunch of pedals with true bypass only in your rig; would sound like ass.
:lol: thanks!
i agree about the true bypass thing. I can tell the difference with one true bypass pedal in the chain (with 20ft of guitar lead versus 10ft), I imagine there'd be a pretty noticeable difference with even a couple.
^Brow: Yeah, I'd considered the daphon phaser, but went for the Biyang one instead. Sounds like I made the right choice. You get added noise if you're using a lot of distortion, but it doesn't mask the effect or anything, it's not noticeable when you're playing.
regarding the danelectros- I'd heard they're meant to be good. Haven't tried them, though. As people have been saying, from what I'm hearing, the transparent overdrive is pretty close to the timmy (they've released a new version 2 which is supposedly different because of this), the drive is supposedly similar to the OCD, and the fuzz is allegedly not a million miles off a frantone peach fuzz. Thomann has pretty good prices on them, too (around the £20-£25 mark), if any of you are interested. They don't have the transparent OD, though, which'd be the one I'd most likely get were I to get any of them, and here in the UK it's more like £40. There's some good info over at the gear page about the controversy, too.
I haven't tried the behringers either, don't they have plastic cases? I've heard that they're pretty noisy too, but I could be wrong.
Artec, I'd looked into those too, I emailed them and they said they had some digital stuff in the signal path. Obviously being digital doesn't make something bad, but I'd be wary of buying without trying, as a lot of digital stuff does sound very, well, digital... :)
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While on the subject of cheap pedals I just found these http://www.hotroxuk.com/aria-pedals-11399-0.html (http://www.hotroxuk.com/aria-pedals-11399-0.html). Looks bouteeeeky and solidly built! Can't find any info on them though...
edit: http://www.ariaguitars.com/int/03_products/pro_equ_ep.html (http://www.ariaguitars.com/int/03_products/pro_equ_ep.html) found this page but doesnt realy give much details :(
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yeah, i noticed those before too, found nothing in the links either, though, same as you. :lol:
wish there was more info, as they actually do look pretty cool (just looking at the boxes). Can't tell much from that, though. :(
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Sorry to bump an old thread, but considering I had pointed out that my Biyang fuzz was faulty, I thought it was only fair and proper to point out that Advantage Music replaced it very quickly with no fuss, and the replacement seems to be working fine (touch wood! :lol: ). So, they stand over their products, which is always nice.
:)
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^Brow: Yeah, I'd considered the daphon phaser, but went for the Biyang one instead. Sounds like I made the right choice. You get added noise if you're using a lot of distortion, but it doesn't mask the effect or anything, it's not noticeable when you're playing.
The Daphon 1 was awful for noise. On a clean tone and while not playing/guitar volume turned down, the white noise in the background along with the swirling etc of the phase was very noticeable. With OD or distortion it was pretty unuseable :?
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yeah, that doesn't sound too great. There is a bit of noise with the biyang one on the most extreme setting (of the two 2-way switches), but you can't notice it when playing. :)
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Nice post. I will consider them, for the main reason you said, to try something out, without spending a huge amount. I'm tempted to get the delay, but can't seem to find a seller, although i will definately look out for them, because at those prices, you can't really go wrong, and they seem like they're worth a try! :)
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Since the last postings on this thread, I've bought a Cool Cat Drive and had a good play on their fuzz as well.
When I bought the Drive, I also tried the Transparent OD. To me, despite the name, the Drive behaved more transparently and more cleanly than the TOD. I couldn't get it to sound right through the HT5 they had in the shop (Im familiar with the amp). With the drive and tone down, it (edit: I mean the Drive) provides a very nice fat sounding boost. Not nice enough to replace my TMB though nor did I expect it to.
Fuzz is ok. It can get very mean and fuzzy but not really what I was looking for. I guess I just don't get on with fuzzes. Seems to compress the sound in a way that I don't like. Same with Big Muffs I've had in the past. I think what I'm looking for is a germanium fuzz.
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^ interesting, thanks for posting that. I've still only heard soundclips (which I realise is a terrible way to judge anything), but i liked the sound of the transparent OD the most, I wasn't too fussed on the clips i've heard of the other dano cool cat pedals. Of course, I may have a completely different opinion if i tried them... :)
Nice post. I will consider them, for the main reason you said, to try something out, without spending a huge amount. I'm tempted to get the delay, but can't seem to find a seller, although i will definately look out for them, because at those prices, you can't really go wrong, and they seem like they're worth a try! :)
you mean the daphon delay? if so, i haven't seen one at the price i got mine for either, i guess i just got lucky. :D just a matter of keeping an eye on ebay, i guess, and hopefully one will come along eventually. also, it pays to search by the model number as they aren't always listed under the daphon name.
actually, i think i know where there's a seller on ebay, but they only had them at about £35, and I'm not certain they're worth that (though obviously the fact i got mine for £17.50 is colouring my judgement on that a bit :lol: ). :)