... 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=1Thanks for your time. :)
