To the people on the forum that BUILD PEDALS

[Ryan.]

Question for you:

 

What stops a person from dissecting a very sought after pedal and rebuilding them to an exact likeness?

 

Are there things inside a pedal that you can't know without being the first builder?

 

Just curious.

 

And you know what happened to the cat!

[SonicVI]

it happens all the time. the only thing that stops it is personal ethics.

[Ryan.]

 

it happens all the time. the only thing that stops it is personal ethics.

 

 

So there is no pedal out there that one of you builders couldn't make on your own for way cheaper?

 

And I don't mean to sell it, just to have your own.

[ZoomRmc]

Nothing.

 

 

Selling clones sucks though.

[Guest Guest]

 

So there is no pedal out there that one of you builders couldn't make on your own for way cheaper?

 

 

I mean, you never said anything about cost.

 

Some, yes. Some, no.

[Ryan.]

Alright, thats cool.

 

I wasn't really concerned about the ethics issue. Obviously copying designs is lame.

 

I was just curious if there was anything in the guts of a pedal that could stop it from being cloned.

[SonicVI]

so far nothing has stopped cloners, but 'goop' on the circuit board can be a deterrant, but usually just makes it take a little longer. Sometimes you can make them way cheaper (Klon eg) but sometimes not.

[Guest Guest]

Well, yeah. Finding decent NOS transistors can require a bunch of sifting/testing.

[Agreed]

I don't understand the question, really. Are you asking if they could make things and sell them cheaper and just choose not to? (yes, that is true, but that is because they want to make money and they have chosen to do so by selling pedals)

 

Edit: teach ME to write a reply without refreshing a tab first. The fact is nothing stops cloning. Goop doesn't, it just makes it a little bit more of a bitch but it is still 100% doable. If a human encrypts something, a human can decrypt it. The most successful way to keep a build at least somewhat mysterious is to sand the values off of everything that can be so treated. It's a little harder to figure out what kind of op-amp it is when you don't know, compared to resistors, caps, etc. that can just be measured. So a lot of builders who want to hide their stuff do sand off all that they can. People still manage to figure it out by either deducing or inferring the best match.

 

The other option is to either use proprietary parts you make yourself, or, alternatively, buy up every single part of whatever type and then you're the only person that can make them exactly the way that you make them. Neither option is feasible for most builders, but they have happened in the past.

[IvIark]

 

Question for you: What stops a person from dissecting a very sought after pedal and rebuilding them to an exact likeness? Are there things inside a pedal that you can't know without being the first builder? Just curious.

 

 

You've just outlined the R&D procedure of a good number of boutique builders.

[BTBAM]

circuit board design is hard?

[devi]

This is why I sell DIY kits.

 

http://deviever.etsy.com/

[Guest Guest]

hahah SPAM'd.

[Ryan.]

This is why I sell DIY kits. http://deviever.etsy.com/

 

For your own pedals? Or other ones?

 

Also my calf muscle just cramped up into a little tiny painful ball of meat. That hurt.

[NITEFLY182]

If you REALLY want to deter people from being able to build a clone if your pedal without understanding enough to simply design their own, you could deter people. Nothing is impossible though.

 

Goop is a good deterrent to some extent. It keeps 90% of people from trying. The other 10% are just willing to put in the hour or two to get the goop off. Theyre willing to destroy the original sometimes to be able to make a copy. Sometimes they see it as a challenge. Other times they do it just to spite the builder. If you see someone post cloning info and they are really aggressive about it or talk a lot of {censored} about the pedal/builder, thats usually the case.

 

But goop isn't going to actually stop people. A lot of tracing is done via pictures over the web. Few people actually measure all the components. You could go to great lengths to make things tougher. You can sand components. You can remove labeling from electrolytic caps with a quick swipe of a razor blade. You could relabel components incorrectly to fool people. You could add false components to confuse them. You could run thin wires through the goop that might get destroyed during degooping and would make the resulting clone layout not actually function. So many ways. I have yet to actually see those in practice though.

[renula]

spam it is.

[soulsonic]

The one thing that can almost guarantee your design won't get copied and cloned is if it's a DSP based thing. 95% of would-be copycats have no way to copy or even read the code written in the chip, and the program itself is protected by copyright law.

[Ryan.]

If you REALLY want to deter people from being able to build a clone if your pedal without understanding enough to simply design their own, you could deter people. Nothing is impossible though. Goop is a good deterrent to some extent. It keeps 90% of people from trying. The other 10% are just willing to put in the hour or two to get the goop off. Theyre willing to destroy the original sometimes to be able to make a copy. Sometimes they see it as a challenge. Other times they do it just to spite the builder. If you see someone post cloning info and they are really aggressive about it or talk a lot of {censored} about the pedal/builder, thats usually the case. But goop isn't going to actually stop people. A lot of tracing is done via pictures over the web. Few people actually measure all the components. You could go to great lengths to make things tougher. You can sand components. You can remove labeling from electrolytic caps with a quick swipe of a razor blade. You could relabel components incorrectly to fool people. You could add false components to confuse them. You could run thin wires through the goop that might get destroyed during degooping and would make the resulting clone layout not actually function. So many ways. I have yet to actually see those in practice though.

 

WINNER.

 

[Jack Deville]

Alright, thats cool. I wasn't really concerned about the ethics issue. Obviously copying designs is lame. I was just curious if there was anything in the guts of a pedal that could stop it from being cloned.

 

The short answer is yes.

There are a number of techniques that not only discourage would be RE's, but also make it downright impossible to duplicate.

Functional equivalent may be possible, but really, if you can create a functional equivalent, why would you be cloning?

[Agreed]

edit: end of page + vb software = no one will see this

[devi]

 

For your own pedals? Or other ones?

 

 

Mine silly.

 

... but good point. Yeah, http://www.buildyourownclone.com/ makes a living selling kits of other people's designs, though ones that are generally cloned by the masses to begin with.

 

Truth be told though, if one wanted to setup a business selling kits of big-named designs that aren't normally cloned, they could without legal repercussion.

 

Great article that goes into detail about legalities and such : http://www.muzique.com/clones.htm

[FXR]

Copyrights and trademarks and Patents stop people from doing it commercially.

 

For personal use, where there's a will, there's a way.

 

But once you get into DSPs and ROMs and the like, it kinda gets time consuming and thus not worth the effort. But it can be done.

[Ryan.]

Why are so many of you from Oregon? Does the rain keep you in your houses all day?

[NITEFLY182]

The one thing that can almost guarantee your design won't get copied and cloned is if it's a DSP based thing. 95% of would-be copycats have no way to copy or even read the code written in the chip, and the program itself is protected by copyright law.

 

Then you run the risk of your product not being desirable in the first place because its digital and guitarists are notoriously conservative

 

fools.

[tape]

Nothing. Personally I dont care when people do it for themselves. When they start selling them at profit, it turns into tricky on-the-fence stuff. I encourage builders who make that their bread and butter, and at the same time I believe information should be free. Considering how people have different ethics, it becomes conflicting stuff.

 

There are clear bad vs good cases though. Like Danelectro cloning the Timmy. Huge biz that can more than afford to invent an original design vs single builder's bread and butter.