SOLVED: Can vintage modulation pedals in front of PodGO distort?

[soerenP]

Hi there, 

this is just to confirm whether or not the guy I'm dealing with is talking bullsh*t. 

 

The situation: 

I've bought two DIY pedals from a guy in a DIY forum, a reportedly very experienced one: A Small Stone and an Electric Mistress. 
I tried them out and they both have some kind of distortion going on when hitting my Les Pauls hard. I guess the the Electric Mistress might be because of the small headroom of its bucket chain. The small stone only at one end of the LFO phase.

 

The problem is that the guy thinks he is smart, he built the pedals perfectly and I am the one with the bad setup, bad cables, low Headroom Amp, and lastly: The PodGO. A noGO for an Analog Fanatic... 

 

So in his last message, he said something about it being a toy, either not having enough headroom and/or not being compatible impedance-wise with 70s style electronics.

 

My question: 

This is complete bulllollipop, isn't it?

 

Firstly, you will not be able to clip PodGO's input without heavily boosting it, secondly, why would an impedance mismatch cause distortion (as in clipping when being hit hard) and thirdly, why would my guitar not clip in true bypass mode, when it clips when these modulation effects are turned on?

 

If you have any experience with the mentioned pedals, I'd appreciate any ideas or shared experiences concerning their respective headrooms :) 

Thanks!

[silverhead]

It’s possible that the POD Go might be at least partly responsible. There was a hardware issue with early POD Go units that affected input impedance. It has since been resolved but you may have one of the affected units. Contact Line 6 support; they can confirm the status of your unit based on serial number. If affected they will advise you how to have it repaired under lifetime warranty for this issue.

 

I don’t know whether this could affect the distortion issue you’re having but it’s worth checking out.

[soerenP]

Hey @silverhead,

thanks and yes, I'm pretty sure that I have this bug. Usually I'm using a buffer in front because of that (no difference). However, I've been trying to replicate the distortion going into the instrument input of my Audio-Interface. Very same issue. I even hear the distortion when the Signal-LED merely flickers lightly, let alone any signs of a red clipping diode flashing. So I'm pretty sure its got nothign to do with my PodGo. 

 

I really have to hit hard into my LesPauls 498T to make it clip, even a P90 won't make it clip... Maybe the builder just didn't hit hard enough (I know he plays humbucker guitars only), but I guess he will not admit it's his devices that clip. I don't even say he did something wrong or they are broken. They are built after vintage specs, I guess.

 

 

[silverhead]

I’m not sure I would call a DIY pedal ‘vintage’. Do the actual vintage pedal manufacturers publish their complete specs so that a DIY-er can simply build it rather than buy it? Or is there some guesswork going on?

[soerenP]

Well, I don't know if 'vintage' is the correct term, either, but I think the original parts and schematics are known well enough to replicate it in a way it's pretty close. The DIY world is pretty powerful when it comes to that. Of course these builds are more of a "re-issue" than vintage original. Some of the voodoo is lost. 

What he meant about these pedals being vintage is that the schematics/circuit design is 70s and therefore not working well with modern equipment.

 

However, end of the story: 
I put the things on my board in the rehearsal room in front of my cleanish blues deluxe and the overall noise/distortion and the additional headroom of running the Electric Mistress at 12V make the noticed effects negligible, so I kept them. 

 

So, in the end, both of us were right: 

He was right that in front of a real amp, it will be ok, although he didn't say it that way, and I was right that the pedals clip when hit hard in either setting, just that in an analog band setting you don't hear the clipping well enough to perceive it as unpleasant or broken. 

 

EDIT: 

To give you an idea of the costs of DIY builds: I payed him 70Euros in total. His builds were a bit more expensive because the Small Stone used some extraordinarily expensive parts, but the mere parts of a normal build will be 20-40Euro. (Of course you can't count the build time) So if you like soldering and building stuff, it does make sense.

 

[somebodyelse]

On 8/22/2024 at 4:14 PM, silverhead said:

I’m not sure I would call a DIY pedal ‘vintage’. Do the actual vintage pedal manufacturers publish their complete specs so that a DIY-er can simply build it rather than buy it? Or is there some guesswork going on?

There's not much, if any, mystery in the pedal world. Where a schematic hasn't officially been published, someone has opened a pedal up, cloned it, and published the schematic, anyway. For the most part, 'the specs' are 'printed' on the components - it wouldn't take long for an electronics geek to clone a Helix. Where 'he'd' stumble is writing the software to bring it to life.