Re: Original Pedal vs Clone, What Would You Do?
It's not nearly as deep as you're making it... you just play the gear you like. All that digital stuff sounds like garbage TO ME. I'm a musician and I'm dedicated to my art and I don't give a **** what it costs to sound the way I want to sound. Combined with good luck and working in an industry that deals exclusively with the tools that I use to craft my art, I've been fortunate enough to be able to purchase some amazing equipment for pretty ridiculous deals. I work hard, save money, and buy the **** that works FOR ME, and my handwired tube heads from the late 60's and early 70's sound, feel, and are better FOR ME than is some digital thing that has a billion features I won't use and will be worth dirt in less than a decade because digital technology is constantly being upgraded and improved upon and advertized as now, FINALLY (again), sounding as good as the gear I've been using since before I could drive.
Maybe you grew up using and playing digital stuff and that's why you like it. Maybe your ears are used to digital and solidstate and so that's what you like or prefer. That's totally cool too. As long as you're making music and writing songs, whatever. It's actually to your benefit because most major music retailers will no longer buy that stuff to resale so you can find it for almost nothing on the used market. Cool for you, lame for whoever spent a month's salary on it five years ago.
(I watched the Sunn model T that's my main amp climb from $600 to $2000 in the last ten years. Good luck selling your AxeFX for that in 10 years when computers are built into your clothes.)
I've started using lots of food analogies when it comes to music equipment. Can you imagine a forum like this where people talk about pizza toppings... or what should go on the best sandwich... People would be screaming and ranting and thinking of complex moral justifications for ham vs. turkey, pepperoni vs. sausage, and all kinds of pointless crap. Then you start getting into ordering from Pizza Hut versus some gourmet celebrity chef foodie snob pizza joint or the local mom-n-pop joint or heating up a frozen pie "that tastes almost as good as the real thing" or slapping your own dough yourself........
To each their own, y'know... You like (and play) what you like because you like it. I'll judge your tone after I've decided I like your song so much that I can't stop listening to it.
But to the point of this thread: Building a computer that pretends to sound like a handwired tube amp is not the same thing as building an exact point-for-point copy of a tube amp made by somebody else and claiming yours is better because it costs less.
If a dude was like, "This is my TWEAKED, IMPROVED version of a ZVex Box of Rock with lots of different features I think you'll like," that's not plagiarism, that's innovation. The Line 6 M-series multiFX are digital simulations of pedal boards... GREAT IDEA... I love it... I won't use it, but I can definitely see why people would. It's innovative. It's new technology designed to replace the old. Love it.
If a dude was like, "This is an exact copy of a ZVex Box of Rock I built in my garage and I'll sell it to you for $20 less than Zvex," I'd say, "**** you dude, Zack did the world a favor by making that pedal and you're a dick for trying to take money out of his pocket. Either invent something new and amazing or get a real job, *******."
Clones of handwired 60's Fender amps are okay because Fender doesn't make those anymore and Leo hasn't made a dime from that company in a long time. Taking money out of a working artist's pocket is rude at best, evil at worst. "Hey dude I LOVED that pedal you thought up! Yeah I paid some Chinese kid $14.97 to build me a copy of it! Go **** yourself!" You know what I mean...
Kinda like how seeing a cover band is so completely lame compared to seeing the real thing. Y'know unless it's MY cover band, we're way better than the Sex Pistols ever were.
