The Watering Hole

Last night the Joyo Hot British pedal arrived. $32 shipped from Amazon.  This is a ridiculous deal. Essentially it's a clone of the Tech 21 Character series Oxford pedal.  Couple of circuit differences.  It's a ridiculous pedal, and covers just about anything I can think of besides clean boost.  The "Voice" knob is ridiculous. At one end it's huge bottom, sparkling top, fat, loose crunch, like a JTM45 that's falling apart.  Turn up the gain on this setting and it's like a blues club in a shitty neighborhood.  Awesome.  The Voice knob is the heart of the pedal... in the middle this pedal sounds like a Plexi, still thick, middy, warmer, crunchier. At the top of the range it's in JCM800 territory, although a little over the top and treble-heavy.  Between about 9:00 and 3:00 this pedal is insanely useful.  And the EQ!  Holy crap.  I'm not sure how big the range is but it's got to have at least 10 db of cut and boost each band B/M/T.  

The only con on this pedal, it's a little on the noisy (hissy) side at gain.  I made comparable sounds on my homebuilt Wampler Ecstasy (Euphoria) clone, and the Wampler design was quieter by a couple dB as far as hiss goes (this is also noted as an issue with the Tech21 version).  That's really all I can think of.  It's pretty enough, useful, covers a huge range of sounds- this could easily be my only gain pedal for a simple gig rig.  I put this up against a couple of higher end pedals and was easily able to get sounds very comparable--it's got a huge range of sounds, a wide gain range, and a ridiculous EQ section.  It's like a SansAmp that doesn't let you choose any weird settings, they're all really good.  

Great pedal. $32.  So simple.

Sorry, that's the Joyo "British Sound" pedal.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised that it's decent.  I have the Joyo Tremolo and Vintage Phase and both are quite usable.   It's funny, I got them both for about $30.  I ordered the Trem and they sent the Phase.  I emailed them and they sent the Trem at no charge and said keep the Phase.   :D  I keep the trem in the chain.  They have some pretty good demos out there on the YT.

Most of their pedals are fairly direct clones of other things, for example, you can guess what a green overdrive pedal is based on. But they've done some more high end boutique clones, too, a suhr riot clone, the mad professor sweet honey od, the OCD. Their quality is far higher than Behringer and I've been impressed with their case design and build quality in general. I'm still a fan of more handmade stuff, and I'll throw my money at a boutique builder if it's unique and cool, or build it myself. But no reason all these designs that aren't really anything new should be left to only special mojo expensive companies to build.