Are Vintage Pedals Better?

on today's episode we're going to try to answer a question that has haunted all of human civilization since 321 bc that question that has haunted us is this question do vintage petals sound better than modern reissues [Music] today's episode is incredibly simple i'm gonna take four classic coveted full of mojo pedals that are really expensive really hard to find and i'm gonna shoot them out against the modern reissue by the same company and we're gonna figure out do vintage older pedals sound better could new pedals possibly sound as good as the old ones well no when this is over what the answer is i'm gonna use the switchback when you see the red light it's the og vintage pedal when you see the green light it'll be the new reissue i have this on the floor i'm just switching it kind of as an ab looper not kind of that's what i'm doing let's get started the first pedal here is one full of controversy it's full of argument it is the white face rat it gets its name because the logo is black inside of a white box there so we call it white face this is 84 85 and this is supposedly the greatest sounding rat on the face of the earth and the one that everyone likes i think because it looks the coolest we won't go there and we're going to shoot it out against the newer pro co reissues that everyone hates on these get so much hate it's not even fair like i feel like i need to step in and you know fist fight some bullies sometimes but to get a lot of hate now they're produced a little bit differently but the circuit's supposedly the same uh so we're just gonna do this we're gonna see what happens here goes [Music] [Music] [Music] now that we've jammed i've listened to this in detail as i have many times before now you've heard it here are my thoughts these sound identical in the musical scenario when i'm switching i don't feel any difference i don't hear any difference it is the same exact circuit and the same exact sound now one of the things that is frustrating to me about the concept of shooting out petals when i see other people do it is that the video title will be vintage rap versus new rat and they'll put them up like this and put all the knobs at noon and go back and forth and they don't sound the same well no no pedal sounds the same like that you can take two pedals off of the production floor downstairs right now where we're building morning glories and super bolts or whatever and there's parts tolerance meaning that there is a range to these pots they're not perfectly designed it's impossible to make a thousand pots that have the exact same resistance when you move it so you have to massage the knobs a little bit and like pull things in and get things closer to each other and the circuit's identical so you cannot shoot out a pedal like that that's just point a so they sound exactly the same if you take the time to find the tolerance and the range now the other thing is i know a lot of you are saying what about the chip the old chip the lm308 it's so much better than this new crap chip the chip isn't that important i feel the knives in my back i feel you on forums right now slandering me calling me names but you heard what you just heard moving on next up is a huge huge classic that a lot of people are emotionally attached to and for good reason it is the small stone there's a lot of vintage versions here i'm gonna use the 75 kind of the og version which is more rare more expensive not necessarily better but just kind of cream of the crop if you're going to collect a small stone and i'm going to put it up against the small stone 4800 phase shifter this is like the nano small stone and i see this a lot how could this possibly sound as good as this the box is bigger meaning the circuit's bigger i hear that kind of stuff so we're gonna shoot this out we're gonna play some kind of weird i don't know steely dan me something i don't know what's it gonna sound like nick like pink floyd yeah yeah yeah let's let's do that can we merge pink floyd steel it in let's try [Music] [Music] foreign okay you heard it i've heard it uh they sound really crazy close um this is really cheap this is really expensive and the price is really kind of shining a light on how ridiculous that is like you could just buy this one if you're wanting the sound of a small stone this is fantastic electro harmonix has done a really good job and they take these reissues seriously i've done things like the big muff shootout to show you that um but i know as in that video in the comments a lot of people said this bigger box style electro harmonix sounds better than this one because it looks better and i can't fix that but they sound the same so we're just gonna we're gonna probably move on from that and just say it is the exact same circuit just use a surface mount and smaller parts this is old parts and i will say this one other thing this actually has a volume loss this is not even at unity volume when you turn it on so this is actually better but if you want an older pedal that's probably going to break easier and has a problem sucking the volume of your guitar away and costs way more money this is definitely i would go with this one because this is trash this next pedal has caused wars and it will cause new ones as soon as i do this but i'm embracing the fact that i can't control you but i can control my choices and my choice is to shoot out a vintage holy grail 1983 ts9 against a cheaper modern reissue that i commonly hear referred to on forums as bottom of the barrel we're going to shoot these out we're going to see what happens just get your weapons ready and uh sharpen your knives whatever you do when you go to war let's let's see what happens [Music] yeah i'm not going to talk about how they sound exactly the same i'm going to move on to other things like some of you are asking right now in your mind you've typed in the comments and i understand this i want to do episodes on this you're saying but the chip but the chip the chip in the old one is special the chip in the old one is pure magic the chip in the old one is the thing of dreams and legend and the chip in the new one is complete trash it's not even worth looking at owning you should pull it out of this pedal and throw it away truth is guys the chip doesn't have a lot to do with the sound when everything is said and done the components inside the tolerances of resistors capacitors potentiometers that is a major difference so this pedal i put the knobs in the exact same place literally and it held up perfectly it's fantastic and i think we need to face that if you're saying this sounds better because you had one now 40 years ago and your memory of it is that it sounded way better than the new reissue we have to admit as a society and as a people that we don't even know what we ate for lunch monday and we cannot remember the sound of a certain tube screamer 40 years ago at a bar in des moines it's just not possible we have to move on from that and i think not to go on a rant or a soapbox i don't want to do that today but i am going to say these engineers are geniuses they want to make this like the old one why would they want to make it worse and they have better parts better manufacturing smarter people than they've ever had before this is not apollo 11. this is an overdrive pedal let's move along i feel good i feel good i feel like there's healing happening let's move on next up from 1979 i have a boss c2 in the box it's a silver screw meaning it is the original version very rare very coveted it has a lot of dings on it the paint is scratched it's beautiful it sounds beautiful i'm going to shoot it out against the new waza craft ce2w this is from 2018. it is where boss recognized these vintage units that they have they re-released them in a reissue form and put in some different modes i'm going to put this on the standard mode where they are replicating this and we're gonna see what happens and i'm really excited like seriously excited [Music] again that sounded really great i cannot tell a difference as the player behind the amp i can't hear it in the mix these are fantastic like go look at the wozza line the vibrato is going on one of my boards at some point this chorus is fantastic and it has modes that this doesn't have they have the ce1 mode in here they have another it's just really really great now again some of you are wondering what about the chip what about it i don't know they still make the chip for chorus so we could get hung up on it wasn't made in a certain factory with certain dyes by certain people when the weather was a certain way i don't know we can go there people do that it's fine it's a hobby i like hobbies we can all have hobbies it's a free country but and the internet's a free country sort of but we we we're going to move on from that and just say these are really really good now one other thing i hear and i want to approach this here and defensive boss because i love boss but the wazacrafts have a different buffer in them they change them okay yes because you complained about this for 30 years so they changed it and now you don't like it so we we can't have everything we can have good things and this is a really really good thing [Music] all right let's let's wrap up here i want to say first of all you saw the truth i want you to take a breath with me let's take a deep breath [Music] exhale and just let the truth hit you like a truck just let it wash over you let it crush things that you believe it's fine because now we're better people we now know that pedals are not hard to reissue they're basic electronics we also need to know and understand and i think we do know now designers are really smart and they've only gotten smarter and most these classic pedals are from the 70s so we've had decades and decades to improve methods and get even smarter so of course we can replicate it it's like no one says they can't replicate someone else's cheeseburger from 30 years ago so we have learned that we've moved on and everything's just easier period and i want to say this one other thing i really really care about you guys and i know i'm probably a little saucy today but this stuff bugs me because i think a lot of you waste your time you spend money you go around in circles don't do it these reissues are great most all reissues on the market are fantastic buy them plug your guitar and go out to an amp make some music make some art and have fun that's what i've been trying to say but i gotta i got a little a little crunk a little over the top and i need you to say you forgive me because i'm saying i'm sorry i did this for you because i care about you and we're gonna listen we're gonna go over to record time and listen to music maybe i don't know on may 13th of 1985 i was 2.8 years old and dire straits released brothers in arms it's a record that i think gets overlooked from the guitar perspective now mark noffler is awesome and everyone knows sultan's of swing and everyone knows track 2 on this money for nothing you know we got to move those refrigerators that whole song well this is full of other amazing songs and one of my favorite songs from the 80s period and one of my favorite guitar songs is brothers in arms the last track and the title track so check this out and you may be a big fan of this because it was popular but it hasn't held on in popularity so yeah and this is a reissue of the vinyl and if you have an original it probably sounds way better because they don't know how to do vinyl anymore and they keep reissuing this but that's another subject because reissues aren't usually as good i don't guess it's what i've heard anyway check it out let me know in the comments if you like it thanks so much for watching this episode i hope we're still friends like i know you're cool and i hope you think i'm still cool i know you know it got a little rough like i've i've really released a lot of my inner demons through this episode i hope it made your day better maybe i don't know if you like the episode like it subscribe or don't i don't know hit the bell icon or don't i just want to be a little more passive because i was so aggressive in this episode um there's this place you can buy shirts and stuff jjshow.com there's a patreon link below i don't i just want you to know that i appreciate you and i went a little overboard again i'm just saying i'm sorry i'll see you next week maybe i mean we don't have to you don't have to show you can do another it's fine let's just turn the camera off

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 212,594

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, The JHS Show, Guitar Pedals, Guitar Effects, Guitar Gear, Guitar Pedal Demo, Music History, overdrive pedal, chorus pedal, distortion pedal, boss pedals, compressor pedal, univibe, delay pedal, octave fuzz, reverb pedal, reverb, eq pedal, boost pedal, behringer, Ibanez Pedals, RAT Pedal, ProCo RAT, Small Stone, Vintage Gear, Vintage guitars, Old Guitar Pedals, New Guitar Pedals, Guitar Pedal Reissue

Id: EJYxsG0N0nk

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020