Pro Tone Pedals, possibly the worst pedals over 275 usd?

[Belanger]

Ok, so I have to admit I own a few of these things, the Keith Merrow, Loomis and regular dead horse. Purchased them all before I started to build so shut up lol. The more I learn about pedals, the more pissed off I get every time I open them up. So the merrow was built pretty well actually for a pro tone pedal and sounds wonderful. Thats the only one I would purchase again, the Jeff Loomis which goes for well over 300 with taxes and import duties and has a fake JRC4558 IC, Chong electrolytic capacitors 1uf and 220 nf monolithic ceramic caps instead of the regular box style they use to use and finally an enclosure that was most diffinetly purchased on eBay ( I have a few of them myself for personal builds) which I'm assuming is where all of there components are coming from these days as this jrc4558 is one of those really bad Chinese copies that you can't read because there's no actual printing, but it's like engraved into the IC again I have a few of them myself from my very first IC order I did, from ebay:icon_redface:

So I figured ok maybe its just the Loomis and this is what Jeff decided sounded good to him, fair enough I suppose even tho its still far overprices. I was wrong tho the new dead horse essential I bought was the same thing! Ive got lots of pics of the dead horse mk1 and mk2, and there all built the same way as the merrow minus a few added goodies like the normal dead horse has 1n4148 and a 51pf ceramic while the merrow has NOS 1n914's with the yellow stripe and a kemet tantalum 51pf cap

Maybe I'm crazy but I thought the bigger your company gets, the easier it is to get good quality components at a fair price. He charges more then ever now and uses the worst components I've seen in a pedal of this value. not saying there isn't a ton of others but I think its pretty disgusting the way he treats his customers buy using fakes IC's and charging a premium.

first pic is my clone of the merrow( i just started building take it easy on me haha) and on the bottom is the actual keith merrow he builds all his od pedals on the gauss markovs tube screamer etch so I did the same


and here the loomis and the dead horse essential



now the loomis

[Belanger]

also on my clone the enclosure was salvaged from another build so that's why the dc jack is on the wrong side

[Derringer]

worst over $275?

I could sell you one of my builds for $300

[duck_arse]

questions, Belangor, questions.

a fake JRC4558 IC, .... .... as this jrc4558 is one of those really bad Chinese copies that you can't read because there's no actual printing, but it's like engraved into the IC

can you show us a real good clear picture of same? the printing/engraving is not a good way of identifying fakes: the parts I got from the TI samples program, which come from TI, have such non-engraved numbering as to be almost unreadable, but I know they aren't fakes.

also:


if you're going to sell that top pedal for 275$us with a straight face. you could at least run a wire to both jack sleeves.