Did I Get Cloned???
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- As more and more guitar pedals are hitting the market, we're seeing a rise in "clone" pedals. Whether you're scrolling through Reverb or visiting your local guitar shop, you would be hard pressed to find a completely original guitar pedal, especially in the analog overdrive realm.
Recently, I stumbled upon a clone pedal that looked familiar: the NUX Steel Singer, an overdrive pedal that appears to be imitating the Vertex Steel String Clean Drive. Today, I'm doing an A/B comparison of my Steel String pedal and the NUX Steel Singer, seeing how the clone stacks up against the original.
What do you think of the Vertex Steel String vs. the NUX Steel Singer? Do they sound different?
Purchase a Steel String MKII:
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CONTRIBUTORS:
Hunter Harrison - Mixing, Audio Editing
Mason Mejia - Co-Producing, Editing
Mason Marangella - Co-Producing
Nico Sotomayor - Videographer
#VertexEffects #SteelStringSinger #GuitarPedals
What do you think? Does the Nux Steel Singer sound the same as the Vertex Steel String? What’s your verdict on cloning? Tell us in the comments below!
Can the V1 Steel string take 18v?
@@thereallbking yes
As a bass player, I like the Steel String. For guitar time though, I like the Steel Singer
Nic sounds like crap, they copy strymon's look of effects box ,now they want to clone everything - centaur etc
Talk about how the vertex has less top end and more girth when your “apples to apples” comparison has you playing the nux using the bridge pickup but the vertex on the neck pickup on the stones style riff? C’mon...
Didn’t you “clone” a wah wah pedal?
he literally just repainted bbe wahs
came to the comments JUST for this @@USSLIBERTYREMEMBERER
Wasn’t this the guy that restamped a bbe wah to a vertex wah and sold it for 200 bucks more?
Yeah the exact
Lol yes.
I really want to like Mason, but he tends to make it very difficult from time to time.
Thanks for the feedback Del. I thought it was a fairly charitable overview of the pedal and that we really have no claim here, but I always want to improve. Thanks for watching!
@Andrew D I don't think you've watch the video if you think this was a take down or indictment of Nux. The thesis of the video is "are the two pedals the same?" The video looks at that, and at no time says the Nux pedal is bad or doesn't sound good. The opposite in fact.
No you didn't. It was a clone of the Free The Tone String Slinger. Anything for clicks, huh bro 😂😂
My problem with this video is that his playing style on the first 2 pedals has much more finesse and soul. He plays harder, louder, faster, and harsher on the nux. Also, he used the neck pickup on the first 2, and the bridge pickup on the clone.... The gain should have also been balanced much more. The best way to do these kinds of tests is using a looper that removes playing differences. This isnt a fair comparison
Ha-ha I hadn't spotted that, I just thought I liked the sound of the NUX better ... but then I perfer the sound of a strat brige to neck, so that all makes sense - thank you
The sweet sweet irony. This guy re-houses a pedal and then has the nerve to bitch about someone cloning his pedal.
Have you been on the Vertex website? They are actually refunding people for that and the transparency of the process is on there.
Chris Rankin, not the same thing. We never "cloned" anyone. We bought pedals and re-branded them and changed some thing in the circuit an sold them at a mark up. We've always been transparent about our past, our responsibility in that and refunded customers to that end all the way back in 2014. Also, this video isn't really upset at Nux, it actually I think will help them and give some contexts to the two pedals. If you looked at the thumbnail only, you missed the real point here.
But... isn't the Steel String just a clone of the Jack Orman Booster 2.5???
I'm confused!
No more than it could be of 20 other pedals. Even a pretty lazy overview of the two pedals would tell you that. The Orman unit has one control - volume. The Steel String has 4 controls - volume, gain, filter, rock/jazz. The muFET design that our Steel String is based on, it is nothing new or proprietary and we've never claimed any different. It was used by guys like Craig Anderton clear back in the early 1970's (maybe even late 60's). We voiced our Steel String pedal in accordance with the circuit archetype that most closely resembled the Dumble SSS when doing in person comparisons between the Dumble amp and our pedal through a Fender Hot Rod DeVille as our reference, and tweaked from there. The muFET circuit nailed the tone and feel, and that's what we went with for the design. Our circuit isn't the same as Craig Anderton's muFET designs, nor is it of Orman's (who came after Anderton) but certainly has many things in common to the same degree as any other analog overdrive or boost in the marketplace. Our use of muFETs is about as common as what you'd see in pedal derivatives of the App Notes section from National Semiconductors (the genesis for many pedals we know and love today).
@@VertexEffectsInc it was good to explain that
I’ll buy and use Vertex but I’ll take my ethics lectures elsewhere tbh.
I wonder if Howard Dumble has any sympathy for your loss
As I say clearly here, we have no claim to the look, that's all from Dumble and it's fair game for Nux.
Howard is free to make a pedal version of his amplifiers should he ever choose. Other than that, people should be pleased to have companies including Vertex that are helping those achieve near dumble sound that can't afford the ridiculous price of a dumble amplifier.
@@VertexEffectsInc fwiw I really appreciated your transparency here. Pretty ballsy to post a video like this and it really speaks to your confidence in the quality of your product. I’ll be honest and say that I’ll probably be picking up the nux (reluctantly) but only because I’m poor. Lol. But it’s content like this that’ll make me buy the SSS when I can afford it. I’ve really been enjoying all of your videos. Thank you!
BBE Ben Wah. Ring the bell? 🙃
Mananda - What happened with the Axis Wah (a re-branding of a BBE Wah) and the cloning of the Vertex Steel String as the Nux Steel Singer are fundamentally different and incomparable. With the Axis Wah, I was purchasing the wah directly from BBE with their full knowledge, in my company name, and they were getting paid the same as if they sold it to any other dealer in their network. You can see that plainly on this invoice example from 2013 where my name and my company name are all clearly spelled out here: drive.google.com/file/d/1p2eoqWOaNO4otufq2Ux35luhYLakIpTb. By contrast, with the Nux, there is no re-branding. I don’t get paid by Nux when they sell a Steel Singer pedal. They’re cloning, at least aesthetically, the look of our Steel String. As I state in the video, that’s their right. I have no claim to the look, I have no claim to inventing the use of muFET circuits. What Nux is doing is all fair game as said in the video. The point of the video is “I Got Cloned!” Well...kinda. We got cloned, but the clone really isn’t a clone. It doesn’t sound like our pedal, but looks a lot like our pedal. The Nux Steel Singer does sound good as I said - just not particularly Dumbley to my ears, and more like a Tweed type break up. More gain, more treble, more compressed than the Vertex Steel String. Both sound good in their own right, they just don’t have any sonic overlap where I see them as being in the same ballpark.
Like you cloned a Maxon SD-9 and just re-cased it and called it Dynamic Distortion? Lol! Oh the irony!!!
We've never said that it wasn't based on the SD-9, there are plenty of interviews where this is said if you did just a little research on this.
@@jjschulz3472 I think we said it as recently as our Sweetwater video a few weeks ago - you can see it yourself.
Dynamic distortion and sd-9 sound totally different.... I use both love and in studio..... try em both out and you’ll hear differences
The schadenfreude is giving me life
Some might find it to be a positive...I suppose it is. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, as they say.
Yup, made me laugh seeing the video title 😂
Since the steel string is a clone of Jack Orman AMZ-FX Boost 2.5. II think this is pretty fair.
We have no claim to the muFET, we state that in the video at 15:48. However, the Vertex Steel String is no more a clone of a Jack Orman Booster is no more than it could be of 20 other pedals. Even a lazy analysis of the two pedals would tell you that. The Orman unit has ONE control - volume. The Steel String has FOUR controls - volume, gain, filter, rock/jazz. The muFET design that our Steel String is based on, it is nothing new or proprietary and we've never claimed any different. It was used by guys like Craig Anderton clear back in the early 1970's (maybe even late 60's). We voiced our Steel String pedal in accordance with the circuit archetype that most closely resembled the Dumble SSS when doing in person comparisons between the Dumble amp and our pedal through a Fender Hot Rod DeVille as our reference, and tweaked from there. The muFET circuit nailed the tone and feel, and that's what we went with for the design of the Steel String series of pedals. Our circuit isn't the same as Craig Anderton's muFET designs, nor is it of Orman's (who came after Anderton), but certainly has many things in common to the same degree as any other analog overdrive or boost in the marketplace. Our use of muFETs is about as common as what you'd see in pedal derivatives from the App Notes section from National Semiconductors (the genesis for many pedals we know and love today).
@@jjschulz3472 no we asked the question "Did We Get Cloned?" The answer through the video is, no - the look almost the same, but sound quite different.
Dude, I've got a nyle and I enjoy it. But maybe the guy notorious for passing off other peoples designs as his own should just let sleeping dogs lay when it comes to certain topics. You know you are just gonna get hate and push back. My two cents anyways.
It's easy bud people get what they can afford its just the way it is .we all know the people would download everything as for my self I like to have the cd case and the art work .but I still try and see if wall mart has it lol
Mason, your pedal is basically a clone of a Jack Orman Boost. Oh, the irony…….
would the same electronics in a different casing be a clone? lol the balls of this video
You beat me to it. For the uninformed, Google Axis wah Mason Marangella. The irony of this video is not lost.
What happened with the Axis Wah (a re-branding of a BBE Wah) and the cloning of the Vertex Steel String as the Nux Steel Singer are fundamentally different and incomparable. With the Axis Wah, I was purchasing the wah directly from BBE with their full knowledge, in my company name, and they were getting paid the same as if they sold it to any other dealer in their network. You can see that plainly on this invoice example from 2013 where my name and my company name are all clearly spelled out here: drive.google.com/file/d/1p2eoqWOaNO4otufq2Ux35luhYLakIpTb. By contrast, with the Nux, there is no re-branding. I don’t get paid by Nux when they sell a Steel Singer pedal. They’re cloning, at least aesthetically, the look of our Steel String. As I state in the video, that’s their right. I have no claim to the look, I have no claim to inventing the use of muFET circuits. What Nux is doing is all fair game as said in the video. The point of the video is “I Got Cloned!” Well...kinda. We got cloned, but the clone really isn’t a clone. It doesn’t sound like our pedal, but looks a lot like our pedal. The Nux Steel Singer does sound good as I said - just not particularly Dumbley to my ears, and more like a Tweed type break up. More gain, more treble, more compressed than the Vertex Steel String. Both sound good in their own right, they just don’t have any sonic overlap where I see them as being in the same ballpark.
@@VertexEffectsInc If everything was cool, then why did you have to issue an apology? Also, your Steele Stringer looks to be an awful lot like the Way Huge Overrated Special. Is that a better comparison?
@@kdrake777 I was accountable to the customers that purchased the Axis Wah, not BBE. The impropriety is in how I resold the BBE product as a Vertex product, not my business relationship with BBE. As I said in the video, we have no claim to the look, we're all copying Dumble, and even if it were my look, Steel String was at market before the Way Huge Overrated Special.
@@VertexEffectsInc I support the fact that you made a mistake, own up to it, and are moving/have moved forward. I own an ultraphonix and occasionally watch your videos (so not a troll). But as you say, "[you] have no claim to inventing the use of muFET circuits", and this video has an air of "hey f**k these guys for doing something similar to me and not paying me" to it . That kind of attitude is detrimental to pedal culture, since clones have led to some great pedals (i.e. the start of the video). I also think that given your past, that attitude is just hypocritical. I watched this video, and it gave me the same cringey feelings of OJs' "if I did it". I made my comment not to dig up the past, but instead to starkly point out that this video poorly walks the razor thin edge of you addressing the role of clones in the pedal world. As other commenters point out, since the SS is basically a clone of a Jack Orman Booster 2.5, it would have been better to see the three (JO, SS, and Nux) together, because it makes the video more honest. You made a whole video about clones, and didn't address where your own circuits come from! Thats just not cool. Myself and most players see your pedals as great sounding clones/clone-adaptations, and ignoring/not addressing that makes me angry - so of course I got angry and did a low punch. You did a whole video about a pedal failing because it "wasn't in [your] lane", I don't this video was in your lane.
Dude, just rebrand'em and sell'em at a 100% markup like you used to do.
18:27 but you used steel string name and knobs of a dumble amp in a product that is so much less than that.. (in your words.. copy the ascetics but not deliver the sonic elements of the original). I like your pedal, but I think the problem is the hypocrisy. OBS: Nux clone is a free of tone string slinger.
Correct, we have no claim to the look and we say that at 2:18. The thesis stated in the video is "they look the same, but do they sound the same?" The conclusion we reach is "no". I don't get into speculating what it might be, just that it looks like our pedal but doesn't deliver in replicating the sound, e.g. "does not deliver on the sonic elements of the original". If it's an FTT pedal, that would explain why it's not the same sound. However, it seems like the look was certainly intended to appeal to those looking for a low price version of our Steel String pedal, as our pedal is the only pedal doing a clean Dumble SSS amp in a pedal format that looks like this on the market that I'm aware of.
Thank you so much for this comparison, I now know I have to get the NUX steel singer, lovely pedal
C'mon man you just proved that the Nux pedal is not a clone of your pedal. They are just both Dumble inspired pedals, both in sound and looks. Stop being such a paranoid snowflake
Thanks for watching and the feedback!
I mean if you look at Nuxs line of pedals you can see they are making clones of multiple different brands. He’s not being a “paranoid snowflake” and was just making an informative video about it. You can make a dumble inspired pedal that doesn’t look exactly like other dumble inspired pedals.
It’s pretty obvious Nux is cloning off multiple pedal brands out there.
@@joshelmore9089 Yeah, Nux make copy of many pedals, that's how they started and that's how they conduct their business. But in this case they are not copying his pedal, and he proves it in the video itself, one is an overdrive and the other a clean boost, both intended to resembles a Dumble sound, that's why he refuses to talk about the circuit, because they are not clones. The only similarity of the pedals are the color, the knobs and the lettering, and all of these comes from the Dumble amp design. Complaining that someone cloned you pedal because of it is like saying that every Marshall in a Box that's uses black and gold knobs and the Marshall font are clones of each other
Matheus Colla ok cool dude
The Nux actually sounds better to me. Thanks for the comparison, you just saved me $150!
Bam, there you go! Saved you $150! Enjoy my friend!
@@VertexEffectsInc bro
Hahahahaha no way jose for 50$ over drive you can find a much higher manufacturing pedal like a boss SD1 or even Beringher over drive man regardless for sound you are actually liking get something better man.
He literally made the pedal, support the original creator, don’t be like that.
The Nux sounds cheap, you get what you pay for but why waste money.
I think Joe bonamassa said it best when it comes to Vertex. this is in poor taste you gain nothing from posting a video like this and instead of taking the higher road and showing how you've grown from your wah wah days you instead make this silly video that no one asked for. stop calling yourself the rig doctor and just grow up please its very cringe and no one but you does it. you earn your nickname you don't just pick one and hope it sticks. If you put as much time into making new and better pedals/products as you do these types of videos you'd be more respected and less hated.
I kinda had the same sentiments, some things are better left unsaid.
Where do you feel the analysis in this video becomes disparaging of Nux or takes a low blow shot at them?
@@VertexEffectsInc While my thoughts are far from the OP, my sentiments only agree where he's implying your time would be better spent on other things.I enjoy your videos on improving our boards and I'd personally rather hear of effects that are unique and useful.As far as the "wha"thing I've no idea what it is about.IMO I think you'd been better off skipping this one.
@@kevmac1230 Thanks for your feedback! Thanks for watching!
They DID NOT clone you. They cloned a Free The Tone pedal and used Dumble’s trade dress, just like your pedal is a clone of someone else with Dumble’s trade dress. Has been done many times, so you weren’t even original there. Keep trying to be decent person, maybe some day you will get there.
Isn’t your pedal a clone?
A profesional cloner talking about clones.... what a joke!!!!
I didn’t know the topic was off limits. If you don’t dig the content in the video, I’m sorry to hear that
@Vertex Effects I like your videos, and I like your work, I don't like you don't tell people where do you take some ideas, circuits,..., even if they are copyright free, it is ethically correct to name the people who helps you to create/clon products.
@@alexisschrodinger75 what would be an example where you think we're deliberately obscuring the circuit? We goop nothing, all the PCBs are free to inspect. Anyone can trace them out.
Lol I like your pedals. But like come on man. Out of all the brands to make a video like this out there you’re obviously last who should based on your past, idk why that didn’t occur to you. Only thing I can imagine is either you knew you would be getting this sort of feedback here, or maybe you kinda feel like negative attention is better than none. I’m sure you get tired of defending yourself at this point. Enjoying my SSS though so idk.
I hear ya Dylan, the thing for us was to create some distinctions between the pedals and that although they look the same, they're not. I think the video proves that and might have done better if we'd used less provocative language in the titling or the thumbnail to start, and maybe lost the first opening line or made it something more in-line with the actual analysis of the video which was much more balanced of the two pedals. I'd like to say that my judgement is 100% on point when we make videos and predicting, roughly, how they'll be received. However, I am human, and sometimes will strike out whether I have baggage from the past or not that might color the reception of the video. In any case, I appreciate your feedback and appreciate your support and patronage. Hope you continue to enjoy your SSS pedal!
@@VertexEffectsInc Dude, that was maybe the coolest possible response to that argument. Good on you, sir.
@@pdenton thanks for watching Chuck.
@@VertexEffectsInc I hear you. Again I’m not gonna be another snarky internet bafoon who accuses you of this and that- however just questioning this content I suppose. It is appreciable or at least commendable how you or your team always have some sort of response for the negative Nancy’s, I’m sure it gets tiring.
didn't y'all just slap some vertex logos on a BBE wah not that long ago?
About seven years ago, and resolved that by 2014 with all involved. What happened with the Axis Wah (a re-branding of a BBE Wah) and the cloning of the Vertex Steel String as the Nux Steel Singer are fundamentally different and incomparable. With the Axis Wah, I was purchasing the wah directly from BBE with their full knowledge, in my company name, and they were getting paid the same as if they sold it to any other dealer in their network. You can see that plainly on this invoice example from 2013 where my name and my company name are all clearly spelled out here: drive.google.com/file/d/1p2eoqWOaNO4otufq2Ux35luhYLakIpTb. By contrast, with the Nux, there is no re-branding. I don’t get paid by Nux when they sell a Steel Singer pedal. They’re cloning, at least aesthetically, the look of our Steel String. As I state in the video, that’s their right. I have no claim to the look, I have no claim to inventing the use of muFET circuits. What Nux is doing is all fair game as said in the video. The point of the video is “I Got Cloned!” Well...kinda. We got cloned, but the clone really isn’t a clone. It doesn’t sound like our pedal, but looks a lot like our pedal. The Nux Steel Singer does sound good as I said - just not particularly Dumbley to my ears, and more like a Tweed type break up. More gain, more treble, more compressed than the Vertex Steel String. Both sound good in their own right, they just don’t have any sonic overlap where I see them as being in the same ballpark.
@@VertexEffectsInc Yeah man I get it, there are some differences between this situation and yours with the BBE wahs, but considering how much blowback you got on that this seems like a weird thing to bring up unsolicitedly. You do you I guess, but this was an odd choice IMHO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@thisgoestoeleven should I let my past dictate my future? I've owned my mistakes, paid for them, and resolved them with those that were impacted. Some can overlook that, some can't. The analysis in this video is as objective as I can make it and the content is based around facts and not conjecture. Our audience asked for this, and as the guy on the other side of this pedal, am I not allowed a voice in the discussion?
@@VjekoslavMaxLuburicZDS What comments do you think are being deleted? Read the many comments posted attacking him here. Seems if he was deleting comments these would not be posted.
@@VertexEffectsInc You're allowed to do whatever you want, I just pointed out that it seemed like an odd choice to make.
The guy that simply rebranded wahs and marketed them as something special complaining about getting cloned is hilarious to me. You make some nice pedals, anything in the future I buy from your company will be used.
1. You didnt get cloned, so theres no sonic quality for Nux to “not be delivering on.” They didnt sound the same because they are not the same design. You didnt compare the schematics but if you did the conclusion would have been a bit shorter.
2. You have no claim to the aesthetic, and you admit as much, so if Nux is riding on someones coattails, its Dumbles, not yours, in which case you are riding on those coattails right along with them.
3. I am no electronics wiz, but you admit the muFET-based circuit is not your own, so whos coattails are they exactly riding on as far as the circuit? Look i get theres a bit more to either circuit than this aspect of the design, but it is clearly the crux of the circuit, otherwise you and everyone else who does know circuitry wouldnt be mentioning it so intently. Clearly if there is a coattail being riden in regards to circuitry, it is not yours, and would be as silly as saying someone was riding the coattails of whoever invented the op amp, because their circuit included an op amp. So theres no coattail riding in the circuit. Theyre different, and where theyre similar, you have no claim to the originality of the design.
I appreciate you perspective and feedback. A few notes:
1) That is said in the video - it's not the same. The point was to investigate since the look of the pedals, and names are almost identical, and many of our viewers had been asking about this for a few months
2) We have no claim, correct. However, nobody has put out a Steel String pedal except us and Rockett pedals that I'm aware of, certainly, the look of the Nux pedal is using a market tested look in the choice of aesthetics of their pedal clone or not - but again, I have no claim to that. If you're being intellectually honest about it, I don't think there's any question they hoped to appeal to a similar customer as a Steel String customer.
3) The circuit style that is used for the Steel String is widely available and known for 30+ years. This is true of 95% of analog overdrives in one way or another. I don't think the customer is being engaged by talk of the circuit, but rather what it does, how's it's marketed and how it looks. Most customers are not circuit literate to the point where talking about FETs, versus OPA, versus transistor to get closest to the Dumble sound is going to be the best qualification of the product.
The short answer is NO, NuX did not clone Vertex. The NuX Steel Stringer sounds different from the Vertex Steel String because it's based on an entirely different circuit. The NuX is a clone of a Free The Tone String Slinger circuit. The Vertex Steel String is based on a Jack Orman boost circuit. The Vertex and NuX look similar on the outside but have completely different circuits inside. Apples vs Oranges.
Nowhere in the video is that disputed. We say we don't know what it is, we conclude it's just not the same as pedal, the Steel String. It's clear that no matter what it is (Free the Tone or otherwise), the Nux pedal was hoping to draw comparisons between our device and attract a similar customer that may not be willing to spend $200. I appreciate that fact, as say so in the video - a $200 won't be for everyone. I do think however that a customer looking at the two pedals would assume a sonic relationship based on the name, the controls being the same names, and the name itself being a few letters off and stating "Clean Drive" on the pedal. There's nothing on the pedal that would tell you that it had any relationship to Free the Tone, nor was that advertised until after this video released for anything that I could find. Seeing these two pedals side by side would be like seeing a box of Cornflakes and generic box of Cornflakes on a grocery isle. Let's call the generic box "Cornfakes". The customer is going to presume from the look and the name that these two cereals are essentially the same product. Just as when Nux styles a pedal this way, of all the possible ways to invoke the Dumble look, with all of the similarities to our Steel String pedal, I think the customer will presume they're the same product and not just some other Dumble pedal. Secondly, muFET follower (or mu follower) is a circuit topology (totem pole configuration) not a device. The first published circuits using JFETs was an application note by National Semiconductor in the early 1970s, but had previously been used in transistor circuits in the 1960's. It is a variation of vacuum tube configurations like SRPP from 1940's, and later variations like SEPP and many other variations. Anyone claiming the Steel String circuit is the same as Orman’s is sadly mistaken, let alone totally wrong since Orman did not invent a new circuit but used established circuits as we all do in electronics design. Where our Steel String circuit topology resembles Orman’s is the order of u-follower gain stage to gain control to u-follower gain stage to tone circuit to volume, but that is where it ends. The key differences to Orman’s are the gain stages have higher static current, different biasing values and capacitor values. The tone control has different values so different turn over points (affects different frequencies). So from a topology standpoint, one can make a case for a similarity with the Orman circuit, but from an electronic standpoint, all the values are COMPLETELY different and as a result would sound VERY different and does if you were to compare them.
@@VertexEffectsInc Its still click bait - with the headline and the cover photo what will stick with people is: They cloned you. The fact that you quickly realize this not being true is just clear when looking in the video. To me - not yet a customer of you... this doesn't rub well... I think I would think twice in buying.
100%
@@aptfx especially after what happened with Mason cloning other peoples pedals and having that deal blow up on him when people realized he was cloning pedals, not changing anything, and slapping his name on it like 10 years ago or whenever it was. And that, may not be exactly what, happened. I'm recalling from memory so I could Be wrong on details. The overall gist was he was cloning well-known pedals and not Changing anything at all, IIRC. Then slapping his name on the pedal and selling it commercially when all he did was build someone else's pedal and rename. It.
It'd be like me building a 1:1 replica of a Fuzz Face, throwing it in a std enclosure, calling it the Fuzz Factory, and selling it is my own design. That's not how it works. Funny tbing is that, people want to bring up JHS and talk about how much they don't like Josh because of this or that, yet they'll give Mason a pass on doing the crap he did. Yea, I get that he's worked to turn that, around. But he still did it and many have seem to forgotten that fact or are purposely disregarding that fact.
@@JC-11111 dude wasn't even cloning. He was straight up rebranding an existing pedal. He was taking full credit for something that he not only didn't create himself, but he didn't have the balls to do the right thing and pay to be using it under his brand. Yeah you can find duplicate clones with different brand names but at least you still know what is going on there. With clones there's generally no smoke and mirrors. Vertex is a straight up thief.
Did you get cloned,come on. They did the exact same thing you did but affordable. THE SAME THING YOU DID.
Use your ears before opening your large hole to eat food with 😅Nowhere does mason “complain “ that they stole his design” in fact he is fair and balanced. He says the clone is a good sounding pedal ( average at best from 35 years experience IMHO”) he shows you the difference and you make your choice .The inherent character of the Nux is very very different…..
@@nickg2431That's because the NU-X is a very different pedal, and Mason is full of it.
@@richietownsend6737Oh, he does. There's no denying that this dude repainted BBE wahs, put his sticker on them and charged more than double for them.
Do you really had ears?
So you are saying that both pedals are clones of the Jack Orman AMZ-FX Boost 2.5! ;)
So it would appear if the freestompbox schematic is correct.. A few minor component tweaks to up the gain, as suggested anyway by Jack way back 20 years ago and a standard BMT replacing the single tone control. Ain't nothing new under the sun these days
Lol beat me to it.
The Vertex Steel String is no more a clone of a Jack Orman Booster is no more than it could be of 20 other pedals. Even a lazy analysis of the two pedals would tell you that. The Orman unit has ONE control - volume. The Steel String has FOUR controls - volume, gain, filter, rock/jazz. The muFET design that our Steel String is based on, it is nothing new or proprietary and we've never claimed any different. It was used by guys like Craig Anderton clear back in the early 1970's (maybe even late 60's). We voiced our Steel String pedal in accordance with the circuit archetype that most closely resembled the Dumble SSS when doing in person comparisons between the Dumble amp and our pedal through a Fender Hot Rod DeVille as our reference, and tweaked from there. The muFET circuit nailed the tone and feel, and that's what we went with for the design of the Steel String series of pedals. Our circuit isn't the same as Craig Anderton's muFET designs, nor is it of Orman's (who came after Anderton), but certainly has many things in common to the same degree as any other analog overdrive or boost in the marketplace. Our use of muFETs is about as common as what you'd see in pedal derivatives from the App Notes section from National Semiconductors (the genesis for many pedals we know and love today).
@@SirMonteCarlo I didn't know that...however we're just asking if the Nux pedal is the same as our pedal - that's the thesis of this video.
@@SirMonteCarlo Cool! Free The Tone makes amazing pedals! I just watched John Nathan Cordy's video. As he said in the video: "If you are gonna accuse someone of cloning your pedal, probably check the schematic first, that probably matters."
@vertex effects what is actually the point in this video? They’re clearly different circuits designed for different things?
The thesis is, "they look the same, but do they actually sound the same?" We then go through the look, the sound, the build, and evaluate the similarities and differences.
Wait...hasn’t it been proven that the Steel String and the Ultraphonix are clones of someone else’s circuit from an online forum? Or if you are claiming the pedal origin, they are just clones of Dumble preamps with JFETs instead of tubes and maybe a few tweaks? Don’t get me wrong I know the pedal industry does this kind of stuff a lot and it’s hard to find a circuit design that is truly unique without basing it off something else first. But I stopped the video pretty early on when you started talking about quality components, seeing as the whole BBE Ben Wah controversy wasn’t really all that great for your company or credentials. It takes a lot of balls to make a video like this considering, you’re kind of a NUX like company with a higher price tag.
It take a lot of balls to comment on a video you didn't watch.
Typical Mason !! Nobody tests the pedals with the pots in the same place . All pots are not the same , and adjusting the filter control would probably get them quite close.. But even better the Nux has a decent set of sized controls which make it better. I have a Nux Horseman and it is really a good pedal .
Nathan, the video spells out any claims of originality to the product in question. If you watched it you'll easily see that. Regarding the BBE product, it's a dissimilar comparison. I bought the Wah pedals from them in my company name with their knowledge, and while I would agree that from the customer POV the fall out was awful and was handled terribly by me - all that were involved were refunded in full, exchanges, or credited with whatever form of restitution they requested clear back in 2014.
Vertex Effects I get what you’re saying and I did rewatch the video up until half way through the playing. Honestly before this video I was kinda liking your videos again and figured you’d moved in a good direction away from all that, but something about the way you talk about being cloned, just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not excusing NUX by any means here. They are like a lot of cheap foreign made pedals on the market and blatantly steal designs and circuits. But what some of us find in the pedal community is that some more “boutique” companies do the same and take credit for things they didn’t do. It’s just hard for me to sit here and see you make a video like this, knowing the past. And I do recognize you made it right with the Ben Wah, but it’s not something that just goes away.
@@nathansnyderart the point of the video was really, is the Nux really a clone, and does it sound the same. I tried to remain as objective as I could about it, maybe we missed the mark in your view to this end. I do have a past with the BBE Wah, but that wasn't a clone and is fundamentally different than what is happening here with Nux, although I understand the temptation to collapse the two events. I'll wear my past like a tattoo, but it doesn't change the fact that the Steel String was cloned, at least aesthetically, if not circuit-wise. This video unpacks that. Irrespective of my past, I have as much a right as anyone to comment on a pedal, especially one of my own.
Wait isn’t this the company that was literally selling clone/re-cased pedals???? Lmao
They just partnered with Amazon to do the prime pedals.
Donny, that was us. You may or may not be aware, but every customer and dealership that ever owned an Axis Wah was provided a full refund, rebate, or exchange according to their desired restitution back in 2014. In fact, we still leave the door open to any owner of the product that was previously unaware of refund options and keep a public record of all Axis Wah refunds on our website for anyone to view since 2014: www.vertexeffects.com/axis-wah. The Axis Wah is not representative of our company values and the products we make. We've worked tirelessly to make a new impression and continue to maintain a high standard of quality and customer service with transparency around each product and its origins. All we can do is release the best sounding products possible and give our customers the best possible quality and support in hopes that with time we'll earn back their trust.
Didn’t Joe Bonamassa make an official statement detailing how you overcharged him for a product he didn’t ask for and used him as an endorsee without his permission?
Found it.
"Joe Bonamassa wrote:
Hey Guys,
I'm sorry to be chiming in so late but I must warn all you fellow gear nerds to stay away from Vertex effects and pedalboard services. Mason is not truthful nor is his work good or in most cases his own. He had me on his site without permission as a user and happy customer. I am/was neither happy nor do I use any of his products. My pedalboard sounded awful, took tons of gain away, and added a huge ground hum. It also cost $1400 and that was after I pitched a fit when the $2000 bill came to my tour manager all the while seeing unauthorized You Tube videos of my " new rig" a rig I never tried nor signed off on. Fortunately Dave Friedman at Rack Systems came in and saved the day for $400. All I wanted and asked for was to have some cables cut to size. I didn't want to waste Dave's time so I gave it to Mason. BIG MISTAKE.... I am very disturbed by his actions and have heard recently that he has been called out on some Wah Wah pedal stuff. Bad News Bear that cat is unfortunately.
So... In closing...
Just trying to keep my fellow guitar nerds from getting ripped off like I was.
Caveat Emptor
Joe Bonamassa."
@@Quipstiley With respect to Joe - he commissioned me to build him a pedalboard after seeing the rigs he built for Josh Smith and Kirk Fletcher on New Year’s Day 2014. The issue, as I understand it, began with a discrepancy around the billing after the rig was completed and delivered to Joe. Regrettably, I did not have a discussion of costs with Joe prior to us delivering the rig which could have prevented this. After the pedalboard was delivered to Joe with an invoice, the billing was above Joe’s expectations, and created upset as a result (we charged the same rate for Joe as we charged any other customer at the time including Josh Smith and Kirk Fletcher who were my intro to Joe). A few days later, this invoiced figure was negotiated down to a rate that was amicable to Joe based on his expectations.
Approximately six months later, the Axis Wah controversy came to a head in September 2014, at which point Joe had come forward on his website forum about his experience with me building his pedalboard. Joe explained that the rig didn’t sound right, that he had issues with noise, and the rig had to be taken to another rig builder to remedy the issue. He also continued that the cost above market rate for the work, and cautioned against anyone considering Vertex products or services.
I was as embarrassed as anyone to read Joe’s statement. The last thing any rig builder would want is to upset or send a faulty product to the most influential guitar superstar in the world. Although I have no doubts of the sincerity of Joe’s statement, what would I have to gain by sending him something that wasn’t up to par? I will be the first to admit, as I’d imagine is the same with any rig builder, that no matter how good you are, no builder will bat 1,000% on every rig. However, we all have testing procedures in place to catch every possible issue prior to shipping a rig to a customer. At the time Joe’s rig was going through a Marshall Jubilee as his main amp, and we used the closest amp we had to test with for sound and fidelity (Marshall JCM2000), and communicated with Joe were we noticed things out of the norm, for example, his Boss DD-5 was noisier in the effects loop than the DD-3.
Nevertheless, what Joe received was not to his expectations. As rig builders, that is our responsibility to each and every customer to deliver a bulletproof rig that functions perfectly. However, our ability to be able to take corrective action for a customer (Joe or otherwise) and resolve an issue is only possible when the customer communicates with us about a problem - and, over the six months that Joe had the rig in his possession, we didn’t hear anything from him regarding the rig not meeting expectations. The only problem communicated to us was at the point Joe received the pedalboard, where he communicated that our rates were higher than his expectations.
I wish it had gone down differently and had a chance to remedy this for Joe over the course of the six months he had the rig prior to making his public address. Understandably, the timing of this, plus feeling overcharged from our initial work together, compounded by what was going on with the Axis Wah, certainly wasn’t a recipe to bring Joe back to the table.
It was a business dealing that didn’t go to plan, that I wish we could change. These issues are more common than we might think in our industry, but ordinarily would have remained between the client and service provider, or hopefully resolved between the two parties. However, with the Wah controversy looming, and Joe’s past experience, I’m sure he felt the need to warn others of his experience, and caution his followers of fellow gear-heads and guitarists.
Clone? BBE Ben Wah? Anybody?
Now he’ll buy the NUX pedals wholesale, rebrand them as Vertex and sell them for 5 times the price. I heard he even rebranded cheap Chinese cables as “boutique?”
The NUX is a clone of Free The Tone, not Vertex, and he already knows that.
And the Vertex itself is a clone.
Do yo know if Nux has clone a BBE wah?
Couldn't say...I suppose check their website.
Kinda like that time a boutique pedal company took an existing wah pedal from BBE and passed it off as their own
Chad, hope you enjoyed the video and could see the downstream consequences for boutique makers in general even if you don't like me/Vertex. If you do a little research, you'll see that BBE sold Wah pedals to us in our company name the entire time we sold the Axis Wah - no impropriety in our business dealing with them or cloning involved. This is not a comparable example with what's being discussed in this video with the Nux Steel Singer vs. Vertex Steel String.
So was it okay for you to rebrand and upcharge those wah pedals because you bought them under your company name? What a load of crap.
@@ronmichael2167 that's about as bad faith of a reading of what is being answered here. The original comment is saying that we did the same thing to BBE as Nux did to us. We didn't. They're isolated events and collapsing them is frankly a dishonest appraisal of the discussion. The relationship between Vertex and our customers that purchased the Axis Wah was inexcusable, and I regret that every day. However, we were able to make things right for them with full refunds, rebates, or exchanges based on their desired restitution almost seven years ago. I've made no attempt to obfuscate what I did or my responsibility in what happened and my roll in what happened with the Axis Wah back in 2014.
@@skeletor2000 there is no legitimacy or excuse for what I did with the Axis Wah. The original post suggested that what Nux is doing to the Steel String is parallel to the Axis Wah and my relationship to BBE. It's not. As I said to Ron below, they're isolated events and collapsing them is frankly a dishonest appraisal of the discussion. The relationship between Vertex and our customers that purchased the Axis Wah was inexcusable, and I regret that every day. However, we were able to make things right for them with full refunds, rebates, or exchanges based on their desired restitution almost seven years ago. I've made no attempt to obfuscate what I did or my responsibility in what happened and my roll in what happened with the Axis Wah back in 2014.
Sure do not want to see a clone of this guy walking around.
Huh?
The irony is killing me over here as I look at my BBE wah....pot, meet kettle.
Wouldn't Nux have to be buying the Steel String from me for that to be a parallel? As the video states, I don't think that Nux did anything of impropriety necessarily.
This is the second tone-testing video of yours that I find possibly disingenuous. The first was about loop switchers where you had a Klone buffer in one scenario without mentioning. Now you’re a/bing without touching knobs and trying to get the Nux to sound closer.
The purpose of this video was to see if the pedals are the same circuit. If all the pedals are at noon and one has 3-4x the gain of the other two, clearly it's not the same and can't be chalked up to tolerances. I'm sure there be some demos comparing the two in the future which might help you have a better sense of the range fo the two. I'm a terrible demo guy, and it's not my place to give you a quality A/B of what each is capable of, and again, I'm just qualifying that the two pedals are NOT the same and have some clear differences if the spec sheet alone isn't enough to tell you that there are already some differences as outlined in the video.
@@VertexEffectsInc thanx for responding. I see what you're getting at, maybe I'm projecting what I thought would be most "revealing" testament to the NUX as a clone which would be if they could be dialed in to sound the same rather than tolerance/values/a more objective technical comparison. Aesthetically-its obviously ripping your design/take on the Dumble aesthetic but I've heard sound wise they were aiming for the Free The Tone String Slinger. who knows. I have a suspicion that as silly as it may be, calling yourself the Rig Doctor (obviously tongue in cheek) might subject you to being held to a higher, maybe impossible, standard for all things tone compared to a demo/tone lesson from some stoned metalhead in their basement. Either way, it's all taken too seriously. I hope i get to try your V1 some day. Always sounds great in demos. I enjoy your videos as a whole, so thanx for the effort and ambition to share the knowledge.
@@winstonsmith8236 thanks for watching and for the feedback!
A clone of a clone? 👀 Both are clones of the SSS…
"This pedal looks similar to my ripoff a preexisting product but I am too lazy to check and see if they are actually ripping off my design. I am going to accuse them of stealing my design anyways because it looks similar to the original as does mine."
Huh?
@@VertexEffectsInc I think he was pretending to be you... mockingly
Um. Surely your own pedal is a copy (clone?) of another design? So Nux are actually cloning Jack Orman’s design if they are cloning anything. I’m sorry, but Vertex claiming that anyone is cloning them is the greatest irony I’ve ever seen on UA-cam,
Thanks for watching John! MuFET follower (or mu follower) is a circuit topology (totem pole configuration) not a device. The first published circuits using JFETs was an application note by National Semiconductor in the early 1970s, but had previously been used in transistor circuits in the 1960's. It is a variation of vacuum tube configurations like SRPP from 1940's, and later variations like SEPP and many other variations. Anyone claiming the Steel String circuit is the same as Orman’s is sadly mistaken, let alone totally wrong since Orman did not invent a new circuit but used established circuits as we all do in electronics design. Where our Steel String circuit topology resembles Orman’s is the order of u-follower gain stage to gain control to u-follower gain stage to tone circuit to volume, but that is where it ends. The key differences to Orman’s are the gain stages have higher static current, different biasing values and capacitor values. The tone control has different values so different turn over points (affects different frequencies). So from a topology standpoint, one can make a case for a similarity with the Orman circuit, but from an electronic standpoint, all the values are COMPLETELY different and as a result would sound VERY different and does if you were to compare them.
@@VertexEffectsInc hi. My point is that you have a horrible history of claiming designs as your own, when they are anything but original. So the whole premise of this video “did I get cloned” is hugely ironic.
Exactly
You're being too polite. Ridiculous express better the situation.
Did Jack Orman admit he cloned another design even though it may not be a pedal, it was "cloned" from others - shouldn't he admit he cloned the circuit? Seems that is only fair.
You *should* look at the schematic.
I'm were looking at whether they're the same pedal, and we're already different on the spec sheets and the sounds with the knobs approximately in the same place, are they really the same pedal? Sure, we could buzz it all out, and create a schematic, but does a customer really care what's in R1 and C10 if the two pedals are totally dissimilar? I think the schematic would help differentiate them more, but for a simpler, less invasive test, I think what we demonstrated is enough to qualify the thesis of "are the two pedals the same?"
The worst pedal comparison I’ve ever watched. Adjust the gain. I was considering a vertex but I will be passing.
I watched this video and promptly bought a NUX Steel Singer :)
Enjoy! 👍👍👍
@@VertexEffectsInc it's so cheap it piqued my curiousity. It's a well spent $50 if you can't afford the better unit. Not sure if you were feeding this 9V or 18V for your comparison, but you prob already know the 18V makes a massive difference in this pedal. Way more headroom
Weird video. I always think of vertex as cloning some other thing, mostly dumbles .
Seems like you prejudice took you away from the premise of the video.
I think it's more helpful when pedal demos try to dial in the same tones. Of course they sound different with the knobs at noon. If you wanted to really compare what tones you can dial in you would turn knobs. Fair to show the Nux has more OD, but you can still turn the gain down to compare.
^This
My intent here was to set them all at noon and that if they were the same (outside of the spec sheet being quite different) were we even in the ballpark. Fundamentally, they were different. If it's 3-4x the gain at noon, it's not going to get into the vibe of the Steel String which is really more of a low gain overdrive or high gain boost at best, even at max gain. I'm sure there will be more knob-turning demos to come from other UA-camrs.
Too soon!?!? Really don’t think this adds to all you’ve done to try to turn the perspective on the company around. I find it really poor taste and should have just picked another topic to build brand image on. I can’t see how this response wasn’t anticipated from the community.
I appreciate your feedback Jeremy. Thank you for watching.
I am buy steel singer of nux!
it sounds good, I'm sure you'll find a good use for it
This guy is a trip ! Bullshitter he switched the switch on the guitar when comparing the pedals from bridge to the neck pic up check it out 😂😂 frickin lier 😮😮
Clutching at pearls...at least they actually MADE the effect and didn't just re-brand someone else's.
To the degree that your comment is true has to do with a product that is unrelated to this video and was furthermore resolved almost a decade ago. I can understand the temptation to graft on the Axis Wah here, which several have attempted to do in the comments section as a consequence of their prejudice toward me or Vertex and perhaps any mention of "cloning" to be in bad taste. To the degree it's possible, at least financially, anyone that ever owned that product was provided the restitution they desired whether it be a full refund, exchange for another product, or a credit if they decided to keep the wah and get back the difference of what they paid versus the cost of a wah from Barcus Berry. Furthermore, although I can't fully restore any emotion damage done to those that purchase this product - feeling betrayed, lied to, and deceived - all which are true and legitimate, were issue a full apologies separately from any public "coming clean" statements that were made. Short of that, I'm not sure how this could have been resolved any better - all customers were restored financially on their terms, apologized to, and we've moved forward to create product with full transparency and customers have the ability to choose to buy our products or not based on what they know about my past and Vertex's. Your comment isn't actually looking at the pedal that's the subject of the video, we did manufacture this product (Steel String Clean Drive MKII), and by all accounts this NOT a re-branded product. This is something you can easily see if you open the pedal up or look at a photo of the PCB (which are widely available online). I think if you're objectively looking at what's presented in this video, it's not a "take-down" of NUX or their product in any way. I think many have jumped to conclusions prior to evaluating the claims in the video and the nature of what it's actually about and inferred the most uncharitable intent of the video based on their prejudices.
Wonder what would of happened if the NUX gain was turned down and not left at noon.
I hope you're not going to talk about the morals of copying pedals 👀
All is explained in the video
They actually cloned “free the tone” and not you.
I heard one time there was a pedal builder who didn’t even bother cloning . The guy took a cheap $50 pedal, re housed it and sold it for $200 , Eventually he was found out. Wonder what happened with that guy . Anyone know ?
Touché ❗ 😂
He accepted his mistake and went to make some amazing pedals
haha ...low jab ;)
This gets really old. Please move on
@@eanroad to be fair you repeatedly saying these kind of totally legitimate comments are “getting old” on multiple comments on this video is getting pretty old too! 🤷🏼♂️
Look, this guy didn’t just clone a pedal (he himself is clear that this NUX pedal isn’t a clone by the way anyway, it’s a totally different circuit) he bought someone else’s product and rebranded it. And he apologised and took steps ONLY WHEN HE WAS FOUND OUT and had no alternative but to do so. Now, it’s up to each person whether or not they accept and forgive... you do... others don’t and they’re totally entitled to their opinion and to state it on this UA-cam video. Put it this way - I for one won’t ever be buying a Vertex product just like I won’t ever be buying a Fulltone product or a John Cruz built guitar (for different reasons but still one of my own personal view on what is ethical and what is not).
Hypocritical as heck. Your Dumble whatever pedal is a Zendrive sans 1 of the controls. The Steel String is an AMZ circuit. Another of your pedals is an Ibanez SD-9. You just sell them in a different package. I didn't even care which sounds "best", just come out clear on the cloning you do yourself, Mr. VERTEX.
Lago, I make no claim that I invented any unique circuitry here, just that it's the one that sounded right based on the goal to sound closest to the Dumble amplifier itself. In the analog domain, especially among overdrives, there's little room left where you're not going to overlap and those stating otherwise lack an understanding of the larger body of work or are deranged. When we use a circuit heavily, we name it when asked without pretense. The Vertex Steel String is no more a clone of a Jack Orman Booster is no more than it could be of 20 other pedals. Even a lazy analysis of the two pedals would tell you that. The Orman unit has ONE control - volume. The Steel String has FOUR controls - volume, gain, filter, rock/jazz. The muFET design that our Steel String is based on, it is nothing new or proprietary and we've never claimed any different. It was used by guys like Craig Anderton clear back in the early 1970's (maybe even late 60's). We voiced our Steel String pedal in accordance with the circuit archetype that most closely resembled the Dumble SSS when doing in person comparisons between the Dumble amp and our pedal through a Fender Hot Rod DeVille as our reference, and tweaked from there. The muFET circuit nailed the tone and feel, and that's what we went with for the design of the Steel String series of pedals. Our circuit isn't the same as Craig Anderton's muFET designs, nor is it of Orman's (who came after Anderton), but certainly has many things in common to the same degree as any other analog overdrive or boost in the marketplace. Our use of muFETs is about as common as what you'd see in pedal derivatives from the App Notes section from National Semiconductors (the genesis for many pedals we know and love today).
You copied an amp design from someone else. They copied that same amp design.
You don’t get to say anything, especially since the wah incident.
Even then your pedal is just a common jfet amplifier into a jfet mu-amp, neither of which you invented.
Its worse than that. It's a straight lift of Jack Orman's V2.5 mini Booster with a couple of component changes suggested by Jack to boost the gain and bring in some dirt.
Came here to say this.
Reisenden, and we clearly state all that in the video and the muFET design as well. Watch it and you'll see.
@@tomtrinder5468 The Vertex Steel String is no more a clone of a Jack Orman Booster is no more than it could be of 20 other pedals. Even a lazy analysis of the two pedals would tell you that. The Orman unit has ONE control - volume. The Steel String has FOUR controls - volume, gain, filter, rock/jazz. The muFET design that our Steel String is based on, it is nothing new or proprietary and we've never claimed any different. It was used by guys like Craig Anderton clear back in the early 1970's (maybe even late 60's). We voiced our Steel String pedal in accordance with the circuit archetype that most closely resembled the Dumble SSS when doing in person comparisons between the Dumble amp and our pedal through a Fender Hot Rod DeVille as our reference, and tweaked from there. The muFET circuit nailed the tone and feel, and that's what we went with for the design of the Steel String series of pedals. Our circuit isn't the same as Craig Anderton's muFET designs, nor is it of Orman's (who came after Anderton), but certainly has many things in common to the same degree as any other analog overdrive or boost in the marketplace. Our use of muFETs is about as common as what you'd see in pedal derivatives from the App Notes section from National Semiconductors (the genesis for many pedals we know and love today).
@@tomtrinder5468 see my comments to Wayne Gram earlier, then please complain about Jack Orman lifting the circuit from those before him! aI do not understand your attacks on Vertex on this, as if you research it properly, you will find many other pedals with copies of the same Mu follower? It is very interesting that if Jack had not released this circuit for the DIY, you would not be able to "claim" Jack was cloned! You talk as it f he was the inventor of this topology. He was not, but how would you know? Please find other pedals using the same circuit and go on their forums and say the same about them.
"All knobs at noon" isn't really a fair comparison. As we've seen from many other drive shootouts, components can vary, tolerances can diverge. Handbuilt boutique pedals aside, you can take any two consecutive pedals fresh off the production line at MXR and they won't exactly match, even given the same circuit and components. Vintage fuzz circuits in particular are prone to wild variations (particularly when using NOS parts) and must be hand-tuned by an operator with ears and experience enough to ensure that the intended goal is met.
Rigorous blind A/B testing might be more 'scientific', but it's virtually impossible to level-match, due to the factors noted above, so what can we do? I'd suggest getting the best, most ideal tone possible from Pedal A and seeing if we can match that with Pedal B. That seems fair enough, and it's what Josh Scott would do.
No, you didn't get cloned.
A million pedals are in a similar sized enclosure with three knobs. The only reason the pedals look similar, is that you are both copying the Dumble colour, knobs and font. Vertex made theirs look like that to get some reflected glory from the Dumble. That's what Nux are doing too, not to get any reflected glory from Vertex
You mean that somebody cloned the pedal that you bought from somebody else and rebranded with a price hike.
What happened with the Axis Wah (a re-branding of a BBE Wah) and the cloning of the Vertex Steel String as the Nux Steel Singer are fundamentally different and incomparable. With the Axis Wah, I was purchasing the wah directly from BBE with their full knowledge, in my company name, and they were getting paid the same as if they sold it to any other dealer in their network. You can see that plainly on this invoice example from 2013 where my name and my company name are all clearly spelled out here: drive.google.com/file/d/1p2eoqWOaNO4otufq2Ux35luhYLakIpTb. By contrast, with the Nux, there is no re-branding. I don’t get paid by Nux when they sell a Steel Singer pedal. They’re cloning, at least aesthetically, the look of our Steel String. As I state in the video, that’s their right. I have no claim to the look, I have no claim to inventing the use of muFET circuits. What Nux is doing is all fair game as said in the video. The point of the video is “I Got Cloned!” Well...kinda. We got cloned, but the clone really isn’t a clone. It doesn’t sound like our pedal, but looks a lot like our pedal. The Nux Steel Singer does sound good as I said - just not particularly Dumbley to my ears, and more like a Tweed type break up. More gain, more treble, more compressed than the Vertex Steel String. Both sound good in their own right, they just don’t have any sonic overlap where I see them as being in the same ballpark.
@@VertexEffectsInc, so the story changes again. Amazing. Yeah, they knew that you bought them, but not that you were defrauding your customers by misrepresenting what you were selling.
Also, isn't your pedal just "cloning" the look of a Dumble Steel String Singer amp? So, how is what they're doing any worse?
@@tomscioscia9869 I'm not sure what's changed, if you've ever asked, I'm always said we purchased these directly from BBE in our company name. That's the truth. If you watch the video, the aesthetic point is covered - we have no claim to that any more than Nux does. Sounds like you didn't watch the video.
@@VertexEffectsInc , so if you received an order for 100 of your pedals from my company and then found me selling a pedal in the same category for four times the price without any mention of your pedal you'd be cool with that?
@@tomscioscia9869 Why would he not? He makes the same amount of money and his sales go up, just like he did for Barcus Berry. Barcus Berry was very pleased to sell more pedals.
Seems likea variation of what Mason has pulled on others has been pulled on him. His pedal is just two Mu amps and a Big Muff Pi tone control. The Mu amps harken back to R.G Keen if memory serves, so it's neither his idea, nor a new idea. You build something, and make big claims about it, or put a high price tag on it, and it will be cloned. If it weren't for other people's ideas and cloning neither JHS nor Nick Greer would have anything to offer. so forget about it and move on. Bill Finnegan had it worse. His Klon was actually a new idea, and as close as you can get to an original circuit, and he's been cloned a thousand ways to Sunday.
By doing this video Mason just draws more attention to the Nux product. Any press is good press.
Just move on and let it be.
I think you're making an argument that I don't make, nor does the videos make. I make no claim for this to be a circuit that I invented, my only claim is that this pedal most closely resembles a Dumble Steel String Singer through a clean amp based on my process of voicing the pedal against a real Dumble SSS amp. It could have just as easily any number of other common circuit archetypes, it just so happened that this combination was best. This style of Mu Amp circuit actually predates R.G. Keen by decades and is in the National Semi Conductors Application Notes decades before R.G. was on the scene. However, many guys, including R.G. Keen, Anderton, and Jack Orman have all done different pedals using these and have even provided DIY schematics and suggestions on how builders might use such components for various application in guitar pedals. However, this pedal, despite using Mu Amps doesn't resemble their values at all...pretty much any interpretation of the Mu Amp circuits I've seen for any of the above builders have a different value for pretty much every part of the circuit, nor do they all have tone controls or a gain control, or further EQ's via toggle. For all intents and purposes, our pedal is voiced differently, and if you were to do a DIY kit from any of the builders above, you'd have a different sounding pedal all together. Moreover, the video doesn't seek to dethrone the NUX pedal...it asks the question, "Are They The Same?" I feel that the video is quite charitable to the pedal and finds that they're not the same, yet the NUX sounds quite good and this is acknowledged in the video.
@@VertexEffectsInc Exactly; Nux is predating the image and look of Vertex pedal. Investing on a new product branding is expensive; copying the way the pedal look is like saying "buy ours not Vertex's, because is the same thing, at a portion of the price". Make the pedal, put red on it and name it "my great od pedal", and sell it from scratch.
Lmao. You are crying out you got copied when you also copied your pedal from another product.
LMAO you didn't even watch the video. Nobody is crying out.
That appeared to be a theme here in the comments Der Red.
Na you didn't get cloned bud. It's no a clone under the trades description act in the uk. Respect. Stay Healthy all.
If you watch the video we come to the same conclusion, we didn't get cloned, the two devices sound fundamentally different.
@@VertexEffectsInc did watch it bud and gave my opinion as requested, Speaking as a clueless noodler unfortunately we mostly don't have the opportunity to try these things side by side before we buy. To watch demos of pedals on utube is unreliable, unless guys like yourself take the time to produce the educational video you did, us noodlers are shooting in the dark. So thanks for taking the time. Regards willie.
@@VertexEffectsInc what do you mean in the beginning of the video then when you said "I got cloned"?
Bruh...
*If the design language isn't YOUR'S, how do you know they were trying to clone YOUR circuit??*
Maybe they were trying to clone a different pedal like Free the Tone Steel String Slinger
How convenient you are not analyzing the schematic...
😑🙄
David, we state we have no claim to the look in the video. However, there are plenty of Dumble style pedals out there, yet somehow we can distinguish them from one another with specific branding to differentiate them so we don't accidentally buy a Way Huge Overrated Special when we thought we were buying a Caroline Hawaiian Pizza. Certainly we all use a rough aesthetic design, similar color pallet, but still have some distinctions between our models visually if not electronically. Nowhere in their literature do you see anything mentioning that it has any relationship to the Free The Tone pedal, you can see that for yourself here: www.nuxefx.com/steel-singer-drive.html. How would I or anyone else pick the FTT out of obscurity of the thousands of circuits out there for this pedal to be based on. It's not as if the FTT was a well know and highly sought after circuit for the Dumble clean tone. I'd seen it before, but have never seen one in person other than when I chatted with Yuki from FTT at NAMM a year ago. Bottom line is that the NUX pedal, if it is a FTT Steel Slinger pedal, it in no way resembles the look of a Free The Tone Pedal, and resembles no other Steel String Singer in-a-box pedal but ours (I'm only aware of the J Rockett Lenny and the Free The Tone versions outside of our pedal). The names of the controls are the same, the names of the pedal is difference by one letter "String" versus "Singer". Anyone seeing the pedals side by side would presume that the Nux is a generic of the Vertex Steel String. Even several Craigslist ads state in their titles and descriptions that the Nux is a "Vertex Steel String Knock Off", see here for example: boston.craigslist.org/gbs/msg/d/somerville-guitar-effects-pedal-nux/7251753250.html . This sort of thing was the exact reason that we made this video, not to say that the Nux pedal is bad, it's not. It's to say that it's not the same as our pedal and although they look to be the same pedal, they're not. We don't need to examine the schematic and draw it up to determine if they're roughly the same pedal or not, the spec sheet alone would tell you that there's already differences between the two.
I dunno man, I really like your videos and I've learned a lot from em, but you might have wanted to let sleeping wahs lie. It'd be like if I made a video calling out people who do idiotic things after drinking too much at the office holiday party. Just change your name and move to a new town and try to move on...
Where do you see me calling them out? What in particular did you find uncharitable about the analysis in the video? I'm not sure how it could be any less editorialized.
@@VertexEffectsInc Fair enough, "calling out" was the wrong term but that wasn't really my point, you are indeed being totally fair and unbiased and all that, I'm just saying you have attracted a lot of negativity and criticism by making this video that puts the spotlight on the subject of copied designs and reminds people of something kind of dumb and shady you did years ago. Believe me, you are not alone in doing that, you just got caught, and now everyone wants to feel bigger about themselves and bully you again. I'm not trying to be a d*ck, honestly just saying it's too bad as your channel has a lot to offer and now we're back down this stupid TGP rabbit hole.
@@tripledoubletroubful I can't change my past. I did what I did, and cleaned it up the very best I could. For some that was enough, for others it's unforgivable and they'll come after me whenever they can. I can't let that dictate what I make videos about - they'll always be present as a consequence of a bad choice I made as a 26 year-old inexperienced and dumb businessman. The fact is, people that watch this channel have been asking about this for months and I wanted to do as dispassionate a comparison as I could as the maker of the pedal on the other side of this. Some here say I deserve it, that's not for me to say. The fact is, however, that if it's happening to me, it's going to happen to someone they like in short order. The clones aren't going away, and if you're making waves and selling pedals, you're on the chopping block for companies that are looking to release cheaper alternatives. Poking a hole in my raft, is also poking a hole in their revered pedal brand's raft upstream.
Came here to research the vertex and IMMEDIATELY fell in love with and bought the Nux.
Enjoy!
Nux all the way for me! The vertex of course are good, but that NuX sounded fantastic!
Maybe not even a clone of vertex😯
I like the nux too, but the vertex pedals do sound great too.
i'm sure if you tweak the knobs just a little maybe you can achieve same tone in each pedal, no body in the world ever uses a pedal just everything at noon.
It’s possible that we could get close, but the pedals are very different sonically, and we wanted to show that by setting everything to noon
I have every steel string Vertex has released, none of them have "this type" of gain. Even if you dime them. That's not the purpose of the pedal. The Nux at noon sounding like an Mt-2 like we about to djent
Over my 18+ years of playing guitar and examining/comparing pedal circuitry, I came to the conclusion long ago that almost every pedal is a clone to most degrees.
Especially in the analog overdrive domain
Watch John Nathan Cordy’s video. You didn’t get cloned.
I just watched it.
Oh..kay. I also did a little research on Vertex. Wow. So much controversy. I just don't know what to say at this point.
Modular Beat Maker - where in the video do we say we were actually cloned? We stated clearly that the thesis is, "are the two pedals the same?" The conclusion in our video was that they're not the same, but both sound great in their own right. I don't know what the Nux is based on, but I they certainly look very close to our pedal and I think may have hoped to capitalized on that, but I have no claim to the look, in the end we're all trying to look like Dumbles.
@@VertexEffectsInc Nux claim it is a clone of a Free The Tone pedal.
Paul Cochrane of the "Timmy" pedal fame said that, given the fact that, more or less *the entire industry* is based on cloning and tweaking a few basic OG designs, if folks are going to condemn you then perhaps it's time to take a closer look at a few of "the darlings of TGP".
Personally?
I think you're at your best when giving advice about rig building. Doing a cloning video was maybe not the wisest choice. Surely you had to know that you were kicking up a hornet's nest? Getting defensive just makes it look worse.
Optics. Very important.
@@VertexEffectsInc one example is that you said you were cloned at the beginning of the video
Cato Liu completely agree. I’m shocked he even questioned “where in the video do we say were were actually cloned” it’s really mind blowing and I feel like something is really off here.
I think the NU-X clones Free The Tone ‘s circuit, not yours.
I'm not sure what it is...I've not seen any indication of it on their site or any talk of the circuit until after our video was made. All we determined in the video is that they're different pedals that look about the same.
If you are trying to claim that another company cloned your pedal, isn't the schematic the most important thing to look at? Am I missing something here...?
Watch the video and we unpack why we don't do this beyond just looking at the overall specs.
This is just bait for the "China bad" crowd.
Jokes aside, ideas are inherently un-ownable. What good is a fucking idea if it cannot be shared. There is only so much ownership an idea can have. And products are just material manifestations of ideas. Imagine if Leo Fender's estate started suing every company that took his products or designs and turned it into something else: will we be left with a guitar market? True innovation can only happen when one borrows ideas and builds upon them. There is nothing that is truly unique under the sun; we are all reflections of the people and beliefs we are surrounded by. There is only so far one can go in trying to ethicise the issue of pedal clones. Is your pedal someone else's exact pedal in a different housing? Then you're just being lazy and cheating people. Is your pedal based on someone else's pedal but does more/different things? Good, you're building on something that came before you. Mason's past actions were "bad" because he was being lazy and cheating. But if not having original ideas were the problem, even the Steel String is bad, and so is the Timmy, or the King of Tone, or Morgans and Friedmans, or Dr. Z, or even the bloody Steel String Singer, all guitars except for Fenders and Gibsons, or any other pedal/amp/guitar that started out as something else.
Dude. Leo Fender took out a bunch of patents to prevent himself from losing in court if he did need to sue someone. The way it works in the USA is some ner do well WILL copy you/rip you off if you are successful - that's just the way people are - selfish thieves to be honest. If you have a copy right or patent you can sue them and win - and put them out of business. That's how you protect your intellectual property. Now, if you started your business as a cloner yourself, you can't cry about someone cloning the cloner, right?
I agree it's the nature of the business and as I said with this pedal I have no claim to propriety with the product.
I’m waiting for the “Amazon Basics” version now - hahahahaha!!!
Amazon Basics pedals would fly off the shelves 🔥🔥
@Bill Hayes Check this out ua-cam.com/video/hHxEQ264UWI/v-deo.html Close to the end of the video the guy shows the circuit board of the Amazon basic pedal. And yes that one was made by NUX
Everything on Noon ain't apple to apple comparison.
It would be a fair comparison if you try to dial in the sound as close as it gets.
Btw. pedal industry lives of cloning, tweaking, and reinventing for decades.
We're comparing if they're the same pedal, e.g. "a clone" if one pedal is drastically different than the other at roughly 50% of the capacity of the pedal, I think it's safe to say they're not the same. This was the thesis of the entire video, "are the two pedals the same (clones) or are they different?"
All at noon, with pot tolerances what they are, may not be the fair comparison. Can you get it sound close by tweaking, working around with those tolerances would be a better comparison. And I am sure yours will still be better. And having a lot of second best cheapos out in the wild will only increase your sales. So good for you. Don’t be bitter. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
My intent here was to set them all at noon and that if they were the same (outside of the spec sheet being quite different) were we even in the ballpark. Fundamentally, they were different. If it's 3-4x the gain at noon, it's not going to get into the vibe of the Steel String which is really more of a low gain overdrive or high gain boost at best, even at max gain. That's not something that can be chalked up to tolerances. There's a fundamental gain structure difference, EQ, and feel between the two units. I'm sure there will be more knob-turning demos to come from other UA-camrs.
Mason, you seem like a really friendly and good guy. And you must be knowledgeable and skilled for the players of certain caliber and renown to trust you with their boards. But this type of video seems a little inapt considering several factors. I know you’ve apologized for not going through the effort in cloning, but in simply re-badging pedals. Secondly, schematically, this isn’t a clone of your pedal. It’s a free the tone pedal. Thirdly, isn’t everyone ripping off Alexander? I mean you’re profiting off his sound, work, (font as you accused nux of doing) and amp models. I think all that’s fine, it’s just a little unbecoming to hold up your product as “the real thing”, especially when it’s not even your circuit. It appears as a poorly disguised promotion of your product.
Again man, you’re a likable guy. We’ve all seen growth and progress in your company, and in you as a person. I think you’re better than this.
On point two, how would anyone - even me know this? There is no indication at the time this video was made that it had any relationship to any other pedal or purported to be a clone of something else despite looking like our product, same control names, same pedal name minus a letter, etc. Nothing from Nux suggested it had any relationship to Free the Tone. The only reason I become aware of it is that an endorser of the product post that information publicly, before that there was no mention of it. I say in the video clearly that they're not the same pedal and state that if it's a clone it's not an accurate one and could be something different altogether. Point three I state verbatim in the video. Where I disagree with your assessment is that it's not unique to me to be creating a Dumble emulating pedal - many companies do this. Yet were able to create distinctions between them even with a shared aesthetic whether that's Dunlop/Way Huge, Caroline Guitar Pedal, J Rockett. We're invoking that look, yet it's clear that we've make distinctions between each other in our name choices, graphical layout etc. With Nux, it appears that they're trying to use a model that's tried and true, and even if it's Free The Tone inside, it's clearly using a look that we adapted a Dumble look for in the pedal market as most pedal buyers have no idea what the Free The Tone Steel Singer pedal is. I have no claim to that look no matter which way you cut it, but I think it's disingenuous to say that they didn't hope to ride our coat tails in creating a similar looking pedal that an unknowing customer would view a cheaper Steel String pedal when it's not - it's a totally different circuit. Nobody is going to buy that pedal and think they're getting a Free The Tone pedal clone looking at the pedal on its face. If you buy a generic box of Corn Flakes at a grocery, you're going to think you're getting Corn Flakes when you open it up, no Cheerios. My intent here was not to prop my pedal up as better...if I missed the mark that wasn't the intention. My intent was to say "don't judge the real pedal by the clone" - they're often not the same, and in this case completely different circuits. As someone on the manufacturing end, I can tell you that it's common that someone tries a clone of a product that they don't bond with and blame the pedal the clone is based on never having tried the real deal. It creates a false equivalency and doesn't really measure up in the meaningful ways that makes the authentic pedal what it is. Perhaps I could have been more thoughtful in the presentation of the two products. I felt it was pretty charitable but also the like/dislike ratio is lower than usual - in the high 60 - low 70% range compared to our normal mid 90% range. This is a consideration for future videos in this fashion and may be something I need to get more external feedback on to better craft the message. Conversely, The Gear Page makes up about 29% of the traffic to this video (normally it's less than 1%) - a place where I'm almost universally hated. Ironically this 29% traffic attribution almost mirrors my dislike ratio. Could be unrelated, but it could also explain why it appears to be more negatively received. With that said, it's hard for me to reconcile if the real opinions on this are weighted by a concentrated group of dissenting voices or if the message of the video is truly self interested at its core and turned people off that would ordinarily like our videos. Certainly a worth question for some soul searching. Thanks for your comment and feedback, and thank you for watching!
@@VertexEffectsInc I was right... you are a good guy :)
I meant that in sincerity and not sarcasm. I appreciate and respect your response.
I think whats REALLY disingenuous is that you want potential customers to think your pedal sounds anything close to a Dumble amp
While creating the Steel String, we used a Dumble Steel String Singer to dial in the tone. If you don’t think we nailed it, you’re entitled to that opinion and appreciate your transparency.
hey Anthony....i actually own several REAL DUMBLES.... and the vertex stuff does get quite close, when it comes to a pedal ...to sound like a real dumble.... princeton reverb into a SS pedal actually can track and sound quite close to a real dumble tone.... so, yeah.... im happy... if you ever get a chance to play a real dumble with those pedals....let us all know your opinion then.... many people like to make comments like this, but they themselves dont have the access to a real dumble.... no harm no foul of course.... everyone hears things their own way..... ;)
happy holidays!
@@TravisHY he doesnt say it is a dumble.... he says the pedal sounds like a dumble.... just like how anyone that claims to have made a brown sound pedal that does the VanHalen thing isnt claiming that theres a 100 watt plexi and variac in the pedal..... 'sounds like' and 'is' is 2 very different things....
Pedals ultimately are made to augment your tone and playing. An amp in a box pedal is supposed to give you a flavor reminiscent of said amp, of course nothing beats the true thing but then again, how many people have 6 figures to blow on an amp? Hell if I had $200-300k to spend, I wouldn't buy an amp in the first place i'd get myself a lamborghini or mclaren.
@@dannyllerenatv8635 totally agree. about pedals brotha... i will say it is nice to have a pedal that can emulate tones that inspire, especially tones that copy out of reach pricewise amps.... if you had 200-300k to blow, id try and talk you out of the mclaren or lambo...money pit.... ive watched my dumble go from 5-6 figures... if you buy dumble ONLY for playing and analyzing tone, yer business sense is off....heheh
hey...when you do get that lambo someday, come pick me up!!!!! hahahah after the drive we can crank up some amps!
I know "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", but I am sorry, in this case I don't think you have been "cloned" at all!
Your Steel String is already based on the Dumble Steel String Singer. Both on visuals and sound, as you yourself pointed out. Nux in this case seems to be doing their own take on the same known amp - and, as you yourself pointed out, both pedals are different in both quality and tone. You did not analyze the circuits but, based on other factors (like voltage and consumption) we can safely assume that both circuits are different. The only common thing between both products is the visual and the name - which is not surprising since both are based on the same amp.
We all know that Nux is famous for cloning popular circuits, but it simply doesn't seem to be the case here. It is just that both you and Nux are trying your own takes on the same amp - but are achieving very different results, as you yourself pointed out. Even if I think Nux is doing a worse job than you at emulating the Dumble Steel String Singer, there is nothing that says they can't try.
So don't worry - you did not have been cloned.
This is the best take
This seems to echo what the video asserts, does it not?
@@VertexEffectsInc I don't think so. In the video you talk about "infringements" and "ethical ramifications" of Nux actions, clearly stating that the Nux pedal is, in tour view, a clone of yours. I on the other hand state the exact opposite.
@@thiagodiascosta3582 I say there are no ramifications other than that they've used a similar look to ours to capitalize on a price motivated customer that is familiar with a popular pedal (Steel String) and present their own pedal with a similar look, control names, pedal name, etc. in hopes to recruit some of the low hanging fruit. I can't prove that, but I think if you're intellectually honest about the intent of the aesthetic choices, more people are going to recognize the look before any talk of a schematic will come in to play (if it ever comes into play).
Didn’t you just wholesale rip people off selling Wahs for 4x what you bought, when it was a cheap pedal and you’d epoxy’d it to look like it was yours
Eben, it was me, and this was resolved with customers and dealers more than six years ago and had nothing to do with cloning. If you care to watch the video I think you'll find a fairly favorable perspective on the pedal and you might even want to purchase the Nux version after the video is through.
@Andrew D out here casting stones like you're perfect. A very hateful thing to say.
Someone does the time takes accountability tries to move forward and builds a whole UA-cam dedicated to helping people and showing that he is on the up and up ... and you say words that cast harsh judgement. This a wonderful video.
Not many builders if any would go this far and to show... with care, the differences between their product and another who cloned their product.
@Andrew D watch the video. The thesis is, did I get cloned and are the two pedals the same. The video unpacks that and favorably to Nux. If you came to a different conclusion, let me know where you thought the analysis deviated from this in the video.
Personally I think that is ok to clone a pedal and sell it at a lower price. I prefer purchasing the original pedals to support pedals creators but not all people can afford pricey pedals. The SSS seems to be a very nice pedal and I will purchase the one made by Vertex. BTW, many thanks for all your videos about pedalboards :)
Update after seeing the video:
First, many thanks for this video. I would have thought that the Nux would be more similar to the Vertex. Now, I feel that, unfortunately ,they are two completely different pedals. I wish the Nux would be more similar than the Vertex since they look so similar. So, I would not purchase any Nux pedal just to give a try since they are too far from the original. Finally, I must say that I love the tone of the two Vertex model but I will certainly purchase the Supreme version :) Keep up the good work! 👍 Happy Holiday!
I look forward to your review of the video! Thank you for watching!
Why not buying an actual dumble if you like original stuffs?
@@jimyang8824 if you got the dough, do it!
It's not a Vertex Steel String clone, it's more Free the Tone Steel Slinger style?
Thanks for watching! Nowhere in the video is that disputed. We say we don't know what it is, we conclude it's just not the same as pedal, the Steel String. It's clear that no matter what it is (Free the Tone or otherwise), the Nux pedal was hoping to draw comparisons between our device and attract a similar customer that may not be willing to spend $200. I appreciate that fact, as say so in the video - a $200 won't be for everyone. I do think however that a customer looking at the two pedals would assume a sonic relationship based on the name, the controls being the same names, and the name itself being a few letters off and stating "Clean Drive" on the pedal. There's nothing on the pedal that would tell you that it had any relationship to Free the Tone, nor was that advertised until after this video released for anything that I could find. Seeing these two pedals side by side would be like seeing a box of Cornflakes and generic box of Cornflakes on a grocery isle. Let's call the generic box "Cornfakes". The customer is going to presume from the look and the name that these two cereals are essentially the same product. Just as when Nux styles a pedal this way, of all the possible ways to invoke the Dumble look, with all of the similarities to our Steel String pedal, I think the customer will presume they're the same product and not just some other Dumble pedal.
Based on the past, perhaps a little cosmic payback.....
It's me they're doing it to now, but what about when it's a company you like? Certainly they're coming for anyone with a popular product.
NUX rules!!!!
Thanks for watching!
As a proud pedal manufacturer (and rightly so) I think that unfortunately you've missed the point. Players who are happy to spend £40/$40 for a pedal that sounds like a Dumble haven't got a clue what a Dumble sounds like and possibly don't care. They're more likely to be looking for a very low gain pedal and are willing to take a punt on £40. The vast majority of players have no idea what a Dumble sounds like, but they know what a nice sounding pedal sounds like and celebrate if it doesn't cost much. Similarly, 'modelling' pedals may or may not sound like the original amp that their imitating, but really all that matters is does it sound good and can I use that sound. Incidentally, my Nux Steel Singer should arrive today and I've ordered it as a very low gain pedal for £39 - hooray. I didn't know Vertex made a Dumble-sounding pedal but unfortunately wouldn't have been interested anyway
He chose to willingly omit and lie about the fact that he knows this pedal is not a clone of his, but of a Free the Tone pedal. He doesn't want to show and compare the circuits because he knows they are different. So he just doesn't want to and then he can complain about them being lazy and bad and play the victim all day long
Good exposition. This reminds me of the only pedal purchase that I have yet regretted, where I allowed price to be one of the engineering criteria. YMMV, that just doesn't work out for me. That one had a noise floor a couple storeys upstairs of where I wanted it. Anyway if you have soldered a circuit or two, you can appreciate the value of the person who actually crafts the unit, and I don't see any reason not to pay them fairly. It's all up to what you value, and your means. I actually buy way, way, beyond my budget, but that is just my preference. 💸
thanks for watching and for sharing your perspective.
What you didn’t do was try to make the Nux sound like the SS. “All knobs at noon” on your pedal might not be the same thing for the nux. Nux is probably just as good. This is what happens to millions of entrepreneurs throughout the world. Nux for 50 bux!!!
When we unpacked the Nux pedal and plugged it in, it was obvious that the two pedals were completely different sonically, and we wanted to show that by setting everything to noon.
Are you insane? I've tried plenty of Nux, and they are nowhere near the build and audio quality of what Vertex has been doing. Don't base it on the look or computer sound, You have to test them yourself. If done, it's obvious how much better Vertex is.
@@the_travelers_band
I have played them both and that’s a bit of stretch. Build/part quality? Sure, but high-end parts make a 5% tonal difference. The Nux is a really convincing sounding clone of a clone.
I dont know man... that nux sounds rough. I've played it, it just isn't what it "claims to be". Like he said in the video, it doesn't sound bad, it just isn't what it says it is. You can ask for a sprite and get a coke. Coke is still good, it just isn't sprite.
@@BuddyBlues
I suggest you go listen to other demos of the Nux. Mason could have gotten the pedal settings MUCH closer. I was impressed with the pedal.
You know you’ve made it when someone else clones your pedal. 😄
Yes indeed!
@@Bushprowler - Clone-ception. Dun dun dun. 😨
I thougth the Steel String Singer was a Clone of the Jack Orman boost. Meaning the Nu-X is just a Clone of a Clone..
It is no more than it could be of 20 other pedals. Even a pretty lazy overview of the two pedals would tell you that. The Orman unit has one control - volume. The Steel String has 4 controls - volume, gain, filter, rock/jazz. The muFET design that our Steel String is based on, it is nothing new or proprietary and we've never claimed any different. It was used by guys like Craig Anderton clear back in the early 1970's (maybe even late 60's). We voiced our Steel String pedal in accordance with the circuit archetype that most closely resembled the Dumble SSS when doing in person comparisons between the Dumble amp and our pedal through a Fender Hot Rod DeVille as our reference, and tweaked from there. The muFET circuit nailed the tone and feel, and that's what we went with for the design. Our circuit isn't the same as Craig Anderton's muFET designs, nor is it of Orman's (who came after Anderton) but certainly has many things in common to the same degree as any other analog overdrive or boost in the marketplace. Our use of muFETs is about as common as what you'd see in pedal derivatives of the App Notes section from National Semiconductors (the genesis for many pedals we know and love today).
@@VertexEffectsInc While all this is true, the current gear market simply demands transparency on these issues. You do not deny the Orman boost origins when asked, but most people playing/buying pedals don’t ask. Look at JHS for example. He used to clone pedals unabashedly with no credit, got called on it, and now he does credit and borderline advertises a lot of the original designs, and outlines what his circuit tweaks change. This borderline paranoia from pedal buyers came from the boutique boom of the 90’s/early 2000’s, where many makers were selling “holy grail” overdrive pedals for north of $300 that turned out to be slightly modified Tubescreamers with cool paint jobs and goop over the circuit board.
@@charliekrengel1344 I think we'd all be chasing our tails if every circuit had to have a disclaimer of all the things they borrowed from, the truth is with every pedal out there, they're going to overlap with many circuits as their's so little left in the analog domain with overdrives in particular - you're going to tread on somebody. If there is a clear connection, we're happy to acknowledge that. I've done this with our Dynamic Distortion, Nyle, and others where they're borrowing from other circuits overwhelmingly. I think there is a middle ground here that we're always working toward. I think that's the benefit of these sorts of discussions so I appreciate your comment!
@@VertexEffectsInc I totally agree with all your points on the issue. Making truly original analog gear is damn near impossible. I think the issue is more one of transparency. Especially with the BBE debacle in the past, I would be hyper aware and be doing everything you could to appear on the up and up. I understand completely what you mean about the lack of “original” designs in the market. But there are some circuits that are so revolutionary/legendary/recognizable it seems silly not to acknowledge them openly in marketing if using them as inspiration.
For example, a lot of people use Tubescreamers. These can be modded to give the pedal a bit more amp-like overdrive than the stock circuit and more bass. If I bought a pedal claiming to give my Fender amp a Marshall flavor, and after opening found a Tubescreamer with LED’s in the clipping section, I would feel mislead by the marketing. However, the same pedal marketed as a “modified tubescreamer circuit to give a classic Fender amp a more Marshally voice” Is completely transparent, and maintains the message of the original marketing.
@@charliekrengel1344 I was looking at many of the circuits out there and there are a huge amount out there that are clones of the tube screamer with no admitting of cloning. This appears normal for the industry.
Isn't NUX pronounced "New X", not "Nucks"?
Also, great video! Appreciate your perspective on clones.
You may be right- thanks for the support Lyon!
Not sure on the pronunciation. Thanks for watching!
I guess going for the any press is good press here (since you're getting torched)? I only made it about 3:30 before getting bored anyway so I don't know the punchline.
Either way I'm guessing both products are based on something else...is that the gist?
They're different circuits at the end of the day but look the same.
Nux prefers the term 'tribute pedals' :) I own two of these, the Horseman (Klon Centaur) and Analog Delay (Ibanez AD-80) and they both sound great.
NUX is not a bad company - they have some decent / interesting products and should probably stick to the products that distinguish them between all of the other Chinese "companies" - various multieffects processors etc. Amazon pedals are also made by NUX but I suspect, that even though it says that on the circuitboard, there are probably only a couple of companies in China that make all of the guitar pedals. Just browse trough what AliExpress has to offer and you'll see that the EQ, drive, reverb and other pedals are all the same but with different graphics and some fake "brand" names. Donner, Caline, Nux, Mooer, Rowin share a LOT of pedals.
Small pedal makers shouldn't worry too much about their pedal visuals being copied, since most of the people that buy a 18 $ overdrive probably aren't in the same category as people that are seeking specific boutique amp circuit replicas.
Thanks for this input, good points.
The vertex is jfet based and the nux has an ic. So, definitely not a clone.
So you agree with the video ;)
@@VertexEffectsInc I didn't watch the whole thing to be honest. But I'm saying you didn't get cloned circuit wise. I didn't want to get into a discussion about it, but I was wondering why the video was made in the first place when it's clear that two circuit boards you show are based on completely different architecture. Does that become apparent if I watched more of the video? One thing's certain is that I don't need the NUX on my pedal board if it's only a slightly tweaked Tubescreamer (note this is someone else's guess I've not seen a schematic myself - but in your video you do show an IC based circuit)- . I do however like JFET based circuits.
@DirkGentley42 sir? Do you know what bait is?
Herd it was a copy of the Free the tone Steal String Slinger, in another video.
It is.
NUX freely admit it.
I don't know what it's a copy of, the question I asked in the video as the thesis is "are they the same pedal?" We concluded that they were fundamentally different although both sounded good in their own right. I think unquestionably, irrespective of the circuit, they were hoping to appeal to the same audience as our pedal with this look, and certainly we're going for the Free The Tone look. But, as I say in the video, we have no claim to the look - Dumble started that.
why did you change the Thumbnail that said “I got cloned”? A guy did a response to your video exposing the title snd thumbnail you had before.
It was obvious that people felt misled by the title and thumbnail, and that was never our intention. So we changed it to be more representative of the video in response to our viewers.
@@VertexEffectsInc I respect the response 🔥👌🏽 I might just have to buy the SSS
@@teeveee841 if we miss the mark on something we try to correct it. Thanks for watching and the feedback!
Mason, how could you dare after what happened with your buisness. And it had to be about this pedal, yet another copy of the "Free The Tone String slinger". Shamefull !
Seen a lot of negative comments directed at these guys due to a past incident with copying pedals - what ever happened to second chances? People make mistakes all the time! Personally I use the Ultraphonix Overdrive and it sounds mint 👍🏻 Good video, and great pedals man!
Thanks for watching Jake!