I was at a local electronics place today, it's really old and the component section isn't updated very much but they had this "Jamco" pack of 10 CD4049UB chips - all of them were unbranded no writing on them at all. I got home and did a test with my Red Llama between the unbranded chip and a Texas Instruments chip. The unbranded made a huge difference, much more than I was expecting. I love the Red Llama circuit but I feel its over the top sometimes - too much low end bass (muddy) and at the same time it had too many highs (shrill). The unbranded chip sounded like it narrowed the frequencies of the pedal... it tamed the bass and cut some of the real highs, made it smoother sounding when directly compared the TI chip.
Does anyone have any other suggestions for CD4049 brands? I know Fairchild and National Semiconductor made them but they are hard to find right now.
I've heard that even within the same brand, some individual chips sound better than others. Which makes sense, considering it's basically just two transistors in each inverter stage. The fewer the parts, the more those parts matter.