GGG or BYOC for a tube screamer kit

[gutsofgold]

any insight on the differences in this kits? i understand the BYOC kit includes quite a bit more mods but GGG doesn't tell you much about theirs.

anyone have experience with either or both?

[theundeadelvis]

I recommend GGG. JD has been a contributor to the community, his boards are very nice, and he seems quick to offer help. Also, if you search this forum you may turn up some controversy concerning some of BYOC's designs.

[BubbaKahuna]

I've built a few of both and use them side by side on my gigging rig. Both work fine and sound good. Neither have given me any trouble.

The BYOC does have more mods outlined in the instructions for the TS. For the most part BYOC kits have very detailed instruction sheets with lots of info and pictures for newbies. They also have professionally produced boards with solder-through holes, solder mask and silk screening of components which are a breeze to assemble. BYOC kits are very complete, ready to go and only require you to assemble them to have a working pedal. Finishing the enclosure and labels are of course up to you.

That being said, there are other considerations that might steer you away from a BYOC. One that I don't like is that all but one of his designs requires the power jack to be mounted next to the input jack on the forward side of the box. This can make powering a board full of pedals a PITA. Almost all GGG layouts have the power jack on the front end of the pedals, like most commercial pedals do. This layout makes running daisy chains for your 9vdc a lot easier.

Both will offer support in the form of message boards and will reply to emails directly as well. The prices are close to the same with BYOC seeming to run a little higher. Everything BYOC offers for sale is available in available as either complete kit or just the board. GGG Offers info on rolling your own on far more variety of pedals, but only sells kits for some of them and boards for more of them than whole kits.

Most of the GGG boards are single sided and made by JD himself with some being manufactured and double sided. All the BYOC boards are double sided manufactured. The fact that JD etches and drills most of his own boards isn't a drawback, they're very clean boards. They just don't have soldermask or silk screens on them.

If I want quick and fast without sourcing anything for different kits, I go BYOC. If I don't mind sourcing parts I always use GGG stuff.

Also, JD designs a lot of his stuff and gives full credit and disclosure of materials he doesn't personally own. BYOC uses mostly borrowed circuits, but also gives credit for where they came from. BYOC just doesn't design very many original designs, for example the BYOC Digital Delay is basically a Rebote v.1 delay. BYOC has a sticky on their message board about what it's a clone of. After all, BYOC stands for Build Your Own Clone. Sometimes it's of a commercial pedal, sometimes it's a clone of a DIY design.

Like I said, I have and regularly use both side by side. One does not work or sound better than the other. I lean toward the GGG stuff because of the jack layout. I don't hang out or go fishing with either owner so my observations are strictly as a satisfied customer of both.

YMMV of course.

Cheers,
- JJ

[Plinky]

JD's TS pcbs are now double sided and silk screened, and he's doing that to more of them every day. I've built a couple of TSs using just the board and I must say they are very nice. Much more compact than his older layout and very professional looking. They will fit nicely within a Small Bear 125B enclosure, could possibly fit in something smaller. I did have a problem with the first one I built. He forgot to update the instructions and left out the installation of a jumper to bypass the clipping mods he incorporated into the board. This has all been corrected now and everything is proper. JD is very quick to reply if you have any concerns while building it.

I couldn't say anything on the BYOC kits as I haven't built one yet. With so many TSs out there, I'm sure they all sound similar and I'm sure they all can be modified the same.

[Mark Hammer]

Take a peek at the Tonepad board too.  While "just" a board and not a complete kit, each board varies a little in how things are laid out, and you might find that one of them leans more towards how you wanted to situate things in the chassis more than another does, or a particular style of chassis and jack layout, or perhaps the amount of space set aside for specific components (sometimes people feel more strongly about a certain composition of capacitor, etc).

They're all likely to be excellent quality boards, provided with the best customer service possible.

[Gus]

I don't understand the TS kits.   I new or used ts5 or ts7 is cheap.

The Cool things with the TS7 are the knobs good for stage when retracted and boost switch plus they sell around $40.00 new last time I looked.  The ones I bought have jrc4558s.  Change a couple caps and what ever else IC etc. and have a real TS, plus the boost can be nice.

[Mark Hammer]

I don't understand the TS kits.   I new or used ts5 or ts7 is cheap.

The Cool things with the TS7 are the knobs good for stage when retracted and boost switch plus they sell around $40.00 new last time I looked.  The ones I bought have jrc4558s.  Change a couple caps and what ever else IC etc. and have a real TS, plus the boost can be nice.

All true except that:
1) Some people would prefer to use true bypass switching instead of FET switching.  Whether you agree or disagree with that perceived need is a separate matter.  The fact remains that the kits assume TB and the modded 2nd-hand pedals assume FET-switching.

2) Many people who purchase Sound-tank pedals for modding would like to include rehousing into that mod-job.  The 3rd party boards anticipate that final chassis home where the 2nd-hand Ibanez pedals don't.

3) Modding means removing parts and resoldering.  In some people's hands that is an invitation to lifted pads and/or fractured traces.  Practice will improve their soldering/desoldering technique, but may occur a little late for whatever 2nd-hand pedal they tried to mod/rehouse.

4) Existing boards are based around assumptions of the components to be used and their respective sizes.  Third-party boards assume purchasers will mod and tend to allow more space for components.

So, while you are quite correct on one level, on another, starting fresh can avoid certain hassles, particularly for beginners.   Besides, some people would like the experience of building a pedal themselves, start to finish, without having to do everything themselves.  You can make a cake from scratch.  You can buy a cake already baked.  Or you can compromise and get the fresh taste with less hassle by baking from a mix.  The BYOC/GGG/TP kits/boards are essentially baking from a mix.

[twangquack]

I don't understand the TS kits.   I new or used ts5 or ts7 is cheap.

Mark covered some important points, but what about an even more obvious one: this is a great, fun, highly moddable design you can do alot with (though it's been hashed and re-hashed, again and again). But this is a plus rather than a minus (if you like Tubescreamers in general). I have a friend, an old former bandmate, who has a TS9DX that he likes, but not hugely -- "It's OK, I wish it did more."  Well, my newest build certainly does more, as far as Tubescreamers go ...

I bought JD's board for a TS-808 clone and loved working with it -- professional, clean, with a layout that helped me plan all kinds of "what ifs" ... especially with the options for switchable clipping diodes and bass boost. I ended up using a Burr Brown (now TI?) OP2604AP, two "on/on/on" switches ("diode bank A & B" for various diode combinations; the reverse-junction MOSFET & red LED combo is very cool) along with a SPDT switch for selecting between the diode banks and a "soft-clip" (1N34A) option. Not to mention the bass boost switch which adds another 80nF parallel to C3 which is .1uF in my case, since I lowered R6 to 2k4. And the 1M gain/drive pot (along with that often-used Keeley "Less/ More" mod) makes it even more versatile, IMHO. And, as Mark mentioned, you can have (as this one has) true bypass.

It sounds GREAT! ... and it fired right up after assembly and careful layout of components (all top end stuff such as the 1uF box film caps, as an example). JD's board design really helped with planning it out, to add the switchable options. I mean, is this the kind of stuff you're going to get right outa the box? For one thing, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer as to the exact grade of the components used.

After finding so many good hints such as Mark's long post (forget where it was) about measuring clipping diodes, degrees of asymmetry versus symmetry, etc ... and then Jack's stuff about MOSFETs as clippers, other folks' great hints, R.G. Keen's "Technology of the Tubescreamer" ... I'd say why not go ahead and work something up, combine some of these great ideas/mods? Plus, it's fun deciding on your own wrinkles. (I love using a .068uF cap to ground -- instead of .22uF -- in the R/C network just before the tone control: sounds great with the OP2604AP chip, an overall brighter circuit but really smooth-sounding!). With so much info out there, this is a fun "must-build."

As for the the BYOC kit, I haven't seen it or used it but it appears to also be of high quality and may be the way to go if you don't want to source your own parts (which I really think is much of the fun).

[Gus]

It is a TS.  What one will last on the road the ts7 or the other case?   I am all for building stuff but the TS7 is so fairly priced and better made IMO and if you are going to build stuff you should learn to rework PCBs and change parts.  Other effects might make sense as a kit but a current very fairly(IMO) priced effect well made effect like the TS7 does not make sense.

Yeh the changes have been posted for years about the TS.  I modded my first ones in 95 before I saw things on the web. 

[DougH]

Modding an existing pedal can be a good way to get your feet wet in this hobby. I started amp building by modding first. When I reworked the PCB so much that traces started to lift, I threw out the PCB and installed my own circuit board. When the restrictions of the transformer, # of tubes, space, speaker, etc became limiting- I started building from scratch. And by that point I had enough experience to build from scratch and not be overwhelmed. It was a natural progression of events. If you can get a decent "modding platform" for the right price, it's not a bad way to go.

I don't really understand tube screamer kits either, but then again I don't understand the popularity of boutique tube screamer derivatives or the tube screamer in general, really... But I freely admit that's my problem.

[twangquack]

It is a TS.  What one will last on the road the ts7 or the other case?   I am all for building stuff but the TS7 is so fairly priced and better made IMO and if you are going to build stuff you should learn to rework PCBs and change parts.

Have done all that ... but sometimes rather than re-work a PCB or etch one using one of your own layouts (or work up, say, a quick vero layout to use with some stripboard from Aron, which is very high-quality), I think it's perfectly acceptable to buy a high-quality board from one of the usual DIY sources, thereby helping to support a business that provides a good benefit to this DIY community ... then go ahead and use that as the backbone of a project, TS or otherwise. Especially for a quick "need it soon" type of project.

If the issue is road-worthiness, I have seen lots of DIY stompboxes made by others (and have made some myself) that are more bomb-proof than some commercially manufactured effects. Not all, but if one were to use the TS7 and other similar quality effects for comparison, I can't say they are clearly better-made than some of these DIY ones. This review, first one listed, mirrors TS-7 reliability issues of several friends:

http://www.guitarzone.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t127042.html

And a mention of a touchy switch, which was also an issue with at least one former bandmate:

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/stomp-box/36898-boss-od-3-vs-ibanez-ts7.html

At least among those few musician/tinkerers I personally interact with, overall the reliability of the DIY pedals has been a bit better than some of the off-the-shelf stuff. No touchy switches, no crap-outs, even after much hard use. But then, reliability issues hinge solely on the craftsmanship of an effects pedal on an individual basis, for sure, and the quality of the parts used.

But Doug's advice about modding store-bought pedals is still good advice; but as for myself, I'd still rather build my own and control every last detail in both the construction and the sourcing of parts.