Imitation the greatest form of flattery??

[nickyfzr]

Okay So I posted pics of a Fuzz Face I made on here 3 years ago:
"http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=88147.msg743042#msg743042".

Today I got an email advertisement from Chicago Music and if found this boutique Fuzz Face on their site:
"http://www.chicagomusicexchange.com/effects/distortion-fuzz/jam-pedals-fuzz-phrase-germanium-fuzz/".

I wonder when Jam pedals came out with theirs. It does look eerily similar no? I mean other than them using cheaper looking knobs you would guess they copied mine or I copied theirs which I can guarantee you I didn't. I know everyone thinks their kids are the best looking but I think mine looks better. Maybe I should start selling mine. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing I made a cool box.

Comments??

[R.G.]

Welcome to the internet.

[Kipper4]

good job man

[Gurner]

I always maintain, don't post anything you've created online unless you are content to see others profit from your blood sweat & tears.

I used to play Rugby (a bit like American football but without the girlie padding) but had to give it up, because everytime there was a 'scrum'....



......I thought they were all sneakily discussing how to profit from my circuit ideas

[artifus]

[Govmnt_Lacky]

I found it quite amusing that when you utilize the zooming tool you can see SEVERAL chips, nicks, and imperfections in the paint job on the Chicage music site. DEFINITELY NOT something I want to see when I am shelling out $275 for a Fuzz 

Who OK'd putting up that one for the web picture?? 

[Mark Hammer]

I won't take anything away from the very nice work you did on your own pedal.  It IS a cool box, but it bears noting that:

1) The image used by yourself and the one at Chicago Music is one of the more iconic and widely used images of Jimi.  Go a google image search for Jimi, and that one shows up again and again.  My own first exposure to it was as a B&W poster insert in Eye magazine in 1968 or so.  I think I still have it packed away in my office somewhere. (Eye was around for maybe two years, or less, before folding.  Many subsequent magazines have felt free to use the same title without infringing.)  So there is a statistical likelihood that, if someone wanted to stick a photo image of Jimi on a pedal, they'd use that one, if only because it is widely available as a high contrast image which is instantly recognizable as Jimi.

2) Use of facial and human images on pedals has become quite popular, for whatever reason.  I think the first one I ever saw was the "Woman Tone" pedal (wait, you mean there was a face on that one too?  ), but the recent Big Joe series has a photo image on it, and I think I've seen plenty of others.

So, I wouldn't be suspicious of having been exploited.  You just had the same idea as somebody else.  I'm sure that at one point, there were thousands of guys all over North America, thinking somebody else swiped their idea about putting two slices of processed cheese between two slices of white bread and grilling it on a frying pan.

But it was a really nice box you made.  I like the trim around the sides.  Classy.

[Jdansti]

Typed this up as Mark was responding:

Looks pretty close, but at the same time, I don't think it's a stretch to say that two or more people might make a purple (Purple Haze) Fuzz Face with a picture of Hendrix on it without knowledge of each other.  On the other hand, it's not a stretch to say that someone could have copied your work. We'll never know for sure...

I agree with Mark that yours looks pretty nice, in fact, much better than the "copy".

[trixdropd]

Okay So I posted pics of a Fuzz Face I made on here 3 years ago:
"http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=88147.msg743042#msg743042".

Today I got an email advertisement from Chicago Music and if found this boutique Fuzz Face on their site:
"http://www.chicagomusicexchange.com/effects/distortion-fuzz/jam-pedals-fuzz-phrase-germanium-fuzz/".

I wonder when Jam pedals came out with theirs. It does look eerily similar no? I mean other than them using cheaper looking knobs you would guess they copied mine or I copied theirs which I can guarantee you I didn't. I know everyone thinks their kids are the best looking but I think mine looks better. Maybe I should start selling mine. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing I made a cool box.

Comments??

It's just a fuzz face right? Hendrix played a fuzz face right? Do you own the rights to use The hendrix likeness? It seems dunlop is copying you too.. http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/Daily/News/Dunlop_Introduces_Hendrix_Limited_Edition_Cry_Baby_Fuzz_Face_Univibe_and_Octavio_Pedals.aspx

[Jdansti]

@ trixdropd:

Exactly what is your point?  Could you please be a little more direct?

[midwayfair]

Although I think "coincidence is the most likely explanation, it's worth noting that Jam pedals are all ridiculously overpriced clones with part of their "marking" done by forum plants. Jdansti: the paint chips add to the mojo, man. 

[Govmnt_Lacky]

Govmnt_Lacky Jdansti: the paint chips add to the mojo, man. 

Fixed Jon 

[markeebee]

For $275 I would expect Jimi to deliver it to my house, smash his face against the box so it leaves an imprint, and then give me a piggy back to the corner shop to buy some cider. 

[artifus]

Although I think "coincidence is the most likely explanation, it's worth noting that Jam pedals are all ridiculously overpriced clones with part of their "marking" done by forum plants. Jdansti: the paint chips add to the mojo, man.  

oh, come on. if i design and build cars for a hobby and consider them to be better quality (whatever that may mean to whoever) than what's available on the market i can't be jealous of ford or nissan for making a buck with a good business model can i? i don't agree with the current system and status quo but such as it is.

but the cave man comic posted above raises a good point - what if fire or the wheel had been 'protected'? where would we be technologically as a race now? doesn't such behaviour hold up our evolution? this is a lot scarier in the medical and pharmaceutical world of patents.

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Take the initiative. Go to work, and above all co-operate and don't hold back on one another or try to gain at the expense of another. Any success in such lopsidedness will be increasingly short-lived. These are the synergetic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us. They are not man-made laws. They are the infinitely accommodative laws of the intellectual integrity governing universe.

[Jdansti]

Jdansti: the paint chips add to the mojo, man. 

Hmm...  I wish that we're true because my pedals would sound better than they do and be worth more than $275.  Maybe I should take a hammer to them to increase their mojo! 

BTW, the JAM model looks like it also has some grime on it. Not very appealing to me.

[timd]

Jdansti: the paint chips add to the mojo, man. 

Hmm...  I wish that we're true because my pedals would sound better than they do and be worth more than $275.  Maybe I should take a hammer to them to increase their mojo! 

BTW, the JAM model looks like it also has some grime on it. Not very appealing to me.

I seem to recall someone posting something about an Ebay auction trying to unload a hammer damaged Danelectro pedal. The video in the listing actually showed the "modification" being performed. You might have to come up with another blunt instrument of choice to mojo them 

[Jdansti]

Jdansti: the paint chips add to the mojo, man. 

Hmm...  I wish that we're true because my pedals would sound better than they do and be worth more than $275.  Maybe I should take a hammer to them to increase their mojo! 

BTW, the JAM model looks like it also has some grime on it. Not very appealing to me.

I seem to recall someone posting something about an Ebay auction trying to unload a hammer damaged Danelectro pedal. The video in the listing actually showed the "modification" being performed. You might have to come up with another blunt instrument of choice to mojo them 

Dang!  Now someone's copying me, and they're doing it before I even post my ideas! 

[Thecomedian]

I always maintain, don't post anything you've created online unless you are content to see others profit from your blood sweat & tears.

I used to play Rugby (a bit like American football but without the girlie padding) but had to give it up, because everytime there was a 'scrum'....



......I thought they were all sneakily discussing how to profit from my circuit ideas

Weight of typical rugby player. 160-200 lb.
Weight of typical "According to a 2006 ESPN article, "The average weight in the NFL has grown by 10 percent since 1985 to a current average of 248 pounds. The heaviest position, offensive tackle, went from 281 pounds two decades ago to 318 pounds." "

Padding is there to keep you alive.

I've thought of things on my own before, that turned up a few years down the road that someone ELSE did and got credit for in the present, and I never posted my idea. If 1 million people are all using the same or very similar education systems or books to learn about a subject, it's a good bet they'll produce similar objects without discussing it.

There's too many variables to accuse anyone of idea stealing. Im sure Ford was upset when people "stole his car idea".

[davent]

I should be able to get a fortune for this... and Hendrix used one too, mojo, mojo,mojo...

[Jdansti]

I've thought of things on my own before, that turned up a few years down the road that someone ELSE did and got credit for in the present, and I never posted my idea.

This has happened to me in a really big way. This is no joke.  When I was about 7 years old (1969), I thought of an idea for a device that would be mounted in the dashboard of your car to aid in navigation. It would show a map of roads on a small display and show the position of your car on the map. You could tell it (voice command) where you wanted to go and it would direct you to your destination. The problem was that I didn't know of any technology that would allow this to happen, including the fact that there were no embedded microprocessors that I knew of back then, and the word "computer" wasn't a household word.  It turns out that GPS was under classified testing in the 60's, developed in the early 70's, and wasn't fully operational until the 90's.

At least my idea of a fully automated shoe lace tier appears to still be safe.