Ghost Drive Klon clone vs Wish Klon clone

[Lt. Bob]

I have both and find them pretty similar even down to construction although the silk screening is already coming off the Wish pedal.
But first the Ghost Drive build ........ You'll need to organize your parts first off.

I don't have any of those high falutin' fancy plastic boxes like Greg so I simply used the box that the kit came in, put numbers on it and stuck the parts into the foam

[Lt. Bob]

Here's some shots of the kit and circuit board as it's being done .... it's kinda tiny

[Lt. Bob]

and the soldering

[Lt. Bob]

And now the comparisons .....

[Lt. Bob]

And the clip

I did this like I'm gonna do a lot of pedals ..... simply putting a Teac DR-05 about 3 feet away from the amp slightly above it and pointing down toward the speaker using the built in condenser mics.
You can tell by my voice that it's just picking up the sound in the room and I find the playback to sound close to what I heard in the room.
Clean channel Mesa Mark V .... Stinnett guitar on middle position.
They sound pretty close I think ... the Wish has to be turned up more than the Ghost to get the same output.

That first set of chords, it's switching between the pedals every set of chords ..... then every other time with that 8th note thing.
I know which is which so after people give guesses I'll let you know.

.

[rayc]

No guesses from me.
Both sound decent and close - #1 had a little more of something in the treble zone on the last samples.

[Greg_L]

I'm gonna guess #2 is the Ghost Drive.

[Lt. Bob]

I'm gonna guess #2 is the Ghost Drive.

how the fuck did you do that?

[vomitHatSteve]

I can hear a difference. #2 is a little thicker and #1 lets a little more of your clean tone through.

With the dimed gain, I think I prefer #1.

But I have no idea how to ID which is which. (or how to tell them apart from the original, tbh)

[Lt. Bob]

I can hear a difference. #2 is a little thicker and #1 lets a little more of your clean tone through.

With the dimed gain, I think I prefer #1.

But I have no idea how to ID which is which. (or how to tell them apart from the original, tbh)

I hear a difference but I actually think it's down to how hard I picked .... they seem pretty responsive to how I picked and sometimes it seemed like that would bring out a bit of extra treble.
I've never fooled around with an original so I have to go by videos I've seen that say these two are pretty close to the original but I don't personally know that.
I slightly prefer #1 too.

[Greg_L]

how the fuck did you do that?

I can hear things, man.

[Lt. Bob]

I hear things

the audio book version of The Sixth Sense







But seriously good ears sir.

And looking at the pics, that Wish pedal is pretty well built huh?
Looks fairly similar to the Ghost Drive

[Greg_L]

I hear things

the audio book version of The Sixth Sense







But seriously good ears sir.

And looking at the pics, that Wish pedal is pretty well built huh?
Looks fairly similar to the Ghost Drive

Yup, totally.

Now that I have seen the schematic of an actual Klon and helped build a Ghost Drive, I'm pretty confident that Klon Centaurs are nothing special. The circuit is very special, and huge props to the guys that invented it. Innovative. They truly had an original idea and it worked. But I'm talking about the parts...they're nothing. There is no magic to the parts. They're not special. Any klone is good if it's built correctly and with the correct parts. Some might say that the NOS Russian germanium diodes used in the original are the secret sauce, but they aren't. They're just diodes. All of the klones built with the correct spec germanium diodes will get the job done. Good tone is still 100% up to the player.

What I hear in your clips that led me to believe the #2 is the Ghost Drive is the clarity in the treble and output. Knowing that the Ghost Drive is quite accurate to the real thing, and knowing that Centaurs are basically treble boosters with a lot of headroom and clipping diodes, the clarity of #2's drive and treble made think it's probably the "better" one.

[Lt. Bob]

Now that I have seen the schematic of an actual Klon and helped build a Ghost Drive, I'm pretty confident that Klon Centaurs are nothing special. The circuit is very special, and huge props to the guys that invented it. Innovative. They truly had an original idea and it worked.

so what makes it a very special and innovative design?

[Greg_L]

so what makes it a very special and innovative design?

From what I can tell, I think the way they coaxed headroom out of the op-amps was a pretty innovative feature for that time period. The 9v coming in gets converted to 18v internally, and I think they reference it to a negative voltage which gives even more headroom. I think it's something like 27v compared to the regular 9v coming in. It also runs the clean guitar signal in parallel with the dirty and they get mixed back together later. All of that was pretty unique. That's how it sounds so "open" and dynamic compared to something like a Rat or Tube Screamer....which were also very popular pedals at the time the Centaur was invented.

Supposedly the Klon guy had an MIT engineer fine tune his design and ideas. This MIT guy was not a guitar player so he approached it from a purely technical and electronically pure point of view. The result was what it was. Now that it's been de-gooped and reverse engineered there are a lot of very very good clones out there.

I was trying to explain this to my buddy that just built a Ghost Drive. It sounds great. Very impressive. He's super worried about how it stacks up to a real Klon. And I'm like...who gives a fuck? We don't have access to a real Klon and the Ghost Drive sounds very good for what it is. Just use it and enjoy it.

[Lt. Bob]

So what are all the freakin' resistors for?
I know two things to do with a resistor and that's drop a voltage across it but you obviously don't need ten different voltages .... or with a cap in some sorta EQ'ing circuit ....
So why 31 resistors?

[Greg_L]

So what are all the freakin' resistors for?
I know two things to do with a resistor and that's drop a voltage across it but you obviously don't need ten different voltages .... or with a cap in some sorta EQ'ing circuit ....
So why 31 resistors?

It's all pretty much biasing, buffering, setting the right impedance, attenuators, voltage dividers, filter networks, RFI blocking, and elevated grounds.

Amps have a lot of resistors too. A pedal is pretty much just a tiny little solid state amp. The op-amp chips expect to see specific voltages to do certain things...not unlike a tube.



It looks a lot like an amp schematic, and it pretty much does all the same kind of stuff.

[JD01]

Sounds fun, Bob - I wish I could build things!
I actually think they sound pretty good with the gain maxed out.