Mosky Silver Horse

All about modern commercial stompbox circuits from Electro Harmonix over MXR, Boss and Ibanez into the nineties.
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Jarno
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Post by Jarno »

Apparently it is a Klon, haven't been able to test it properly, because it whines so hard the signal is indiscernible, both when active and when in bypass (true bypass?).
I did open it up yesterday evening, but did not take pictures, will do that tonight.
It's got two TL072's (SMT, like most of the components) and a 7660, IIRC. Might just get rid of the 7660 and use a higher voltage wallwart.

Anyone else have issues with theirs? Would think that these pedals are more popular than they are (when going of the number of times they are discussed here), given that they are clones of pretty popular pedals, and in general are well put together (not to mention cheap).
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Post by CheapPedalCollector »

Most of chinese stuff I've bought squeals at high gain, leaky caps.

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Post by The G »

Could be also the charge pump. According to the the datasheet, ICL7660's oscillator frequency can go as low as 3kHz. ICL7660S (notice the "S") allows raising the oscillator frequency above the audio domain. The difference is pin1 - NC on 7660, BOOST on 7660S (raises the oscillator frequency to 35kHz when connected to V+).

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Post by Manfred »

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31203&p=285145#p285145
In this topic about the Mosky Plexi m you can see that the boot connector is connected to the V+ connector, I assume this was done in the same way on the Silverhorse.
It could be possible that there is a faulty solder connection and the boost function is deactivated.
Photos would be helpful for further failure analysis.

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Post by Jarno »

I took some pictures, but need a way to host them, imgur wasn't very handy last time I used it, will check.
Pedal is better now, by the way, apparently two of my instruments have dead batteries :)
(I have a cheapie strat copy whith real Alembic pickups which I fitted with a filter preamp, because Alembic).
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Post by Jarno »

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Looks pretty well put together, but the mounting of the jacks is very fiddly. Plenty of electrolytics everywhere, can't really tell if there are a lot of extraneous components.
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Post by noizms »

So I was reading and talking to some people in electronics and they usually get sometime of bad distortion or cross-over distortion with those TL072 circuits that come from aliexpress or even handmade pedals using components that are most likely from China/Taiwan

There is one guy on youtube who got some very nice treble clarity in his Golden 30 dollar Klon by replacing the two TL072 chips from the pedal with two TL072 chips sold by Mouser

The sad thing is that even my amplifier (Orange) who is assembled in China/Taiwan most likely has bad TL072 circuit. What I mean by bad TL072 is that for what I understand are those that are not 100% to the specs, they have no certification so they tend sound off at some frequencies

Here it is mine orange amp with a TL072 circuit. I suspect this might be a bad one since it does produce awful sounding in treble just like the guy showed on youtube on his Klon pedal
Image
Not sure if Mosky uses good quality IC...? Is there any difference between the Gold and Silver regarding quality of components?
Last edited by noizms on 09 May 2022, 04:37, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by noizms »

Jarno wrote: 28 Mar 2021, 17:42
Image

Looks pretty well put together, but the mounting of the jacks is very fiddly. Plenty of electrolytics everywhere, can't really tell if there are a lot of extraneous components.
From the TL072 pic above with Texas Instrument logo it looks like it Mosky is a real good quality IC
That one says TL072C is there any difference from TL072C to TL072P?

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Post by howmuch »

noizms wrote: Here it is mine orange amp with a TL072 circuit.
Can you tell us which model your amp is exactly?
Don't worry, no one is going to sue you for telling us. Don't be shy, just give us the truth.
noizms wrote: There is one guy on youtube who got some very nice treble clarity in his Golden 30 dollar Klon by replacing the two TL072 chips from the pedal with two TL072 chips sold by Mouser
Can you post a link to the video you're referring to?
noizms wrote: Not sure if Mosky uses good quality IC...?
I would say maybe sometimes they do and maybe sometimes they don't - we'll never know.
The ICs could be fake, rejects, or it could also be down to bad ESD precautions somewhere along the line.
But that's only my opinion based on my limited experiences with their plexi-m - they seemed to start producing bad ones after a certain date from what I can tell.
My other Moskys don't have any problems.
noizms wrote: Is there any difference between the Gold and Silver regarding quality of components?
I wouldn't think so. I assume these two are almost identical, apart from the switch.
noizms wrote: That one says TL072C is there any difference from TL072C to TL072P?
It's not important here, just the package, sometimes the suffix is for military spec., temp range, etc. See the datasheet.
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Post by soggybag »

Jarno wrote: 28 Mar 2021, 17:42
Image

Looks pretty well put together, but the mounting of the jacks is very fiddly. Plenty of electrolytics everywhere, can't really tell if there are a lot of extraneous components.
Interesting, looks there’s real liver Ge diodes in the mini pedal. I have one of these but have not taken it apart.

I’ve read a lot of hype about the diodes. I saw a tear down on YouTube where the measured and tested the diodes in a Klon KTR and they seemed to be regular Ge types nothing special. The original maker claims only one type sounded right to him.

What’s more interesting is that the gain zone where people most often use the Klon doesn’t even break the forward voltage of the diodes. On the scope the clipping seemed hardly noticeable. So the real secret in my mind is the boost.

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Post by noizms »

So Mosky is the most decent Klon clone for the price?

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Post by noizms »

howmuch wrote: 09 May 2022, 15:43
Can you tell us which model your amp is exactly?

Orange Crush 12 and Mini both TL072 based

Can you post a link to the video you're referring to?
It's a 45 min video in foreign language
here it is a cross over distortion screenshot from a low quality OP-amp TL072G
Image

Here it is a screenshot from TL072 in the same pedal but this CI made by Texas Instruments
Image

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Post by karul »

I guess this is the video. You may try the auto-translate and choose the preferred language.

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Post by noizms »

karul wrote: 13 May 2022, 21:47 I guess this is the video. You may try the auto-translate and choose the preferred language.
low quality TL702 IC sample at 15 min. Most noticeable in the "high-mids"

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Post by joelabbott »

My Mosky Silver Horse sounded okay. It did the job. But I won’t be buying another.

DC power plugs always sparked against the enclosure.

Then one night I noticed a burning smell coming from my pedalboard, and tracked it down to the Silver Horse. The enclosure was hot. Opened it up and found D2 diode burned out with brown burning/melting on the pcb on both sides of the diode.

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Post by Manfred »

The same problems, by the bad OP-Amp gave it with the Mosky Plexi-m pedal.
See here:
viewtopic.php?t=31203&hilit=mosky

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