freestompboxes.org

Below is the ad copy from Kendrick. At what point do you guys think I said to myself "Oh puh-lease!"

"Did you ever wish you could get the sound of a cranked output stage at a lower volume? Or did you long for that Jimi-neck-pickup clean tone? Do you want your sound to be easily articulated by your pick-attack? And do you insist on purity of tone to the degree that you can hear the wood of the neck and the wood of the instrument? If you answered "Yes" to these questions, I suggest you order the all new Kendrick Cactus Juice Pedal. It will give you those tones you want and you can do it at any volume - because each function has an individual output volume control. You can get the Clean-Boost, and the Overdrive volume set so that it is in proper proportion to the True Bypass tone. This gives you three very usable tones from a one channel amp! Bonus: Besides these pedals sounding great, they also look great. The steel chassis has welded and buffed corners so it looks like it is a cast chassis. The chassis is finished in white epoxy powdercoat and baked. Then each of the other three colors (red, black and green) are silk-screened with epoxy ink and baked individually. In other words, the pedal goes in the oven 4 times before it is done. It looks fabulous. There are three 9 volt batteries - one for Clean Boost, one for Overdrive and one for the LED function. This enables you to choose the best sounding battery for each function. Eric Johnson was 100% correct when he pointed out the tonal difference in envelope, due to the internal impedance difference of the actual battery. You can experiment as much as you like. The batteries are so easy to change. There are three little drawers and you simply open a drawer and place the battery in and close the drawer. You don't have to clip anything together or use any tools; just close and go."

Not to hijack my own thread, but the Cactus Juice is supposed to address various complaints people had with the Buffalo Pfuz. Has anyone built the Buffalo Pfuz? Thoughts? Thanks.

The Rotagilla wrote: Not to hijack my own thread, but the Cactus Juice is supposed to address various complaints people had with the Buffalo Pfuz. Has anyone built the Buffalo Pfuz? Thoughts? Thanks.

You can throw the Buffalo Pfuz together in no time.
I built one to try, but didn't bother to box it. It didn't impress me at all.

https://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic ... it=buffalo

I think the design of the Cactus Juice is awful. 3 batteries? C'mon! Yeah, I'm sure we have to carefully select the "correct" battery to sound best with the LEDs. If you're going to be lame enough to require a separate battery for the LEDs, they could at least use a couple AAs or something other than an expensive 9v. And seriously, is it too much to consider possibly designing a circuit to sound its best regardless of what kind of battery you put in it? I guess that would require too much thought.

I like how the ad copy uses more space to discuss how many times the finish is baked than what it actually sounds like. I guess it tells you what they're more interested in; selling yet-another tacky-looking gimmick pedal with useless "options" that will leave cork-sniffing tone snobs spending more time swapping batteries than actually playing or bothering to hear what the stupid thing actually sounds like. I'm sure it doesn't even matter what it sounds like as long as it sounds like something... know what I mean?

My "one dealing" with Kendrick was bad.

I emailed Gerald about a Bassman I had... I said something to the effect of " I have a 1965 AA165 Bassman that I want to have recapped, retubed, and gone through. How much would that be, and what kind of turnaround time should I expect ?

His answer.... " I can rebuild your bad sounding AB165 circuit into a AA864 circuit, retube and recap it for $xxx.xx ...etc...

My answer to him ..."Where the fuck do you get off saying my amp sounds bad ? First off, I never said it was a AB165...I said it is a AA165...BIG difference..try paying attention to peoples email, instead of just trying to automatically upsell them on some bullshit mod that they never asked you for. I love my amp AND the way it sounds. Just because YOU prefer the sound of the AA864 circuit doesn't mean that I do. You will not have my business...EVER."

Harsh words, but I totally agree with you.

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My dealings with Gerald Weber have been totally opposite from Cowbells.
I have found him to be a personable and very good guy to do business with.
He rectified the problem I had with personal attention by both phone and email and
followed through.
Maybe he had a bad day and was into the "cactus juice" when you ran up against him.
Fair is fair, his marketing is slick and he makes money, no question about that.
But he backs up his products 100% and believes in customer satisfaction and has built up his business through his passion for tubes. He's a businessman and won't kick an opportunity in the teeth. When he developed the new pedal, he held a contest for people to name it and invites comments and feedback on all his products and makes himself available at events where he is in attendance. Do I agree with his 3 battery concept? No, I think it is overdone. But he also bases some of that mojo on Eric Johnson's comments on battery usage based on end application.
I don't doubt that what he said to Cowbell and I can fully agree with Cowbell's reaction and see Cowbell's point. I just don't see Gerald Weber doing it maliciously, he probably just "gapped".
Things happen.

I've played a couple of Kendrick amps over the years and there were one or two I regret not buying because the sounded incredible. The thing that stopped me both time was the fit and finish...chassis/panels mounted unevenly, stuff like that. I guess for that kind of money I expected a little more QA control. Looking back they where simple cosmetic things I could have fixed. One of the amps I passed on was Kendrick's version of the 5E3 in a cabinet like this one -



I found out later that there were only a few made.

I will more than happily state that the guy builds a great amp...thus the reason I wanted HIM to go through my Bassman...but that little dealing with him was enough to make me, personally, say "theres other guys that build great amps too..."

Anyway, I'm sure he's treated most people great...its hard to be successful without good customer service...but his "assuming" that my amp was a POS and that I wanted to "upgrade it" was enough dealing with him for my taste.

As always, YMMV.

Like many amp techs, GW is extremely opinionated and set in his ways. I bought his book "Hip Vintage Guitar Amps" when I first started working on amplifiers a couple years ago. The schematic/layout index in the back still gets a lot of use, and I enjoy reading the Trainwreck pages from time to time, but much of GW's tech info is either a) his personal opinion stated as fact, b) just plain wrong, or c) an advertisment for Kendrick.

In my opinion, he's exactly the kind of tech you DON'T want inside your amplifier. I'd be willing to bet that most members of FSB have more technical knowledge than he does. Cowbell, you CERTAINLY do.

There's a funny video clip on youtube of GW shocking himself while working on an amp, then pretending like nothing happened. It's from one of his "instructional videos." I wish I could find it - it's pretty funny.

Actually, the shock outtake scene is quite funny.
He does acknowledge that he got a real "lifter" from it.

So who did you choose to do the amp work, Cowbell?
I know your standards for tone are high and why not give the tech a plug?
People respect your opinions and it might swing some business his way, no?

LMJS wrote:Actually, the shock outtake scene is quite funny.
He does acknowledge that he got a real "lifter" from it.

So who did you choose to do the amp work, Cowbell?
I know your standards for tone are high and why not give the tech a plug?
People respect your opinions and it might swing some business his way, no?

I had my tech back in Indy, Kevin Silva do it. He's done a ton of work for me in the past, and does great work.
( http://www.unclealberts.com )

I've only recently started really "researching" tube circuits. I have plans to do a few things "tube", but I'm a "over-prepare" kind of guy when it comes to that stuff. I've done filter cap changes on a few things, biasing and basic stuff, but not a lot. I'm the first to admit my shortcomings in that area. I'm planning to do a champ circuit to "get my feet wet with scratchbuilding" in the next month or so...as soon as I get caught up with a few other things.

//snipped a page of ranting//

A cursory look inside the "Cactus Juice" shows it to be op-amp based. The "clean" side just has an op-amp gain stage with a fairly low input impedance - probably to load down guitars and thereby reduce treble. Either that or the "designer" hasn't got a clue. The "dirty" side is just an op-amp with a couple of diodes in the feedback loop. The "designer" used the third battery for the LEDs probably because he couldn't get rid of the switching clicks and then tried to claim a "mojo" reason for doing this kludge. It's outrageously expensive for something that ANY of us could throw together in an hour or two. The paint job is nice, but the one I saw had paint chipped from it already, and it was just a few days old....