Hey Jacques, author here. In a way, you're sort of right - I hacked the affiliate program a little bit, mostly to be compensated for my work in ripping apart the pedal and ohming out the PCB. But mostly, I wanted people to know that there's a cheaper alternative to "boutique" electronics that are sold at an outrageous markup. The fact that these are easy to modify is a plus.
Also, I kind of liked the idea of showing off the workings of a Chinese product that's so clearly a ripoff of an American product. (Boss BD-2 Blues Driver, if you're curious.) Granted, that was also a ripoff of the TS808. And, I'll admit that something is lost in the spirit of the effort, since no one in China gets hung up when you take their design, improve it, and resell it.
I appreciate the critique; thanks for reading - I'm a fan of your blog!
Maybe you could include a bit on what it actually sounds like, that would make it a lot more informative. It's not as if people buy these as sources for parts, they buy them to give them a specific sound.
The problem with promoting the product that you review is that your review skews towards the superlative approval. If you reviewed it without the affiliate link you might have added more balance to the article. That's a real risk when you're trying to make money of the things that you review and I don't know of a good way to both 'maximize your take' and 'be objective' at the same time. If I ever reviewed a product I would definitely not try to make money of that particular product.
That's fair. I have some experience in manufacturing engineering; in retrospect, I got a little too excited about how it was designed to be put together in mass quantities. After rolling it around in my hands for a few weeks, I've noticed a few warts in the circuit board - extra flux around the solder pads, a PCB throughhole that was a little too close to the board edge, and got a little shorn when the PCB was milled out, other little things like that. In all honesty, there's nothing really superlative about the electronics themselves. The JRC4558 is a really, really old opamp. It was brand new around the time The Who were getting airlifted to Woodstock.
I shot you an email about some of the other aspects of the article that I didn't want to write about in open air. Check your inbox!
This apparently got stuck in my "Outbox" folder, so it never got sent. I'll pass it along tonight - this is turning into one of those workdays that became really busy all of a sudden.
Also, I kind of liked the idea of showing off the workings of a Chinese product that's so clearly a ripoff of an American product. (Boss BD-2 Blues Driver, if you're curious.) Granted, that was also a ripoff of the TS808. And, I'll admit that something is lost in the spirit of the effort, since no one in China gets hung up when you take their design, improve it, and resell it.
I appreciate the critique; thanks for reading - I'm a fan of your blog!