Thread: Small clone and nano clone choruses

no, the small clone is much better. no drop, less noise and much richer chorusing. the nano is a paperweight compared to it.

Just as i tought,honestly ive not been impress by their "Nano" product.
I've tried a few and all end-up deffinitly not being a "keeper"...exept for my "soul preacher" compression/sustainer,that work's just great for me.

Frank :)

the nano stuff definitely hit or miss. there are bombs like the nano clone and then there are hits like the memory boy or the micro pog.

i need to get myself a "classic" small clone again before they stop making them.

What's bizarre is that the switching scheme for the full-size Small Clone is, while clever, nothing special or anything that they would not replicate for cost reasons in the Nano box. The Nano series are not redesigned in any substantive way that I know of. They are simply a response to consumer demand, and expectations, for a pedalboard-friendly package. Happily, SMT components permit that. Is there anything particularly different about SMT components that people in the know have remarked on? No. Indeed, what goes into the chips takes up but a fraction of the space normally required for the epoxy package used to hold the actual guts and pins. So the exact same guts can fit in an SMT package quite easily without modification and without any decline in quality.

At the same time, it is easily conceivable that passive component variation (+/-5% for resistors; more for caps and the switching FET) results in imbalance. Unfortunately, though, the shortcoming of a surface-mount board is that it is hard for folks like us to mod them up to where we want/need them to be.

the nano clone does not use the same ICs etc. its definitely different. but it's build quality is also terrible compared to other nano/XO pedals i've seen. like they let their trainees build them or something.

the new XO sized memory man is supposed to be the same more or less as far as the circuit goes. same chips i've heard but i can't confirm.

Any tought on the "Polychorus"?Shopping for a small clone i realize i forgot about the polychorus.
Is 65$ for a brand new smallclone is a fair price?
Thanks
Frank :)

Originally Posted by exhausted

the nano clone does not use the same ICs etc. its definitely different. but it's build quality is also terrible compared to other nano/XO pedals i've seen. like they let their trainees build them or something.

the new XO sized memory man is supposed to be the same more or less as far as the circuit goes. same chips i've heard but i can't confirm.

What do you mean "does not use the same ICs"? There is basically only one way to make a Small/Nano Clone, and little reason to change it. Yes, the chips are surface mount, not through-hole, but the same company that makes the through-hole makes the surface-mount (there are only two known manufacturers of the BBD chips these days, Coolaudio - a company whose principle client, and maybe even owner/bankroller, is Behringer - and Beiling). As for who "builds" them, they are largely machine-built. Final assembly into the right chassis, and any fine-tuning that has to be done (most BBD-based circuits will need a final bias adjustment via a trimpot on the board) will be done in New York by EHX staff, but if we can do those same things, then certainly their supervised "trainees" can do it better.

Now, are there aspects of the construction that may be different between standard and Nano? Yes. The jacks are different, but these are the same kinds of jacks one finds on mixing boards and amps the world over. Nothing wrong with plastic jacks. Are the switches different? A little, but everyone has their own tastes in how they want a switch to feel.

Certainly YMMV, but I personally see nothing to prevent the Nano boxes from doing exactly what the larger-chassis versions do, every bit as well. If the basic design has changed, that's one thing. But there are no signs that it has done so.

Originally Posted by Spankin Allison

Any tought on the "Polychorus"?Shopping for a small clone i realize i forgot about the polychorus.
Is 65$ for a brand new smallclone is a fair price?
Thanks
Frank :)

Yeah that is a pretty fair price. The small clone is a great chorus, and heads above the nano series for sure.