Guitar Stuff...sort of

Today is just going to be offloading some of what's been in my head the last week or so. Bulleted by subject just because of the randomness of it.

• What is going on with people?!? Mr JHS talks about the Bad Monkey pedal, equates it to a Klon, and folks are losing their frakkin' minds trying to sell them. Looking at prices on Reverb, the first of this week you could get them all day long for around $50 or $60. Now you're lucky to get one for $150 or $200. It's stupid. I've got a closet full of klones, and they all sound good. I had a Bad Monkey for a while. Paid $40 for it. For it's price point, it sounded really good, but I've got other pedals I like better, and I sold it a few months ago for $40. I didn't lose anything on that deal, so I felt like (and still feel like) I made out like a bandit.
  
  I hold no ill will against Mr JHS for knowingly or unknowingly making the price of these pedals do stupid things. Nor do I hold any ill will towards those that are trying to capitalize on the moment and make bank off of other peoples' insanity. I don't even hold any ill will towards those buying them at these insane prices. I just find all kinds of humor in the fact that one guy can say he likes something, and suddenly, what was a budget item is suddenly commanding prices that are atmospheric. People are going to peep, and this in this case, it's just stupid.
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• I don't usually buy straight up patent-infringing copies. If you're going to clone something, at least change it enough that it's not completely obvious that you just ripped someone else's IP. That said, I recently bought a DemonFX Dual Gun. There is no denying or even arguing that it is anything but an older version of the King Tone The Duelist. Hadn't heard of the pedal until the end of last year, but suddenly at least a couple of people I know bought one. They're $350 new, and they're every bit of $300 used. I saw the Dual Gun for $75 and, it's enough of a copy that, until I saw the price, I honestly thought it was a Duelist.
  
  Read some reviews on it, and they all, seriously, every single one of them, were talking about how good it sounded, and, several commented that, looking at the PCB boards inside them, there was no denying that someone had just straight up copied the Duelist. So, I bought one because I was really curious. It took me a while to get it dialed in, but, once I did, it sounds A.Mazing! I now feel bad about buying the pedal that is a complete rip-off.
  
  I think I'm going to save some pennies and buy a Duelist. The current version has a couple of options not available on the Dual Gun (like route order of the two sides). As well, if the Dual Gun is actually a complete copy of the older version, it'll be fun to A/B the two pedals. I, honestly, can't imagine the Duelist sounding much better than the Dual Gun. And, if that's the case, then I probably owe it to King Tone to buy the original. Dang it, DemonFX! You should've at least rehoused it so that it wasn't identical.
  
  
• I recently pulled out my 50th Anniversary 1962 Sheraton. It's got those mini-humbuckers in it. I forget how much I like that guitar. It's just smoother sounding than any other 335-ish guitar I've played...just so nice.
  
  
• Life sometimes is weird. I had a piece of body work on my FJ that was recently coming off. It's a little cowl that clips into place. The clips break causing the piece to come off. Especially when it first came out, it's a known problem. I had some work done on my hood last year because of a hail storm. They pulled that cowl, and they were supposed to buy new clips for it when they put it back on, but I'm not sure they did. It hasn't done a good job staying in place since the work was done. Recently, it's just been coming off. So I had taped it down, and it was staying in place fine. Last weekend I ordered the clips to put it on. After I did, I drove to ETX. Somewhere along the way, the cowl came off. So I had to order a cowl. So that I can put it on with the clips that I had ordered for the old cowl. Had I ordered the clips a few days earlier, I'd probably still have the old cowl. Funny how it seems to work out that way sometimes.