r3fx Cabsim [review/rant]

[aledeville]

Hi guys
At first I'd like to state that in no way I'm trying to prevent the guy from r3fx from doing any business. However, what I got is still some how impudent.

Quite some time ago I bought at r3fx the Cabsim with the option XLR-Out for 135 bucks. The options look good on this thing, three outs, all adjustable, one without the cabsim and two with (one xlr and one jack). There are two switches, one for the cabsim styles (vintage, modern and combined) and one is Ground Lift.
So far so good.

I always wondered a bit about the bad XLR socket. I mean, the pins were moving that in order to plug the XLR cable in, you first had to put the pins into "position" and then try to thread them somehow in. I solved the problem with a short XLR patchcable with a quality XLR male connector at the end.

I used it in the rehearsal room, have done some recordings and so far it worked good. Then I used the Palmer PDI-05 and now going back to the pedals in the rack, there was no space for the Palmer anymore. Hence the r3fx cabsim made its way back into the gigging gear.
Then I had two gigs, and on both the XLR out was doing noises. I could switch the Ground Lift to any position, on the one side the noise was loud and ugly and on the other it was louder, really hummy and veeeeery ugly.

This made me open the box... Let's say it would have been better I didn't... What I saw was a soldering job probably done by a little child, some work with a glue gun and the worst part - this has absolutely nothing to do with a ground lift. Nothing. Njet, nada.
But look for yourself:

more pictures here.

I don't want to go into how the thing sounds, because for the quality you get, the 135 dollars are a rip-off.
I hope this works as some kind of a warning for those who considered buying this cabsim thinking that for the price it would be something. "Handmade" is obviously no quality attribute at all.
I think the worst part is that it actually says Ground Lift when there is nothing that could be called that. A blunt lie.

In a German speaking forum one guy said, that if he soldered that thing, he wouldn't even sell it on the peddlers market. That kind of speaks for itself.

 

[aledeville]

kind of relieved that no one else bought this other than me...

 

[mmbongo]

I'm risking exposing myself as an idiot here...but where is the 'bad soldering'? This looks pretty much like any pedal from a small/one man shop that makes pedals by hand. Looks like the XLR jack would be easy enough to replace, did he refuse to fix it or something? Is this your first pedal..or at least your first 'non production line' pedal?

Now the ground lift issue I have no idea about.

 

[aledeville]

Okay, the story continued.

I gave the cabsim to a guy in Germany who did an awesome job in putting a decent filtering for the power supply (before that was NO FILTER AT ALL, not even a smoothering capacitor), a real Ground Lift (I wonder whether the r3fx guy even knows what that is...), made an active knob out of the "through" and put a new XLR jack in it.

It is really sad that this 30 dollar cabsim with the standard schematic from the internet did cost 135 dollars. Unusable thing. Really...

First thing I did when getting it was stripping the r3fx stickers off. I mean, this thing now has nothing to do with the amateur's job anymore. And by the way, there were also several cold soldering joints (what the heck?!?).

There was also the sticker that said something like "handwired, custom, blahblah" and had a number on it. It's almost being sarcastic considerin the ******** he's selling.

Now it looks like this:

To make things short: Don't buy from that guy.

Over and out.

 

[Scott Pinkey]

I have nothing but good things to say about R3FX and own several of his stock models, a few custom ones, a bunch of modded pedals as well as the cabsim you have described, all great in my opinion and am sorry you had a bad experience but I never have had anything but a good and courteous experience with R3FX. Here are a few of my pedals and they are some of the best gear I own.

 

[Lethgar]

I solder small components for a living. I have never heard of this company or this pedal.

The wiring in this unit appears to be just fine in terms of order and organization. I see absolutely nothing to complain about. Cold solder issues are fairly inexcusable, but Friday afternoon usually ends up the same for most of us. XLR jack sounds like it was a lemon from the factory it was made in. The manufacturer of the pedal would have had no way of knowing this. If this were my handiwork, I would have wanted to be notified the minute the first hint of a problem arose, and given the chance to make it right from my shop rather than see half a page of this when I got home from work.

All that being said, the ground lift/power filtering issue sounds like you got the short end of the stick, and while the wiring looks fine, CS joints on a board in a "boutique" pedal, are, as I said, inexcusable. I would certainly have attempted to contact the builder, multiple times over multiple weeks if need be, before stirring up a mob over what largely amounts to a series of small issues that potentially could have been resolved with a small box, a packing label, and 3 to 5 business days worth of time. Always disappointing to see this sort of thing, both the pedal and the negative post. A constant reminder of why I am in the radio business, not the pedal business.