When people sell fake parts as new it makes me a very SAD Panda (plus MXR shMXR)

So...as we already saw, my RS09 needs a bit of open-heart surgery to get back to full health, with the transplant required being the most costly one possible after the master octave generator,  an SAD-512 BBD chip.

Here is a close up of the deceased piece of metal-oxide coated silicon in question.

So...despite being out of production for decades, this chip appears to be for sale in bulk lots from China, at high prices, as "new". Normally I wouldn't go near the Chinese aftermarket for silicon, as chips pulled from electronics recycling are often sold as new, and sometimes chips are even relabelled to look like more expensive and desirable models-which doesn't make them work like the more expensive brethren!

Therefore, I did what anyone would do, find a crummy piece of gear that used the chip that I would have no qualms about sacrificing. Picking up courage, I waded into that wretched hive of scum and villainy known as Reverb. Hmmmmmmmmmm.....

As crummy but useful things go, an MXR "Commande" chorus pedal from the early 80s is about the ideal, containing a SAD512D BBD and costing about $100 shipped. This was an abortive attempt to compete with the Japanese onslaught from Boss and Maxon/Ibanez, which saw affordable, well-made pedals in rugged die cast enclosures flood the US market. Well, at least MXR tried to match them on price, pity about the rest.

This pedal even looks cheap, from the poor screen-printing on the enclosure, to the enclosure made out of two bits of plastic held together with a single screw, with even the battery door on a plastic hinge...ugh

The innards sort of match the outside, with a cheapo fibre PCB. Surprising use of metal film resistors for the time though, even if they are 5%. The transistors appear to be Japanese types with flat chamfered cases, which may be a giveaway as to where this was made.

Note the (single) socketed BBD inner the switch-this unit generates a chorus by modulating a single BBD with a single LFO against the source signal, which is a far cry from the RS09's ensemble. Also note the (thankfully obsolete) American-style minijack power connector.

The back of the PCB-it appears someone has tried to repair the battery snap, and ripped traces off the board, requiring link wires to keep it working. Blechhhh....

At first sight I thought the socketed SAD512D and the appearance of rubbing on it meant that the unit had been repaired and a dodgy "reconditioned" part had been substituted. Looking at other units, it appears that this is standard ex-factory on both counts - as is the messy soldering of the pots.

Well, it works OK, but I would never use this seriously in music, so the chip is a good candidate for the RS09. That leaves the chorus pedal as a perfect testbed for other chips, even cheapo Chinese clones....hmmmmm

(to be continued)