Mosky Golden Horse, clone of the Klon Centaur

I got my gold horse around the first of the month. I really liked it until it quit on me.
Same as everyone else, I was changing out pedals and power supplies and killed it.
I have contacted the seller about getting a replacement/refund. Had to post a video on YouTube showing it not working.

 

Klones operate at 27V not 18V. If charge pumps weren't able to reliably function in SMD format, they wouldn't be produced in SMD. These faults have nothing to do with them being SMD.

 

Well, I'm now a member of the club too! My Silver just died on me. No sound even when bypassed, and when it's turned on all I get is high pitched feedback when I turn up the level control. Into the trash it goes.

 

Oh man, that's worrying.
I'm just getting used to my Golden Horse and found some situations where it shines.
I'd hate to see it gone.

sorry to hear about yours.

 

OK, now I'm really confused. I decided to give it one more try before throwing it away, so I fished it out of the trash, plugged it in, and it works fine. Very strange.

 

corn fuse blown.

 

I’m still using my Golden Horse pretty successfully.…

 

We recorded a band demo the other day (classic rock). I tried out all of my OD pedals for a saturated tone that wasn't too harsh or heavy. The Golden Horse sounded best to me... had a lush, creamy tone when recorded with a SM57. It's a little bit too thin for leads though. For this I prefered a MXR D+.

 

Still hoping to find some time to record a demo of the Silver Horse.

 

Just got a Golden Horse shipped to my door for $28 New Zealand dollars. Never played a real Klon but I like this. A lot. Sounded good in almost any setting and absolutely loves my Strat. I can get a really nice thick and articulate tone on the neck pickup that makes lines pop out and chords take on a different EQ shape too. It’s bright but also very strident in the mids, albeit in a pleasing way.


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I've plugged mine in many times with the power on, but I always plug the power plug in before the input and output cables. I think that may be why I never blew it up like others have, 'cause I think the circuit isn't turned on until those cables are connected. But, the soft clipping mode (switch in the up position) on my Silver doesn't work, it just oscillates like crazy. But the hard clipping mode still works fine.

 

I was thinking of picking up a silver horse based on how good this pedal sounds. Am I correct in assuming that the silver horse is just a Golden Horse with a KOT style clipping switch?

 

To me the Silver sounds a bit warmer, less compressed, more dynamic, lower gain, and a bit more open. But, that could just be variations in the parts tolerances in the two I have. According to Mosky, I think they're supposed to be the same, except for the switch for soft or hard clipping. But, my Silver stopped working on the soft clipping mode right after I got it, which is OK with me, 'cause I like the hard clipping mode better anyway. I'm not using either of them now though. I'm using my Caline Pegasus stacked with a Wampler Euphoria in front of it, which sounds awesome.

 

UPDATE: Something in my FX chain has been cutting the signal in and out since I put the Golden Horse in there. I can't be 100% it's the GH that is the problem but it does seem to be the obvious culprit. I lost my signal completely last night during a gig when I stepped on the GH to stack on top of another drive pedal. The LED was still coming on but I wasn't getting any signal. Fiddled with things and voila it came back and didn't do it again for the rest of the gig. Same thing happened last week during a recording session and I powered my board down and then back up which seemed to solve the problem. Perhaps my GH is also faulty?

 

Coming soon....

 

For you, and all the other posters here that have problems with these pedals dying....
(not limited to Mosky. Donner and other tiny Asian pedals have this issue too)

These pedals all seem to have *one* of the jacks actually wired to ground on the circuit board.
The other jack gets its ground thru the case.
If one or both jacks are loose, or the paint prevents the jack from making a solid ground connection....
Well... it just won't work and seems like the pedal is dead.

I have the Mosky Spring Reverb pedal.
It quit after playing for 5 minutes.
I opened the pedal to find the problem, and noticed the single jack ground wire as described above.

The hole and solder pad is there on the circuit board, so I simply added the ground wire to the other jack.
The pedal has been going strong ever since.

You could probably solve this by simply tightening both jacks to see it the dead pedal comes to life.

I also have the Mosky G/H and had the exact same issue.
It died after 5 minutes.
Opened it up, added the ground wire... Boom! Pedal works again.
No issues since.

If any one wants, I could put some pics up to show the problem,
but it's pretty obvious and easy to see once you pop the bottom off.

If tightening the jacks "fixes" your pedal,
I would still recommend adding the ground wire for continued reliable operation.

 

I've seen this issue on my Kokko Compressor. Both the Golden Horse pedals I got have burned out charge pumps.

 

Bummer for you.
How are you powering it?

When I had mine open I noticed the SMD charge pump and op-amps.

Been using mine a while now, no issues.

 

Thought I'd throw some pics up anyway.

Noticing mine has a full size charge pump chip.

This is after I added the second jack ground wire.
Actually I removed and replaced all of the original wires.
All original wire were black, I used red for the signal.

I forget which jack was missing the ground wire, I think it was the output.

While I was in there I replaced the blinding bright blue LED with a red.
The red is very dim, but much better than being blinded.

 

That's interesting. It looks like they changed the charge pump. Here's one of mine with a dimpled up, smaller, charge pump.



I ended up replacing my two failed ones with a MXR Sugar Drive.