Anyone had much experience with Aliexpress?

[McCreed]

Just thought I'd post an update on my recent Aliexpress order.

The pedal arrived yesterday (12 days from ordering, and ordered on a Sunday).
The travel log looks like this:
From Seller to AU - 4 days
Received/Released from Customs - 4 days
Accepted and delivered Aus Post - 4 days (Sydney to Brisbane)

Pretty bloody good all 'round if you ask me.
Now before anyone asks about "the pedal" I'll be posting a separate thread about it in due time. All I'll say it is a bit of an experimental purchase...


Now the second item (different Seller, same order) has "Departed Country of Origin" on 27/06.
Allegedly via airline. So 13 days and counting total and not even in AU yet.

I'd say this demonstrates that not all Sellers are created equal.
I'm not really complaining though. I reckon anything under 3 weeks from China is not that bad considering the price(s). If the second piece arrives within 8 days it will at least meet my expectations.

[Simon Barden]

I've just received a couple of Kmise pedals bought via 'Wish', a similar type of outfit to Aliexpress. The US Dream and the Crunch Distortion (Rat clone). the Crunch Distortion is very distortiony, it doesn't do clean at all. Not a bad pedal if you want a lot of distortion that cuts off very quickly. But the gain and volume knob legends are crossed over, which is a bit confusing.

The US Dream I found very 'meh'. With low gain, there's too much top end missing to be of any use as a clean(ish) boost. You have to add quite a lot of gain to add back in some top end. And to get it sounding good at all, you have to dial in a lot of volume and gain, which makes it just so much louder than the bypassed level. So it's more a pedal for recording, so you can set your amp volume accordingly, or else have it permanently on. It's just about usable, but other pedals do it so much better, so why bother?

I also bought a Coolmusic Reverberry from Amazon whilst I was on my cheap pedal spree. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1. £33 with a small offer discount, so almost the cheapest reverb pedal I could find, (the TC Skysurfer at £29 was the cheapest) but with 9 reverb types available instead of the TC's three.

It's a miniaturised (and cheaper) version of this Moog-like Deadbeat Reverberation Station pedal: https://deadbeatsound.com/products/r...ration-station

Was it going to be a bargain Strymon?

What do you think?

Of course not.

It was quiet in bypass but quite noisy when switched on. The reverbs were very echoey and not very smooth. I was getting some digital clipping when I used it in the FX loop of my amp (though the signal/noise ratio was better when not playing) so it had to go in front of the amp as there was no input gain control. Hall was the best reverb setting for guitar, if used in moderation. Spring was overly 'boingy', an impression of a spring reverb rather than how a real one sounds. The plate was nothing like any plate emulations I've heard, very metallic and with distinct echoes. In fact most of them seemed more like a mix of reverb and delay than straight reverb. Lo-Fi just adds a load of noise, that certainly in special-FX only territory. Mod just adds a bland chorus to the whole sound (not just the reverb).

Opening it up, the processor is marked up with "Hotone (another pedal manufacturer) D3706", but I can't find any details on the web (at least any in English) on it. It's the same processor as used in that deadbeat pedal.

Reverb is an effect that needs to have a fair amount of processing power available, along with good algorithms, and that seems to be missing in this pedal. Whilst you can make good drive pedals cheaply, you can't get a decent reverb sound without spending a bit of money (and a great one costs a bit more).

My normal reverb pedal is a Boss RV-5, which is almost silent and had much better reverb sounds. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for live use and compact enough to fit on my cramped pedalboard. I could get a Strymon (or similar), but it would take up too much real estate and I'd have to lose two or three other pedals.

I've got a couple of other drive pedals arriving from Wish at some point, not Kmise ones, but similar price and style ones. These ones should be overdrives, not distortions.

[Rabbitz]

The US Dream I found very 'meh'. With low gain, there's too much top end missing to be of any use

Describes the whole country quite well I thought.

[PJSprog]

Describes the whole country quite well I thought.

Hey, now ...
It's really only our bigger cities that are dull like that.

[dozymuppet]

The Vintage Phase and Analog Chorus ones above.

It took a while (50 days), but they finally arrived today. Very sweet tones, nothing too extreme. Satisfaction achieved.

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

[J.R.303]

I bought some tuners from Angels Music Guitar Store and got them to the UK in two weeks.

[McCreed]

Another update on my orders:
The old saying about the proverbial "slow boat to China" (except from) is more than fitting in this case.

One of the items I ordered 21 June, has just arrived in AUS 17 August. No evidence it has been handed over to Aus Post yet. 60 days and counting...

A separate item I ordered 25 June was delivered 13 August = 56 days.

I would say my 12 day experience in my first post was truly an anomaly.

[king casey]

I can hear ya.
My Wilkinson tuners order was placed on June 27th.

Patience ran out a couple of weeks ago and the guitar will probably wait until the strings need replacing.
Could be months.

cheers, Mark.

[McCreed]

YAY!!! My order arrived today!

The item I ordered was a Floyd Rose Intonation Tool (aka "The Key").
The irony is when I was looking to buy one 2 months ago, none of the usual AUS suppliers had any in stock. So I went the Aliexpress route. Then, about a month ago stock started to reappear domestically. I could have got one from Realparts 4 weeks ago.

In the end, I only saved myself 10 bucks, but I guess that's better than nothing.

[ThatCluelessGerman]

My humbuckers and brass nuts got lost in transit
Got the money refunded immediately but still, I wanted them badly