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Hmm. Caline catalog is becoming quite puzzling one. These two here. Same f*king circuit. Paul Cochrane Timmy. 4558D, no switch for clipping, just the four 4148s for both. Highway Man has linear and log pots for bass/treble and Pure Sky has them at C50K. Pure Sky has designation screen prints under the components, but just by looking at the boards, component values and topology, i can safely say the circuits are identical.

Why on earth would anyone release two differently named pedals that have exactly the same circuit in them?

Highway Man BOM:
R1 10k
R2 10k
R3 3k3
R4 1M
R5 510k
R6 3k3
R7 1k5
R8 3k3
R9 3k3
R10 4k7

C1 47u/25v
C2 47u/25v
C3 1u
C4 39n
C5 47n
C6 100p
C7 10n
C8 1u

Bass A50k
Treble B50k
Gain A1M
Level A10k

IC1 JRC4558D
D1 1N4001
D2-D5 1N4148
LED1 diffused blue 5mm


Yes. It was quite stupid for me to redraw the Timmy, but...

Well I guess it's definitely not an Xotic RC booster clone then....

I know this is an old post, but it came in useful to me today. THANKS A TON FOR DOING WHAT YOU DID SO LONG AGO, BROTHER!

I just got a Pure Sky and a Highway Man. I like them both but noticed the bass control on the Highway Man didn't seem to have much affect until the 3 o'clock and up range. Seeing that they used an audio taper pot as a bass control, I now understand WHY.

In answer to your question of "Why on earth would anyone release two differently named pedals that have exactly the same circuit in them?" I think the answer is "some players would leave the tone controls at noon and like the bit of mid hump that results". Which was me. All knobs at noon on both pedals, I preferred the HMan. I liked the slight mid-hump which gave my P90's some needed warmth. I found the PSky a bit too brittle.

Now that I've played with both pedals again I've discovered how to set the PSky the way I like it - treble around 9:30 and the bass around 9 o'clock gives a nice layer of warm mids just like the HMan with both tone knobs at noon.

Well, I can now sell off my barely used Highway Man. And I'm going to sell my Tim pedal. Sorry Paul, it's really awesome but I'm broke and never took advantage of the boost side of it or the clipping options.

FrostBottomBoy wrote:I know this is an old post, but it came in useful to me today. THANKS A TON FOR DOING WHAT YOU DID SO LONG AGO, BROTHER!


Well, I can now sell off my barely used Highway Man. And I'm going to sell my Tim pedal. Sorry Paul, it's really awesome but I'm broke and never took advantage of the boost side of it or the clipping options.

I don't have a problem with you selling the Tim at all. Thanks for giving it a shot!

mirosol wrote: ↑17 Dec 2017, 17:48Why on earth would anyone release two differently named pedals that have exactly the same circuit in them?

Perhaps it started out with good intentions, but how many people then bought both? Nice little earner.

Thanks for opening up the pedals and checking the circuits.

So where did this idea that the Highway Man was an RC Booster come from?
I've just looked at the Caline website from 2018 on Wayback Machine and there's no mention of any pedal that it's supposed to be.

[rant] I wish more people would open up their clones and at least take some photos, because you just can't beat actually looking at the circuit.
It doesn't take long and someone will recognise the circuit even if you don't.
And sometimes you find out that the manufacturer has made a mistake which is easily fixed (Joyo UD, Biyang Mouse) and you get a better pedal. [/rant]

Have a Caline Blue Sky and like it a lot. Doesn't change my basic tone; even seems to fatten up the bottom/mid range as well, even before noticeably getting into overdrive.

What I would like, though, is to get the overdrive to come on a little more biting, articulate, less creamy and "flattened" on the top end if at all possible. Does that make sense? Anyone have any ideas as to a diode change or something that would possibly bring this about?

Not heaps to tinker with in this circuit, but on top of my head, a few spots to fiddle with (from miro's schem):
- Changing C7 from lug2 of bass to 15nF and it adjacent to 4.7nF will give you the same amount of bass but at a later pot rotation;
- Changing C7 before IC2 to 6.8nF or lower will give you less cut in the mid-high range;
- Changing C6 to a lower value, say 47pF, will also shave less high freqs.

The CP-25 Highwayman pc board is all discreet components, the CP-12 Pure Sky is mostly SMD (surface mount) components. The Pure Sky also uses 50KC (reverse audio) pots for the tone controls, so the feel and sweet-spot of the controls will be different for the two pedals, even though the overall range of those pots is the same. It drives me crazy to watch a comparison video where someone sets the knobs of two or more pedals exactly the same and compares them. This is not a realistic measure of what a pedal can offer. You must use your ears and see if the tones can be matched. Or set the pots to minimum, then maximun to effectively remove their tapers from the equation. Then you can get an idea if they are similar or not.

Caline revises their pedals pretty often, older ones are all discreet while newer ones have shifted over to surface mount. They do that when part supplies dry up. I have 4 Pure Sky's, and the first one is through hole.

Also it's a Timmy clone and nothing to do with the RC/AC/BB.