klon centaur

[casey]

this may be an old thread...but anyone ever built a klon centaur or know
much about them?  and what is the big deal about them?

[Peter Snowberg]

They were tuned in development over a period of years by performing musicians. That pedal even has the thumbs up from Ken Fisher (Mr. TrainWreck).





There is at least one more picture of the guts on the net.

I've never heard one, or seen one.

-Peter

[BillyJ]

:roll:

[idlefaction]

take a look pal, it's coated in epoxy.  those pics are just there to make us all go 'wow!' rather than make us go 'cool now i can clone one! muahahahaha!'

most of the people here are very intelligent.

[Peter Snowberg]

Billy,

I didn't give away a schematic or any details that are not published by it's makers. You can see the epoxy over the critical components. I offered nothing about how it works. I do not know, and will probably never know, and that's just fine. I won't look too far either.

They're pictures of an overall design, not the specifics or the actual product as in the case of a copied book.

If this were the inside of a botique effect, I would not post a link unless the component values and design were obscured to the point of obscurity. That's pretty standard practice out there. Look at this:


That is from the manufacturer. The values are obscured.

you can see more here:
http://www.kometamps.com/thekomet.html

Notice they never give away a full view?

You (and everbody else) are hereby free to post pictures of the insides of any of my boxes so long as you don't publish the schematic, component values, or remove the epoxy overcoat. OK?

-Peter

[Marcos - Munky]

SOme please explain why itss cool to post a Klon but not a fuzz factory?
Both boutique so what the @#$% gives with this one gurus?!?!

Nobody shows a Fuzz Factory because Z don't want, and he is a contributor of this forum, like me and you. All the users here don't show Z's pics or schematics for this. I think in the old forum rules there was a topi: if you want a schematic of a "boutiquer", ask him directly, specially Zvex.

[Ammscray]

I'll be honest, I think the pedal is overpriced, and IMO doesn't sound that great either...I know lots of people that have bought them and sold them right away...it sounded to me kind of "rattish" but smoother...I liked my Colorsound Overdriver WAY more to say the least...

[Peter Snowberg]

I've read up a bit on this pedal and they say it was made to improve already good tone.  :?   If you are not totally happy with your tone, this pedal will aparently make you less happy.

Hmmmmm.......

It sounds like it is a clean boost with a cut/boost high control and enough gain to send it into moderate overdrive, but not severe OD. The ideal application is supposed to be with a tube amp that takes overdriving well.

I love the case, and for what construction must cost them, the prices I see at HC are pretty decent for a boutique effect (speaking only of construction). I don't see them raking in the cash unless their distribution is great.

There are much more detailed pictures of the innards are at Klon's website in the photo gallery. It's Flash based and takes forever to load though.

www.klon-siberia.com

-Peter

[casey]

well, i myself havent heard one and would be interested to hear one...

but i wonder if it has such a "legendary" status just because there is
alot of secretive stuff....and not because of overall sound ?

The website is put together to give only half pictures of it and so on.  Kind
of like a mysterious thing....
It seems as if alot of smart marketing schemes have been employed here.
Of course this is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is interesting none the less.

With all of that said, i would love to hear one.

[Paul Marossy]

It's kind of silly to put epoxy on the back of pots. You can just measure those with a DMM....  :wink:

[Peter Snowberg]

It's kind of silly to put epoxy on the back of pots. You can just measure those with a DMM....  :wink:

Very true when you're in person. The same goes for all the rest of the parts once you exposed a lead.

The big advantage is it's so hard to press your meter leads into the monitor to get good contacts.


I have to wonder about this pedal too. Many mixed reviews, and almost all of them are very pro or very against. I always question things when I don't see much middle ground.

Add Ken Fisher's name to any equation and suddenly a god-like following will start automatically thanks to his unrelated achievements.

They do have their marketing down.

-Peter

[aron]

I've played it. At the time I thought it had a unique sound. Kind of like a sharp defined clipping - a little midrangey but OK.

I didn't think the distortion was amazing or anything - just that it did have a focused sharp clip.

I liked the HotCake a lot more at that time.

[Rob Strand]

Always wanted to find out what was under the goop on sneaky boutique pedals, but didn't want you pedal to lose value?  Well we have the the thing for you.  It's the new PC-ray, a PC-based X-ray machine the home works on XP, 2000 and Win 9x systems - only $99 dollars from Kmart.

LOL!

[R.G.]

Did I mention that a stainless steel screw inserted into the end of a cheap soldering iron with its head filed to a chisel tip will remove even hard epoxy without damaging the circuit underneath?

8-)

[bwanasonic]

The Klon was one of the first boutique pedals I remember reading about and just laughed at the *suckers* who bought $400 tube-screamers. I never did get to hear a Klon , but I have a lot more appreciation for a well built *booteek* pedal these days. As many a hobbyist-turned-would-be-pedal-maker can tell you, it ain't easy making money in this racket. I also now have the luxury of a nice tube amp and have come to appreciate how having just the right pedal in front of it can really be the difference between sounding *decent* or sounding like you always wanted to. Lucky for me that pedal was one I made for $40 bucks , but not everyone has the inclination to do this. If I was making more money, I may have never got into DIY myself, preferring to pay some of the very interesting people in the boutique pedal business. Although I have a personal distaste for the *mysterious super secret* approach, I'm not the one trying to pay my rent and health insurance making pedals.

Kerry M

[Peter Snowberg]

It's the new PC-ray, a PC-based X-ray machine

The frightening thing is that you can make an x-ray machine with two car ignition coils, a couple NPN power transistors, a 555, and a tube with a getter on the top. Regular stat film works fine.

Please kids, don't try this at home. I did and I wonder how much life I took off myself.  :cry:

I just wonder how much you could dose things before poping the semiconductors?

-Peter

[bwanasonic]

The frightening thing is that you can make an x-ray machine with two car ignition coils, a couple NPN power transistors, a 555, and a tube with a getter on the top. Regular stat film works fine.

Please kids, don't try this at home. I did and I wonder how much life I took off myself.  :cry:

C'mon this a DIY forum! Where's the link to the schematic?  Anyone make a *Glow In The Dark* Fuzz yet?

Kerry M

[Peter Snowberg]

You can find one in a book of old Scientific American article reprints called "The Amateur Scientist".

Thay also have some neat DIY projects in there covering rocketry and even a magnetic resonance spectrometer(!).

The originals were all from the 40s and 50s I believe. I lost the book long ago. It was a smaller format paperback about two inches thick.

The final efficiency will depend on the coil voltage and the fill of the tube used. It's no hospital equipment, but with a 1/2 hour exposure you can see some very interesting things.

Please don't make one though. I seriously wonder what I did to myself in the process.

-Peter

[Greg Moss]

I just tried out a Klon pedal a couple of days after this thread started.  I should point out that I am a bass player, and while my bass gear tends to be marginally pro-quality, my guitar stuff is, well, it has some character, some of it.  The other stuff is more or less crap.  

Anyway, I tried the pedal with a kay/harmony looking (the name plate came unglued from the headstock before I got it) semihollowbody into a 15 watt practice amp.  I actually found it sort of exciting in that the guitar tone had a better defined mid radge (what i'd associate with the 400-800Hz) range.  It made the guitar sound less jangly and trashy.  I'd say it compressed the midrange, but It was still very dynamic sounding.  I don't have a lot of experience with clean boosts or tube screamers, but the Klon didn't have that squashed spongyness I hear people using the TS's for.  I didn't find the higher (ie distorted) sound that interesting.  I guessing because: A)The amp I was using was a Gorilla practice amp, and the Klon may have been using it's magical electronic mojo to enhance the inherant overdriven tone of the combo, which is not so awesome(lol); or B)The pedal isn't really made for aggressive crunchy tones.  I usually am not interested in using "subtle" effects, I kind of like using things that are obvious or avoid the extra gain staging alltogether, but I really warmed up to the klon.  I think maybve a good recorded example to check out might be "The Bed is In the Water," by the band Karate.  Their guitarist Geoff Farina is a fan, and a pretty intense tone nut.  Otherwise just go see them live.  They are a very simply arranged, yet tonally impressive band.

I think it might sound ok on a variety of setups, but I think it was more designed for simpler tube amps, ie older style Fender and marshalls.  Last I noticed, each was tested for quality control with a Tele and a Fender Twin.

I should also mention that I spent a few weeks working for the Klon guy stuffing PCB's for centaurs.  I will say this, and maybe this goes for most high price-tag boutique pedal-makers:  I think he's the real deal.  He really does spend all of his time working on Centaurs, (mostly by himself) answering questions and often talking people out of buying them if he felt they were into buying the hyped name, and would be better served by a different style of pedal.  For somebody like myself, who, for a long time had a $400 cap on the price tag of any piece of gear I would buy ($100 for pedal or rack unit!) $279 is a pretty big chunk of change for something that, at it's best would be "same as the exsisting gear, but better," but it seemed to me between the time spent making the unit and parts (the custom enclosure for example) it's worth it, if you're able to drop that kind of $$$ in the first place.  I'm not.

As far as suggestions that the secrecy surrounding the pedal is part of some sort of marketing ploy:  He's basically secretive becase he wants to keep being able to make some money off of selling the things.  He hasn't had trouble getting people to try and buy them, just trouble getting them built fast enough-I think there's usually a many month backlog on non-dealer orders.

Blah,

Greg

[Steve C]

The Klon was one of the first boutique pedals I remember reading about and just laughed at the *suckers* who bought $400 tube-screamers.

Kerry M

FYI, when the TS-808 came out the wholesale cost on it was $28.