Klon Centaur

An article by Yoncopin
Board Thread

The Story

Our shred instructor Todd Simpson was amazed when he tried this overdrive, which was hand built and gifted to him by GMC member Yoncopin. Yeah. That's how awesome our community is user posted image

Todd's thoughts on the pedal

"I actually like the tone better than my PRO TONE MISHA BULB over drive. It responds like a tube amp. Light touch is met by a very tubey sound, dig and it gets more Marshall sounding. Most responsive ovedrive Ive ever tried."

"This thing is my fave overdrive yet and I've tried wads and wads of them."

Making the Klon Centaur

Yoncopin explains how the guts of the pedal actually work:

Here are a few of the details of what I put together. First, the layout was my standard stripboard, using this design Klon Centaur Silver Edition

I'm going to guess what Todd refers to as the secret sauce is probably the germanium diodes. The design called for a Russian D9E, but I used 1N34's as the original creator eventually revealed were used in the original. Here's some background on silicon vs germanium diodes

Next, I laid out the enclosure in Sketchup.

I almost always do this now, because it's quick and I make sure everything will fit before drilling. Below is the drilled enclosure after I applied the laser waterslide decal. A quick clear coat and assembly and it was ready to rock.

Here's a few more quick shots of it before mailing it off:

Audio Demos by Todd Simpson

In this vid, I'm showing some of the dynamics of the pedal and doing a proper recording chain so you can hear what it really sounds like and it sounds AMAZING! Using very little in the way of FX, just some overdrive.

I'm running in to my hotone audio XSTOMP with the OCTOUCHER (sounds kinky) patch which is an octaver and wah, then to my hotone harmoney set for chorus, then to my hotone mojo diamond micro head (sounds like a clean vox) to a Randall 4x12 just using the camera mic to pic up audio.