# Klon vs Klone: Premier Guitar



## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

Very cool video and I really like what Joe Gore did; after a/b'ing each klone to the klon, he records a clean clip stripping out all the other variables and applies various overdrive levels from the units to have a true a/b.

What's your favourite? The Archer sounded pretty close to me.


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## Smylight (Jun 28, 2016)

I’m a uselessly desperate Klone fan. I have quite a few different ones, all set up for different guitars and uses (you know... more or less grind), and they all sound great, even the 30$ Chinese ones. Handmade from the original schematic, Soul Food, Keeley Oxblood, etc... They take up a good half of my pedalboard real estate and easily get the most use time. I was very glad to see Joe arrived at the same conclusion as me.


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## sambonee (Dec 20, 2007)

Which one is the Chinese $30 one? I’m curious.


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## dtsaudio (Apr 15, 2009)

Go to www.aliexpress..com and search for klon.
There's a shit load of them starting ar $17.99 US. Shipping's probably huge though.


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## broke snob (Apr 18, 2020)

I've owned a couple of original Klon Centaur's (as well as a KTR). Got my first gold Klon from Bill towards the end of 2007 for the princely sum of $350 USD shipped to my door. It sat unused for many years, because I simply wasn't using it "right"- I was running it into a completely clean amp, and it just doesn't bode well in such a context unless you're looking for a clean boost. Turning the gain up on the pedal and using it as your only drive pedal going into a clean amp isn't a great sound at all, imo. The Klon thrives hitting the front end of an already cooking tube amp. Once I had the ability to crank my amps up, that was when I discovered the true potential of the Centaur. It was absolutely magical in this application, and added a magically layer of tonal goodness and harmonics to everything. I couldn't find an amp it didn't work well with when the amp was cranked up. But even with the ability to crank up, the times I could crank up were few and far between, so I discovered an alternate application for it; Klon -> other drive pedals. I'd have my "base sound" drive pedal, i.e. a Fulltone OCD, which I could run into an amp set for pristine clean as my drive sound, and the Klon in front of it. This would _sort of _emulate running the Klon into a cranked amp, and goose the pedal up beautifully, adding a new layer of gain, but more importantly. a whole world of lush new harmonics. It became my sound for a very long time. But then I was offered a substantial amount for that Klon (wasn't even planning on selling), and I just couldn't resist. I went down the Klone route for years after that, which included a stint with the KTR, and liked the Archer best, along with the Arc v2. Both were lovely, but none of them went all the way. I don't mean to contribute to any folklore surrounding the pedal, or to hype the prices up even further... I wish I could get that exact sound for a fraction of the originals going rate... who doesn't? Eventually I was able to get into an early gold horsie for a very fair price ($1100 cad) 2-3 years back and was in sonic bliss again, but then older and wiser than I was in '07, I thought that no pedal on gods green earth is worth that kinda' money. As bloody fantastic as the Klon is, it will always remain _just_ a drive a pedal- a drive pedal!!!-, and no such pedal is worth even remotely the going rates of these things. So I caved (again), and made a tidy profit. But now I'm kind of missing that sound again- yes, I am a crazy. The thing is, the application in which I was using the Klon 99% of the time was sort of a waste of its talents, and I've found several other pedals that do the job (pretty much?) just as well. It really doesn't take much to goose up another pedal... Screamers can do it just fine... These days I alternate between using a ThroBak Overdrive Boost and Union More, and they're great at that function, as well as boosting an actual cranked amps front end. But yeah, I'd love a Klon again someday, and wouldn't sell if I had one again. There is something in there.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Good post. And you allude to one of the paradoxes of the unit. We hear/read that so-and-so has one on their pedalboard, and their tones are to die for. But those players are on big stages, using big amps, set to big numbers on the volume knob. Does that pedal help them sound as good as they do? Yes. But are WE going to ever play under those same circumstances? Much less likely. And that was where a lot of those dropping big piles of money on used ones would be disappointed and angry. The tonal benefit was in the amp, NOT the pedal, stupid. If one plugged it into a decent amp, set to the edge of breakup, it could push the amp over the edge beautifully and musically.

Bill's production methods (small batches) undermined his ability to adequately serve the growing demand. The only money he made off the things was in his original retail sale. He didn't make penny one from the inflated E-bay resale prices. His production methods also increased his production costs. If one was cranking out pedals with standard Hammond boxes, Alpha pots, and Chinese stompswitches, as well as ordering thousands of PCBs to be etched in an order, he probably could have sold them for much less than the roughly $350 he charged, if only because he could have cranked out more units a month. The wait for each small batch of sandcast chassis cranked up the production costs and delayed production output. The long waiting list was what prompted the resale market, and the backlash.


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## player99 (Sep 5, 2019)

After watching this video and reading the post I wonder if the Klon is special or is it just doing the same thing as a treble booster?







I have a 2 Aluminum Falcon II's, and a Rimrock Lil Mo. I stopped using them when I got a Kingsley Minstrel pedal.


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

player99 said:


> After watching this video and reading the post from broke snob I wonder if the Klon is special or is it just doing the same thing as a treble booster?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Great vid. The Sabbath riff "Into the void" is one of my all-time favourite heavy riffs.


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## Smylight (Jun 28, 2016)

I concur with the preceding posts about the need for an almost-cranked good amp. Most of the times I'm using Klones with a Ceriatone 18-watt Marshall 1974 clone running slightly hot.


Pierre


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## Smylight (Jun 28, 2016)

sambonee said:


> Which one is the Chinese $30 one? I’m curious.


This one. It lives in front of a Marshall Class 5 I'm mainly using for practicing and does a great job of pushing the front-end into smooth overdrive.

Mosky Audio Golden Horse Guitar Effect Pedal Overdrive Booster Overdrive Gift | eBay


Pierre


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

I will just say Ceriatone Centura and the original Aluminum Falcon are as good or better than the KTR, followed closely by a few of the others. Never had the pleasure of playing an original. I also use them to push other pedals into a clean amp.


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

davetcan said:


> I will just say Ceriatone Centura and the original Aluminum Falcon are as good or better than the KTR, followed closely by a few of the others. Never had the pleasure of playing an original. I also use them to push other pedals into a clean amp.


I've been meaning to try the Centura. I bought an original silver Klon 15 years ago from a friend and at the time, I thought $US350 was a lot of money for an OD so I sold it...what do I know?!


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

Was down the You-Tube rabbit hole yesterday and found a video by Music is Win. He did a vid on spending 5K on an actual Klon, and this one is comparing the real thing to a cheap knock off. Sounds pretty good to me. Certainly worth saving $4970!!! Tyler got his from "Wish". Even in this clip, the price jumps a bit. For fun, I went over to Wish-Canada. Yep, they have them. Lots! Ranging from $29 into the hundreds of $$. I see one for $44. I click, and when it opens, it's instantly $52. Huh?? and then I have the option to select "style 1" or "style 2". (2 is usually the "big one"). Price jumps again.

I have 2 questions I suppose.

One, has anyone tried this particular knock-off?

Has anyone ever tried "Wish"?

To answer myself on #2, I don't think I will ever use Wish. Seems like a total scam!!


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

SWLABR said:


> Has anyone ever tried "Wish"?


Inexpensive source for Chinese goods. Quality varies. Order it and you may have it by Labour Day......or maybe in less than a month...it's a crap shoot.


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## SWLABR (Nov 7, 2017)

Jim DaddyO said:


> Inexpensive source for Chinese goods. Quality varies. Order it and you may have it by Labour Day......or maybe in less than a month..*.it's a crap shoot.*


I think "crap" being the operative word here.


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## Always12AM (Sep 2, 2018)

In the beginning, I started with a soul food. Didn’t understand it. I immediately jumped to a Boss Metal Zone lol.

Thought I found a sweet spot with the crayon / hot tubes.. 

Realized how good fancier stuff was. Bought a mojohand sacred cow. It was decent. Decided to upgrade to the Archer IKon. I have no idea what it does or why I bought it. But I paid msrp online plus $25 shipping and then got punched right in the face with a $95!!!!! Import fee. Had no idea that was gonna happen.

Reading these posts has cleared a lot of things up for me. I had a feeling that the Klone / Klon really doesn’t shine until it hits ear bleed volumes. Which I’ll never use. But I have also tried the amp> archer > fuzz and found a way to make it usable.

I am still not certain that I’m a Klon guy. Never even came close to seeing an original. I’m not really a pedal guy. But to me I want something that sounds good and sadly looks good but can work as a gain / attenuator. I want some low volume crunch.

I might actually comb though the threads and see if there is any info on the topic or maybe start an inquiry thread about it.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

When the original came out, "overdrive" was something you either got from a pedal like a Tube Screamer, or was something you got from the amp by cranking up the gain and turning down the master. The genius of the Klon Centaur was that it was designed to be a signal conditioner to produce pleasing *amp* overdrive. It lacked any sound of its own. Indeed, having had two ungooped originals in my possession for several months, I have to say that, on its own, it was a rather unimpressive overdrive pedal. When you ordered one from Bill Finnegan, it would be accompanied by a 20-30 minute conversation, where he inquired about your rig and playing style, and would recommend against purchase if he felt it wasn't going to add anything of use.

Though Bill's idea was an original and important one, the goal of signal-conditioning to achieve a better amp overdrive was one that could be achieved many different ways, and did not require use of a Klon and nothing else. So, we see the emergence of various "driver" pedals over the last 15 years, from pricey, to medium-price to bargain basement. As with many of the lower-cost pedals, the circuit design is generally borrowed from somewhere else. (R&D takes time, time is money, and production costs = higher retail prices) So, differences between price-tiers tend to be with regard to robustness of build rather than tonal qualities. And, after working with the pair of boards Bill sent me, I have to say that his builds were impeccable; right up there with Pete Cornish. Hence, the high-end customers he had. A $40 Mosky may well sound the same, but would not stand up to a world tour and routinely being thrown from this cargo compartment to that one, where Bill's builds would.


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## Jaime (Mar 29, 2020)

Always12AM said:


> In the beginning, I started with a soul food. Didn’t understand it. I immediately jumped to a Boss Metal Zone lol.
> 
> Thought I found a sweet spot with the crayon / hot tubes..
> 
> ...


I've personally found the King of Tone and Centura to be the best "your amp, but more" pedals. I could be nuts, but the Centura is the best klone I've tried and it's not very close.

The Klon thing didn't really fully penetrate my several-inches-thick skull until I started moving it around my board. Lots of people suggest using it into other pedals, whereas I've found I like it best at the very end. With the gain all the way down it fattens things and just kinda ties it all together for lack of a better description. It, as well as the King of Tone really let you use your guitar volume to control how much dirt you're slinging. Centura w/ gain at 9 o'clock, treble to taste along with the yellow side of the KoT into a clean-ish Marshall basically sounds and feels (as close as pedals would let you) like you've got it cranked. Turn your guitar down to 3-5ish and you're clean.

Suggesting the KoT is pretty lame, admittedly, but I've had it twice now after selling it because "who needs a drive pedal worth that much", only to discover all of the knockoffs are compromising in some way. There's no magical dust being sprinkled, it just _works_ and others I've tried to fill the gap with don't.


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## Always12AM (Sep 2, 2018)

Jaime said:


> I've personally found the King of Tone and Centura to be the best "your amp, but more" pedals. I could be nuts, but the Centura is the best klone I've tried and it's not very close.
> 
> The Klon thing didn't really fully penetrate my several-inches-thick skull until I started moving it around my board. Lots of people suggest using it into other pedals, whereas I've found I like it best at the very end. With the gain all the way down it fattens things and just kinda ties it all together for lack of a better description. It, as well as the King of Tone really let you use your guitar volume to control how much dirt you're slinging. Centura w/ gain at 9 o'clock, treble to taste along with the yellow side of the KoT into a clean-ish Marshall basically sounds and feels (as close as pedals would let you) like you've got it cranked. Turn your guitar down to 3-5ish and you're clean.
> 
> Suggesting the KoT is pretty lame, admittedly, but I've had it twice now after selling it because "who needs a drive pedal worth that much", only to discover all of the knockoffs are compromising in some way. There's no magical dust being sprinkled, it just _works_ and others I've tried to fill the gap with don't.


That makes sense! I don’t mind shelling out for something that is definitively better. My main issue is not really knowing that I’d even truly like the best versions of a Klon lol.

I think back to when I was untainted by any notion of structural integrity or authenticity and I sat down and plugged into a solid state orange crush 20 and dry humped it with my entire soul for a solid month lol!

I just want a little box that makes me feel that happy about my ‘64 deluxe 😩


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