This has worked really nicely, and I’ll continue to do it for as long as my old Centaur parts last. buildyourowntone.com update: Tuesday February 15, 2011. */, Copyright ©2021. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Klon Centaur. Josh Scott of JHS pedals fame, who currently owns the stompbox, is now selling it on Reverb for $500,000! Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing. The pedals were made manually by Finnegan. This Klon KTR can produce transparent boost to warm rich overdrive tones, all with the ⦠In creating the Klon Centaur, Finnegan was at the forefront of the movement back towards guitar pedals. Within the first year, theyâd developed prototypes that were much closer to what Finnegan wanted than a Tube Screamer, and various guitarists in the Boston area encouraged them to go into production so they could buy their own. Privacy Policy | This is Centaur #001, built by Bill Finnegan in January 1995 and kept (never sold) by him. The pedal is known for its ability to add gain without coloring the tone of ⦠The Klon Centaur is a mythical beast in the world of overdrives that has been lost to history for almost a decade. The listing opens as follows: Since Bill gave up building the pedals a few years back, prices have sky-rocketed. Unlike the Centaur which had through-hole components with leads, I wanted to use surface-mount components for the KTR, which meant that my assistant, John Perotti, and I had to spend an enormous amount of time soldering through-hole leads onto hundreds of very small surface-mount components so that we could evaluate them and choose the ones that would make the KTR sound the same as the Centaur did.” Photo by Nolan Yee. “In other words, you need to use the unit as an overdrive in the literal sense of the term.” The assumption here is that users are pairing the Centaur or KTR with an all-tube amp. It had to be rugged and reliable. Klon Centaur Overdrive. Tubes or Solid State: All are welcome. Bill [Finnegan, Klon designer] built/sold this #2 first as he sat #1 aside for himself and built it later. Indeed, our own Klon Centaur did take approximately 10 weeks to receive. It gradually became clear to Finnegan that the situation was unsustainable. If it amplifies a signal, this is the place! To the dismay of guitarists everywhere, Bill refuses to build Centaurs again although several ⦠The latter still sounded good, but not as harmonically rich as when the amp was working harder. Although Fenning had never designed an audio circuit and had no real interest in music, he was exceptionally good at finding ways to give the circuit what Finnegan thought it needed at any given time. Product Description. The Klon KTR Pedal is a revised edition of the legendary Klon Centaur, and certainly one of the finest overdrive/boost pedals. In the 1980s, Bill Finnegan played in a band where he plugged his Telecaster straight into a Twin Reverb turned up as loud as the soundman would permit. âI'm Bill Finnegan, designer of the original Klon overdrive circuit, designer of the Klon Centaur Professional Overdrive unit incorporating that original circuit, and also the hand-builder of every single Centaur unit from the beginning ⦠“This turned out to be quite a challenge,” Finnegan says. It is a one man operation, with Nordvang personally designing, building and testing all of the pedals. Genuine Klon Centaur Overdrive by Bill Finnegan. "I only took one picture because that's good enough. Although the Klon Centaur circuit remained pretty much unchanged throughout its production run, Bill Finnegan did tweak a few component values. Evolution of the Legend âYou know what it is, if you want the best Klon⦠What do you want people to see in Klon? Finnegan says Fenning deserves a lot of credit for the circuit in both the Centaur and its successor, the KTR. Hooked: Blue October's Will Knaak on Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode", 5. Finnegan says he’s heard this claim about earlier units, later ones, gold ones, and silver ones. Eventually, the MIT friend bought a house in the suburbs and the distance made it harder to work together. The Centaur, an elegant and deceptively simple looking pedal, was notable for the way ⦠However, guitar tone is always a personal preference, so what may sound magical to others may not be so for you. “Without the buffer there is a very noticeable degradation of the signal due to the capacitance inherent in guitar cables,” says Finnegan, “but some people prefer it, so I wanted to provide that option in the new unit.” He quickly adds, “My good friend Paul Cochrane—of Tim and Timmy [pedals] fame—was the guy who designed the switching circuitry, so a tip of the hat to Paul.”, It took a long, long time to finish the KTR. The circuit is designed completely by Bill Finnegan, and nails the sound of a genuine Centaur. âI'm Bill Finnegan, designer of the original Klon overdrive circuit, designer of the Klon Centaur Professional Overdrive unit incorporating that original circuit, and also the hand-builder of every single ⦠What you see is what you get, no ⦠These claims stopped almost immediately after it was reverse-engineered in 2007 and a schematic was posted online.”, Myth No.2: Certain Centaurs sound better than others. Designs that are unique and not to be expected from any other designer, no matter how talented. In bigger Boston-area clubs, the Twinâs volume would be at 6 or sometimes even 7, but in smaller places Finnegan could usually turn it up to only 3 1/2 or 4. Klon Centaur od Billa Finnegana získaly povÄst jednoho z nejlepÅ¡ích efektů vÅ¡ech dob. Given the popularity of the Centaur and now the KTR, I would say that this has been borne out. The only Centaurs I build anymore are the ones I build for her, and I don't make or collect a single cent from them. Many moons ago, back in the early â²90s, the maker of the pedal, Bill Finnegan, came to my house with one of the original Klon prototypes. Myth No.1: The Centaur is a slightly tweaked [insert name of extant pedal here] circuit. #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:100%;}
Despite the serial number, the pedal was built and sold first, as Klon main-man Bill Finnegan ⦠#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:100%;}
The same seller also had a TS808 that he wasnât selling. âI'm Bill Finnegan, designer of the original Klon overdrive circuit, designer of the Klon Centaur Professional Overdrive unit incorporating that original circuit, and also the hand-builder of every single Centaur unit from the ⦠Klon Centaur Analysis. ), that is probably the "hypest" pedals of all. The Klon Centaur is a guitar overdrive pedal developed by Bill Finnegan between 1990 and 1994. When you were designing the Centaur, did you begin with any assumptions about players who’d be interested in it? Birth of a Centaur I like pretty much everything under the sun in the way of electric guitars, and over the years I’ve owned a bunch of very different ones. Klon clone kits and Klon clone circuit boards are in stock and shipping again. It was used by ⦠Since I discontinued the Centaur, a lot of people have asked me whether I’d consider building one for them—sometimes offering me pretty substantial amounts of money—but I’m not going to do that. âThis was actually the 19th unit I builtâI had orders for 18 and I needed the money to pay a Klon invoice or two, so I numbered those eighteen 002-019 and built this one a week or so later.â Klon LLC, Photo by Nolan Yee. From that point on, demand for Centaur pedals grew. Finnegan’s contention is that, given several factors—especially the rarity of the Centaur’s germanium clipping diodes—it would be extremely difficult to create an identical-sounding overdrive/boost. Top 5 Klon Myths. Under the username klondirectsales, Finnegan will sell the new run direct as he handmakes them. Created by Bostonian Bill Finnegan in ⦠Klone centaur build (Aion refractor) Klon centaur circuit analysis; Klon centaur mods and tweaks; Klon centaur history and versions; For those who do not know the Klon Centaur yet, it is an overdrive created in the 90s by Bill Finnegan and MIT engineers (yes! When the original Klon Centaur professional overdrive was released in 1994, it was one of the very first boutique overdrive pedals on the market created for the player interested in fine-tuning their tone. Myth No.1: The Centaur is a slightly tweaked [insert name of extant pedal here] circuit. The KTR was designed specifically for mass production, and depending on who you ask, it is an inferior pedal to the original. “It’s always a good thing if your amp is turned up enough to get the harmonic response and distortion that are engendered by tubes clipping and output transformers saturating. Under the username klondirectsales, Finnegan will sell the new run direct as he handmakes them. Here are the most common misconceptions. Iâll admit that I have owned more than one Klon in my lifetime and the last one I sold privately went for over £2ooo on Reverb. Bill Finnegan shares for the first time the inside of the upcoming Klon KTR pedal, which uses surface mounted components. Rig Rundown: God Is an Astronaut [2021], 1. Hooked: Blue October's Will Knaak on Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode", 5. It had to be a design with no hookup wires whatsoever, and with a modular footswitch assembly so that faulty footswitches could be replaced in a few minutes. Thatâs when Finnegan starting looking into creating a new design that would meet those criteria. Finnegan says he typically worked 55â60 hours per week in effort to keep turnaround times as short as possible, though he was hindered by the fact that the circuit was very labor intensive and time consuming. “While it wasn’t an easy or pleasant process, we both feel—and now a lot of other people feel, as well—that I achieved my design goal: With careful component selection, the KTR sounds the same as the Centaur.”, Myth No.4: You have to play really loud for the Centaur or KTR to sound good. Finnegan also wanted to prove—to himself and to those who said it couldn’t be done—that, with careful component selection and smart board layout, he could design a successor that would sound exactly the same as the Centaur. That was four years ago (you can see the ⦠Terms Of Use. â[The TS9] compressed the transient response of the original signal a lot, had a midrange character I didnât like, and subtracted a noticeable amount of bass response from the signal as well,â he explains. This is true whether you’re playing through a 4-watt or a 100-watt amp.”. Bill Finnegan produced the pedal at a time when guitar pedals and large pedalboards were not in vogue. All Rights Reserved And though Finnegan says it was much more difficult than he expected, he feels it has achieved all of his design objectives. We recently spoke to Klonâs Bill Finnegan about the origins of the Centaur, his new KTR designâwhich made a (naturally) limited debut in October of 2012âand how an overdrive pedal can fetch more than $1,000 on the used market and inspire such emotionally charged reactions. Also, given that I live in Boston, it was impossible for me to hire people and expand: Real estate here is in short supply and very expensive, so there was no possibility of my renting commercial space to set up an actual shop.â. The introduction of the Klon back in the early to mid â²90s is arguably one of the most significant milestones in the world of overdrive pedals. Update - 3/18/15: The last Klon-KTR pedals were sold today. Every now and then she needs a little help, financially. /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. I’m aware of what the used units are selling for, so at some point after I discontinued the Centaur it occurred to me that—if and when she needed me to—I could build a Centaur and give it to her to sell on eBay and use the proceeds to keep going. Klon KTR. This experimental board is the one I used for developing the KTR. I was working from the assumption that there were a lot of guitar players with really good guitars and really good amps who were looking for an overdrive pedal that—whether it was adding dirt or not itself—wouldn’t mess up what they already had and liked. The story goes like this: Klon designer Bill Finnegan made Klon number #2 first, and kept number one for himself, which he built later. Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing, Finnegan built Centaursâaround 8,000 in totalâby hand, on a cheap folding card table in a succession of, On PremierGuitar.com, "Sponsored Content" refers to articles, videos, or audio recordings that are produced or curated by an advertiser but that, Bill Crook, Mike âDr.Zâ Zaite and Robert Keeley on Brad Paisley, SNAMM '16 - Klon Centaur, KTR, and Prototype Boost Demos, 2. According to Klonâs Bill Finnegan, âitâs a much more complex circuit than the typical ⦠Thatâs right â itâs still possible to obtain great-sounding Klon pedals made by Centaur inventor Bill Finnegan. The entire design process took four and a half years, and when the pedal debuted at the end of â94 Finnegan was soon very busy trying to keep up with the demandâbuilding, testing, and shipping the pedals as a single-man outfit. And the fact that this seemingly mundane, 3-knob stompbox is used by such high-profile players as Jeff Beck, John Mayer, Joe Perry, Nels Cline, and Matt Schofield only compounds matters. Neither. However, there are very few that can match the tone of an original authentic Klon Centaur (from Bill Finnegan & klon-siberia.com) or a Klon "CLONE" from buildyourowntone.com. Summary. I don’t have any overall preference for single-coil guitars or humbucker guitars myself. Even when a thread starts out with the best of intentions, itâs not uncommon for it to morph into the online equivalent of a mythical Hydra. Privacy Policy | “I was going to have to kill it before it could kill me,” Finnegan recalls. And I added a resistor to give the circuit a very small amount of additional low-mid response—I wanted it to have a little more roundness when used with, say, a Strat into a Super Reverb. Update - 2/09/16: Klon-KTR is back in stock. The Klon Centaur was developed and produced manually by Bill Finnegan between 1990 and 1994. Except for the all-important clipping diodes, it had to have surface-mount components, which take up less space on a board than traditional through-hole components. Taylor GTe Urban Ash: The
Premier Guitar Review, 3. But now, itâs back⦠Part of the legend of the Klon Centaur is due to the fact that developer Bill Finnegan âgoopedâ the innards to prevent other manufacturers from copying the legendary circuit board. “You need to have the output knob high enough that the signal hits the front end of your amp harder than your bypassed signal would,” says Finnegan. On PremierGuitar.com, "Sponsored Content" refers to articles, videos, or audio recordings that are produced or curated by an advertiser but that, Bill Crook, Mike “Dr.Z” Zaite and Robert Keeley on Brad Paisley, SNAMM '16 - Klon Centaur, KTR, and Prototype Boost Demos, 2. Finnegan recalls that, in 1990, guitarists began chasing after out-of-production Ibanez Tube Screamers in droves. Since then, these pedals have been used by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Jeff Beck, James Hetfield, Stone Gossard, Noel Gallagher, and many more. Klon #2 for $500k! I also had the circuit board redesigned with a ground plane for better grounding—again, no sonic effect except the potential for a little less hum. In 1995, two of the 1uF capacitors in the signal path were increased to 4.7uF to allow more low frequencies through, and a 15K resistor was added to âsweetenâ the ⦠The initial idea was to improve the TubeScreamer transient response and the midrange-bass frequencies in order to create a big open sound with a hint of tube clipping: ⦠We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. Finnegan estimates the aggregate cost of a Centaur as seven to eight times that of a pedal built with off-the-shelf parts. This only ⦠He also says it was more expensive to build than most other pedals due to the fact that everything from its cast enclosure to its knobs, pots, and sheet-metal bottom were custom crafted. The seemingly mythical Klon Centaur circuit was first developed by Bill Finnegan in the early 1990s. I let Bill know why it was so important for me to get one. Navíc existuje velké množství kopií a âklonůâ tÄchto Klonů. Launched in 1994 at the front end of the modern-day boutique-pedal boom, the Klon Centaur overdrive was immediately met with critical acclaim. Therefore, number 2 is actually the first ever Klon Centaur pedal in existence. âFor the last seven years or so of Centaur production, the retail price was $329,â says Finnegan, âand to be honest, my profit margin was not very sensibleâno real business person would have considered, for more than a moment, doing what I was doing for the return I was receiving. The new Klon Overdrive pedals are being sold via eBay, one at a time. Finnegan built Centaursâaround 8,000 in totalâby hand, on a cheap folding card table in a succession of small apartments for 15 years. What he really wanted was a big, open sound, with a hint of tube clippingâa sound that would make you unaware a pedal was involved. www.klon-siberia.com It was characterized for its transparent overdrive, which added gain to the signal without steering-away from the original tone of the guitar. I made no other changes.”, Myth No.3: The KTR doesn’t/can’t sound as good as the Centaur. Both the Klon Centaur and Maxon OD-820 are designed to be used primarily with tube amplifiers for best effect. Under the username klondirectsales, Finnegan will sell the new run direct from eBay as he makes them by hand. I don’t have any overall preference for single-coil guitars or humbucker guitars myself. Though both had day jobs, for the next couple of years they got together once a week and tried to push the ball down the field. "Buy it or don't, I don't really care" Josh Scott "Because of the prices lately here on the Reverb, I think this is a fair price for what it is. DIY: How to Adjust Electric-Guitar Intonation. Bill Finnegan's Klon KTR Overdrive. A lot of players wanted multi-FX pedals and digital rack units; not boost or overdrive pedals. Here are the most common misconceptions. Na eBay je najdeme za Å¡ílené peníze, dražby jdou pÅes tisíc babek. Taylor GTe Urban Ash: The
Premier Guitar Review, 3. If youâve spent any amount of time on guitar-gear forums, you know they can often devolve into pretty abrasive battles of opinion. However, we spoke to Bill Finnegan two days ago and we will be getting more supply in 3-4 weeks. In fact, the âmythsâ regarding the Klon Centaurs are often overstated (as said by Bill Finnegan himself), with many people claiming their sound to be âmagicalâ. When Bill Finnegan at Klon decided to create the successor to the legendary Centaur, the Klon KTR, he sought none other than J.Rockett to bring it to life. You obviously have high expectations from your designs, though you’re also perplexed by the reactions it inspires. Like Bill Finnegan â the designer of the original Klon â Henrik Nordvang set up Nordvang Custom by himself. In 1995 I made three small changes: I added a resistor to give the circuit some protection against a static charge delivered to its input—a change that has no sonic effect. He recruited a friend whoâd just graduated from MIT with an electrical engineering degree. In 1994 Bill Finnegan, following years of painstaking research and development, released on an unsuspecting world what would become the first "transparent" overdrive pedal. DIY: How to Adjust Electric-Guitar Intonation. All Rights Reserved A guy at a local shop said Bill Finnegan might be able to tell me where/when I could get a KTR, so I found his contact info and sent him an email. Of all the forum topics that can inspire such heated debate, few inspire more passion, awe, and vitriol than a guitar pedal named after a different sort of mythological creature. Finnegan says this claim arises because the KTR uses surface-mount parts while the Centaur (and most other pedals) use through-hole parts. Aclam The Windmiller Preamp Demo -
PG Gear Spotlight, 4. “These two photos show my testing jig for Centaur boards, with one of my experimental boards on it,” Bill Finnegan shares. Forum administrators attempt to clean things up and lock out the more abusive commenters, but once they cut off one of the creatureâs heads, two more appear. Gear forums are regularly aglow with all sorts of comments about Klon. What can you tell us about Centaur units that occasionally turn up on eBay with the claim that they are “new, with full warranty”—are they fakes? Based on what I read in forums, I didn't know if I would even get a response. This is Centaur #001, built by Bill Finnegan in January 1995 and kept (never sold) by him. Bill prohlásil, že skonÄil, jinak by ho vražedné pracovní tempo zabilo (vyrobil 8000 kusů). The Centaur is characterized as a "transparent" overdrive, meaning it adds gain to the signal without significantly altering the tone of the guitar. The overdriveâs mythical nature quickly grew beyond its namesake, and it now fetches upwards of $4,000 via retailers such as Reverb.com â which is where Josh Scott, owner of JHS Pedals, is selling Klon Centaur #2.. Although it didnât occur to him at the time, a pedal that would give him the sound of a cranked amp is exactly what he needed. However, there was an email from Bill ⦠Myth No.5: Certain clones sound “exactly the same” as a Klon. Although the Klon Centaur circuit remained pretty much unchanged throughout its production run, Bill Finnegan did tweak a few component values. It had to be considerably smaller than the Centaur. The story of the Klon Centaur is an intriguing one. After J.Rockett built the original Klon KTR units, the companies parted ways. Finnegan later partnered with the late Fred Fenning (who tragically passed away in a plane crash in the mid â90s)âanother MIT grad whom Finnegan says was brilliant and very determined. And, though Finnegan thought it sounded a little better than the TS9s, he still felt it had the aforementioned shortcomings. “The fact is, under the hood they’re all basically the same. Never mind the fact that the majority of the circuit comes encased in epoxy. Perhaps the Centaur will never be topped, but this is a good place to look. Heâd heard about a guy who was selling two TS9s, andâhoping one of the little green pedals would help make his Twin sound like it was at 6 when it was only at 4âhe went to check them out. “It sounds the same as the Centaur, takes up considerably less space on a pedalboard, is less expensive, and it’s distinctive aesthetically—it’s got the Klon thing going on.” He laughs, “Whatever the Klon thing is.”. Boutique in every sense of the word and hand built by its creator Bill Finnegan, each Klon Centaur was carefully ⦠In addition to the modest returns from his efforts, Finnegan says he felt immense stress as he tried to oblige those who wanted a Centaur but didnât want to pay the inflated price used specimens were fetching because of the 12- to 14-week turnaround time for a new one. The Klon Centaur in an overdrive guitar pedal designed by Bill Finnegan with the help of 2 MIT Electronic Engineers between 1990 and 1994.
Your Pedalboards 2020: Part Deux, 1. Gear forums are regularly aglow with all sorts of comments about Klon. Bill Finnegan This is the real Instagram page for Klon, the company established in 1994 by Bill Finnegan in order to market original-circuit guitar overdrive units. I like pretty much everything under the sun in the way of electric guitars, and over the years I’ve owned a bunch of very different ones. Rig Rundown: God Is an Astronaut [2021], 1. “My assistant, John Perotti, and I spent almost two years listening to different surface-mount capacitors in various places in the circuit before I felt this had been achieved.” Lastly, he wanted the new unit to be visually unique—a tall order, given that the unit would be housed in a standard enclosure. Bill Finneganâs circuit gentle drives, pushing the mids for both clean or with a bite of adjustable overdrive gain without degrading tone, without over compressing the attack and whilst effortlessly adding sustain and popping solos to the front of the ⦠What I want people to expect from me and from Klon are designs that are exceptional in the literal sense of the term—designs that are conceptually sound and well executed. Terms Of Use. In 2008, he began working on a ground-up redesign that had to meet the following criteria: It had to be straightforward to build, so that any good contract manufacturing firm would be able to do the job easily and well. We have lots of units on hand and orders have been shipped normally. The one new feature Finnegan wanted to incorporate was a switch that enabled the player to choose the buffered output of the original Centaur or a true-bypass output. “The experimental boards have sockets for every component in the circuit, which enables me to listen to any particular component and then swap it out for a substitute while keep everything else the same. It immediately became clear that Tube Screamers were not for him. According to Klon’s Bill Finnegan, “it’s a much more complex circuit than the typical overdrive/boost circuit. Roughly 8,000 units were produced between 1994 and the early 2000s, and is now a widâ¦
Your Pedalboards 2020: Part Deux, 1. “For two years my assistant, John Perotti, and I listened to hundreds of different surface-mount parts throughout the circuit,” Finnegan explains. So much so that itâs ironic how much the pedal named after the half-human, half-horse creatures from Greek legend has since developed such a complex mythology of its own. /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. In 1995, two of the 1uF capacitors in the signal path were increased to 4.7uF to allow more low frequencies through, and a 15K resistor was added to âsweetenâ the ⦠In your opinion, do the pedals work better with single-coils or humbuckers? Aclam The Windmiller Preamp Demo -
PG Gear Spotlight, 4. But Finnegan felt the circuit could still be improved, so he and his partner kept working. âThis was actually the 19th unit I builtâI had orders for 18 and I needed the money to pay a Klon invoice or two, so I numbered those eighteen 002-019 and built this one a week or so later.â Klon LLC, Photo by Nolan Yee. Each of them has its own particular thing going on, and when I was working on the design of the circuit I was always thinking about how it could be more effective in preserving and accentuating the essence of whatever instrument it was receiving the signal of. [Updated on 12.06.2020] A Guide to the Best Klon Centaur Clones (Klon Clones) Perhaps the most legendary (and expensive) guitar pedal of all times, the Klon Centaur was one of the first boutique stompboxes and proved that an overdrive could be much more than just distortion.
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