What You Need To Know About The 'Klon Tone'

The Klon Centaur is one of the most iconic, legendary and mythical overdrive pedals around. There are only 8000 of these fabled units and everyone seems to want to chase that legendary tone. Now, with countless Klon Centaur clones available to buy, I thought it would be important to define what the 'Klon Tone' is, what is isn't, and most importantly, how to achieve it.

0:00 - Intro
1:04 - Design and Origin of the Klon Centaur Circuit
1:21 - Comparisons to a Tubescreamer and Why It's Different
2:24 - Soft Clipping vs Hard Clipping
3:35 - A Unique Overdrive at the Time of Release
3:56 - Supply & Demand Crisis
4:36 - What the Klon Does to Your Tone
6:36 - How Bill Designed the Klon to be Used
6:55 - A Clean Boost into a Clean Amp
8:09 - Using a Klon To Boost Other Overdrives
9:00 - The Klon Design is Important and Sounds Great
10:33 - Outro

Some useful links and credits for sources used in this video:

History:

Tones and Demos:

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My name is Chris Harvey, I'm a UK-based Guitarist, Guitar Tutor, Session Guitarist and Content Creator. I've been playing guitar for 15 years and have a Degree in Music Technology.

My channel is all about creating content for the modern-day guitarist. I want to provide you with everything you need to know to improve your knowledge of the guitar and the guitar industry. I'm also a videographer so I aim to make my videos as visually appealing as possible!

#guitar #kloncentaur #guitartonetips

[ChrisHarveyGuitar]

Thanks for watching! Hope you're all having a great weekend! Anyone own a Klon or Klone? How do you set yours? 🎸

[DerpRulesAll]

So nice to come back to Guitar Culture, and still see people who don't understand the simple idea that professional musicians play at much louder volumes, than what you can get in your house.

[karlsocasau]

Nice one buddy ! Love my Tumnus, specially playing it loud ! Thanks for sharing.

[BrySquatch]

Nice informative breakdown of the history and its strengths. Brought some new perspectives on how to view the pedal.

[manuelpassarella]

Interestingly enough, I use my tumnus to push a high quality preamp style pedal for both the edge of breakup tone and the proper cranked up tone. Awesome! It gives sparkle and bite, especially for the edge of breakup, I can play dinamically weaving my playing in and out the overdriven tone!

[AndrewAHayes]

I use a Rat, setting it with lowish settings you get an overdrive sound from it, I haven't tried a Klon although I have heard it and quite like it.

[hafstrat]

So true! I run a tumnus deluxe into a n odr mini. With Fender strat hot noiseless pickups at the start of the chain the sound is magical.

[willdenham]

So many vids say Bill developed the pedal because bars he wanted his amp to sound like it was breaking up at a lower volume. But your saying it was designed to be used on top of an amp at breakup.

[markmarsden]

Useful comment about overdrive on a clean amp, as I was impressed by the boost, but underwhelmed by the overdrive. So much so that I wasn't sure it was working properly. I'm guessing that vids with a great overdrive sound are using other overdrive pedals or overdriven amp

[brendenbrandi]

Great video. I use the Tumnus mini connected to the Moxie mini (TS10) clone setup.

[barkspawn]

I use mine as a boost into my abasi pathos to give it an extra kick, it can make the pathos sound truly mean. When I'm going for a cleaner tone I like the tumnus on low gain to add just a touch of sparkle.

[janvanzuilekom]

I use my klon for many many years (it was like 500$ at the time I bought it), its still a kinda love hate relationship and even today I’m wondering do i still like it, its on and off on my board and last night gig i had it after the Rat (big box) and the gain was around 11 and pushing the deluxe reverb, it sounded ok, cut through the mix quite well but I can’t say that i was very pleased with the sound, gonna try iit n front of the rat next time

[timscarrow]

soft clipping is diodes inside the op amp circuit, and hard clipping happens just after the op amp section and sends the diodes to ground. A charge pump, and Germanium diodes give the Klon more dynamic range and the Ge fuzziness. And the Stacked potentiometer allows some dry signal though also. I have cloned both the Klon and the TS 808.

[Falconryder]

Interesting for sure, but adding some miked playing examples to illustrate your points throughout would be a good way to go.

[leo._.vincent]

So i just got a notaklon but before that I had a soul food and sold it for a duke of tone, but I realized i liked the way the klon style pedal sounded into my Suhr Eclipse much more than the duke of tone does. I think by itself though I still do prefer the klon type pedal over the duke of tone. I like to set the gain around noon for a low gain sound.

[TheBoomtown]

just use a boss ge7 eq and goose the mids into another overdrive. 8:34

[Liberty-hwdh]

Very overrated pedal, not that BOUTIQUE PRICE BULLSHIT.