rwl
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is a report on my build on the Paragon Mini, based on the famous King of Tone. Since this is a legendary pedal, I of course wanted to build one. While I think it's not that different from other overdrives, it's still one of my most-used pedals.
Inspiration
I'm pretty proud of the name for this pedal. Pretty much as s soon as I started thinking of a theme, the name Kinglet of Tone came to me (there are a few other "King" birds - King Buzzards, Kingfishers, and of course Kingbirds come to mind). Kinglets are some of the more common small birds in the Pacific Northwest (we have two varieties here named for the tuft of feathers on their head - the pedal features a Golden-Crowned Kinglet). They're really really small, smaller than chickadees. They're maybe a hummingbird-sized bird, and they make incredibly high-pitched squeaks. And they're constantly moving, so they're really obnoxious to photograph.
I have a fun story about kinglets though. A few months back I was looking out the window of my office - I'm on the second floor. It was a spring afternoon. There was one of those clouds of about 25 gnats that just dance in an oval shape in the sun flying around outside my window, and I was thinking a bit about work. A kinglet appears on a nearby tree and sallies out towards the cloud, and then just completely devours it. Like, in two trips from the branch, and it was able to catch 10-15 gnats each trip, dodging and whirling right in the middle of it. About 20 seconds after it started, all the bugs were gone. I knew Kinglets were insect-eaters but I was shocked. I figured they ate bugs off of branches or something, but this was hands-down the most impressive avian predatory display I've seen in-person! Now I can't stop of these tiny guys as stone-cold killers. Just absolute monsters if you're a bug.
I knew I wanted this to be a fun design, because these are fun birds. I had a Game of Thrones kind of idea in mind, but I couldn't get the Iron Throne to work, so I went with a more traditional king design with the red robe and sceptre. I'm fairly happy with the result. This is one of my last unposted builds before I ditched background layouts, so I'd probably alter the design if I was gonna do it again.
I also made the mistake of ordering a sand texture enclosure - purely an accident. This, which makes the print slightly uneven, along with poor Tayda color differentiation for dark colors, means that my poor kinglet has a bit of a black eye.
The Build
I built this using the mods outlined by @markuus here, and with an awful lot of sockets for future flexibility. Sorry socket-haters. Also, I didn't use any fancy diodes, instead subbing BAS33 instead of MA856 and 1N914 instead of 1S1588, as well as a few resistor and capacitor changes from the suggested mods. It was a little bit annoying to make the alterations, but markuus did a great job of highlighting the changes, so it wasn't any worse than non-value printed board.
Otherwise this was a straightforward build that worked to my satisfaction. I feel like there's an awful lot of tweaking I could do of the diodes and cap/resistor values and so on, but I've not gotten around to trying anything novel.
The Pedal
It's a great pedal. Lots of good tones in here for anything bluesy or overdriven - so I'd definitely recommend it. That said, I feel like it's the pedal that I'm most likely to feel different about when I start playing in the morning compared to how I left things at night. Sometimes I'll just be thinking that it sounds sooo good and then I'll go to bed. In the morning I'll feel like it sounds off somehow. I suppose it's all in my head.
I think it's my most-used overdrive right now. When I'm really vibing with the tone, I usually have the Chop Shop running after it, which just makes it sound about 15% better. I'd love to see if I could redesign this circuit a bit, enough to maybe cram a Chop Shop into the same box - perhaps without the tone switch. It would be an awful lot of controls, though!
Firsts
Pedal rating: 5/5
Inspiration
I'm pretty proud of the name for this pedal. Pretty much as s soon as I started thinking of a theme, the name Kinglet of Tone came to me (there are a few other "King" birds - King Buzzards, Kingfishers, and of course Kingbirds come to mind). Kinglets are some of the more common small birds in the Pacific Northwest (we have two varieties here named for the tuft of feathers on their head - the pedal features a Golden-Crowned Kinglet). They're really really small, smaller than chickadees. They're maybe a hummingbird-sized bird, and they make incredibly high-pitched squeaks. And they're constantly moving, so they're really obnoxious to photograph.
I have a fun story about kinglets though. A few months back I was looking out the window of my office - I'm on the second floor. It was a spring afternoon. There was one of those clouds of about 25 gnats that just dance in an oval shape in the sun flying around outside my window, and I was thinking a bit about work. A kinglet appears on a nearby tree and sallies out towards the cloud, and then just completely devours it. Like, in two trips from the branch, and it was able to catch 10-15 gnats each trip, dodging and whirling right in the middle of it. About 20 seconds after it started, all the bugs were gone. I knew Kinglets were insect-eaters but I was shocked. I figured they ate bugs off of branches or something, but this was hands-down the most impressive avian predatory display I've seen in-person! Now I can't stop of these tiny guys as stone-cold killers. Just absolute monsters if you're a bug.
I knew I wanted this to be a fun design, because these are fun birds. I had a Game of Thrones kind of idea in mind, but I couldn't get the Iron Throne to work, so I went with a more traditional king design with the red robe and sceptre. I'm fairly happy with the result. This is one of my last unposted builds before I ditched background layouts, so I'd probably alter the design if I was gonna do it again.
I also made the mistake of ordering a sand texture enclosure - purely an accident. This, which makes the print slightly uneven, along with poor Tayda color differentiation for dark colors, means that my poor kinglet has a bit of a black eye.
The Build
I built this using the mods outlined by @markuus here, and with an awful lot of sockets for future flexibility. Sorry socket-haters. Also, I didn't use any fancy diodes, instead subbing BAS33 instead of MA856 and 1N914 instead of 1S1588, as well as a few resistor and capacitor changes from the suggested mods. It was a little bit annoying to make the alterations, but markuus did a great job of highlighting the changes, so it wasn't any worse than non-value printed board.
Otherwise this was a straightforward build that worked to my satisfaction. I feel like there's an awful lot of tweaking I could do of the diodes and cap/resistor values and so on, but I've not gotten around to trying anything novel.
The Pedal
It's a great pedal. Lots of good tones in here for anything bluesy or overdriven - so I'd definitely recommend it. That said, I feel like it's the pedal that I'm most likely to feel different about when I start playing in the morning compared to how I left things at night. Sometimes I'll just be thinking that it sounds sooo good and then I'll go to bed. In the morning I'll feel like it sounds off somehow. I suppose it's all in my head.
I think it's my most-used overdrive right now. When I'm really vibing with the tone, I usually have the Chop Shop running after it, which just makes it sound about 15% better. I'd love to see if I could redesign this circuit a bit, enough to maybe cram a Chop Shop into the same box - perhaps without the tone switch. It would be an awful lot of controls, though!
Firsts
First sand-texture enclosure.
Pedal rating: 5/5
