Death to the King

jessenator

Well-known member
I've done many, what I term, dirty builds. Most of them are 3D-printed fitment tests. I've done a few competent builds, where there's aluminum (or PLA), paint, label maker or hand-painted lettering. But this one is my first quality-first build (I don't have the cajones to self-apply "professional" to myself). I'm more designer than engineer.

<Brief History Time>

This started some time ago when a friend asked me to build them a "better klone." They weren't impressed with my tweaks to an existing board (to be fair it wasn't much), so I decided to jump into the unknown and learn PCB design around March and see where it led me.

</Brief History Time>

After a few failed attempts at other effect board layouts (and $$ down the drain), I wanted to take my time and do right by myself, and cut no corners. I picked the klone project and tried to embed myself in it. After losing track of different board versions, fumbling with names, and a heavy case of subconscious plagiarism, I settled on Death to the King (which is still subconsciously rippy offy— sorry, Bean)

Under the surface of wanting to learn PCB layout, my feeling of "better" in relationship to "klone" was this: it's been done to death—everyone has one." Additionally, in my "research" into the pedal, its history, its fandom, mystique, commentary inside and out, I got stuck on the point of anything surrounding it being a u t h e n t i c

I wanted to flip a mild middle finger, or maybe a slightly milder eastern european fig gesture, at the concept of "the one and only is the only one good enough" as well as the cult surrounding that concept. So here it is, mild though it may be: the klone according to me : P

I don't like the 1N34A sound
*gasps*
And I want to have multiple options, so here's a slide selector
*more gasps*
I don't find it drive-y enough, so here's a switched boost stage before the input signal.
*reeeeEEEEEEE*

Okay, this is all in my head, but whatever. It's not the original—at all, and that's what I wanted. I wanted a sound, and that's what I got. And, full disclosure, I'm not waging a crusade on any individual who likes the original for what it is. It's not personally my cup of tea, in its vanilla form, and wanted to expand it. If I say the original is no good at all, I'm no better than anyone saying "you can't build it like that" to me. :) That's why we do what we do!

The board with through several iterations, including one incredibly epic failure, which resulted in a screech loud enough to wake the dead. The most recent board revision is 1.3e. I was able to condense rev 1.2 into a smaller board,

And since I've been trying to do more designs, I also did a (roughly) pot-foorprint-sized boost board as well. I took inspiration from a mini board drawing on CodaEffects' blog from a while back, but I couldn't find it on the shop currently or on the wayback, so apologies if that offends. The current rev (1.2c) is nice and compact with enough room for supply pads and my obsession with power filtering.

The artwork went through a few iterations, with me mostly waffling on how graphic I wanted to make it. Originally it was intended to have a really cool commissioned illustration done by a friend of mine, but with life taking a priority, we decided to defer that commission for another time. I went about tweaking a typeface I enjoy into something resembling an arcane text, a gothic (speaking typographically) royal decree of execution. Anyway enough of my arty farty BS. I'm happy with how it turned out, both graphically and technically.

b1KN2Tw.jpg


ZSsWKfc.jpg



And the artwork by itself
Cih0Dsc.png


The original illustration concept was a Lich-ified Vlad the Impaler. Here's my friend's art style, which I absolutely love:
mqQFQRsm.jpg


As mentioned earlier in the Tayda UV Service thread, I only encountered issues on the user experience side of things. The setup to the art is what it is: I'm covering all the bases and delivering as simple a file as I can. The instructions just need to be designed/laid out better ;)

They have the option to add a second hit of white for an additional fee. I wonder if I could do multiple layers of UV varnish as well… Have each "layer" of blood sort of stack up. Oh well, ideas for the future.

I have a couple of other projects in my queue, and if they turn out as well as this one, I'll keep making more.

thumb:
b1KN2Twt.jpg
 
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I'll say it, so the others hiding in the shadows remain safe...

I don't like the sound of a Klon, and $7,000 fir one is a monumental waste of money... You could easily buy a Refin/player grade 60's Strat for that kind of money... or a pair of blackface Super Reverb amps...

Side note "The ridiculous hype that offends so many" is absolutely Bill Finnegan's doing. My understanding is when the first Klon got "de-gooped" and reverse-engineered, Bill commented that he had the market cornered on all the "special diodes" in the pedal and that any clone would be inferior...

He stopped production of the standard Klon soon after the circuit was revealed, but then came out with the KTR a bit later really pushing the "magic diodes" thing... diodes that do very little until higher up in the gain structure (while most people use the Klon as a cleaner boost).

For me, the Klon either sounds too trebly, has a weird nasally mid tone scoop when the treble is backed off, not enough drive, and can be brittle sounding when you try to get it really working.

I built mine to spec, but also own a $30 chinese Mosky Golden Horse... They sound almost identical.. so that tells me the $7,000 "authentic" version probably does too and any "improvements" in tone people hear are just psychosomatic... hearing with their "eyes" and bank accounts.
 
I'll say it, so the others hiding in the shadows remain safe...

I don't like the sound of a Klon, and $7,000 fir one is a monumental waste of money... You could easily buy a Refin/player grade 60's Strat for that kind of money... or a pair of blackface Super Reverb amps...

Side note "The ridiculous hype that offends so many" is absolutely Bill Finnegan's doing. My understanding is when the first Klon got "de-gooped" and reverse-engineered, Bill commented that he had the market cornered on all the "special diodes" in the pedal and that any clone would be inferior...

He stopped production of the standard Klon soon after the circuit was revealed, but then came out with the KTR a bit later really pushing the "magic diodes" thing... diodes that do very little until higher up in the gain structure (while most people use the Klon as a cleaner boost).

For me, the Klon either sounds too trebly, has a weird nasally mid tone scoop when the treble is backed off, not enough drive, and can be brittle sounding when you try to get it really working.

I built mine to spec, but also own a $30 chinese Mosky Golden Horse... They sound almost identical.. so that tells me the $7,000 "authentic" version probably does too and any "improvements" in tone people hear are just psychosomatic... hearing with their "eyes" and bank accounts.
I dunno, most pedals sound pretty awesome in the right context. Sounds are marvelous things.

I love a cranked Klon going into the normal side of a cranked JTM45 with a Les Paul. It's a thing of beauty. And good on Bill for making a viable business model. Regardless of the FUD around it, he had an original design and was able to make a living from it. If anything, the DIY community should be thanking him for presenting such a tempting target which brought a bunch of people together for a common cause!

There are two things which drive technical innovation... war.. and gooped pedals!
 
At the risk of being pedantic... Umlauts are never used over an E, because they essentially are an E. For example you can spell füssen (feet) fuessen. The umlaut signifies an E after the letter with the umlaut over it. So whereas the word fuss (foot) has no umlaut and is pronounced foos with the oo pronounced as in book, füssen is pronounced fussen with the U sound of too. I love Motorhead as much as the next guy but they never put an umlaut over an E.

Thank you I feel better now. I think your pedal looks amazing!

BTW the German word for King uses an umlaut. The word is König, or Koenig. The umlaut make the O sound like er as in her, but without the rhotic R sound.
 
I always ran with the rule that the umlaut lengthens the vowel sound; fuss --> füssen ~= fuussen. A bit like how ß is a lengthening of "s", Schloß --> Schloss.
I can't remember seeing this, but I love the palaver!

Whilst we're ratting on German.. what's up with square brackets [ ] and backslashes \ on German keyboards? They just have a hatred for programmers..
 
I dunno, most pedals sound pretty awesome in the right context. Sounds are marvelous things.

I love a cranked Klon going into the normal side of a cranked JTM45 with a Les Paul. It's a thing of beauty. And good on Bill for making a viable business model. Regardless of the FUD around it, he had an original design and was able to make a living from it. If anything, the DIY community should be thanking him for presenting such a tempting target which brought a bunch of people together for a common cause!

There are two things which drive technical innovation... war.. and gooped pedals!
I will agree to that... and certainly don't blame someone for protecting their intellectual property... I'm talking about the "magic diodes". Perhaps it wouldn't have been a big deal when the pedals were still in production by Bill, but now that the genie has been out if the bottle for many years, it's kinda ridiculous to drop $7,000 on one, believing that's the ONLY way to get that sound...
And I'm not knocking the pedal in general, I'm just saying that a bunch of folks hear with their eyes and make it out to be "magic" because it's expensive... Then again Bill isn't to blame for the ridiculous prices... that's just the market...
 
Yeah ß is called a sharp S - the same as double S. It's because in German a single S is pronounced almost like Z is in English unless it's at the beginning of a word, when often it's a sh sound. And a Z is pronounced like C in Russian - ts.

I have never seem the two dots over an E and have been to Germany many times. I wonder if it's archaic? Sometimes two dots are used in French over an i, as in the name Anaïs. Pronounced An-eye-ees. Although I often watch the European biathlon and the English commentators call Anaïs Chevalier as Anayss.
 
English needs some accents. Actually it needs a major overhaul of spelling! It was better back in Shakespeare's time when he could spell things differently depending on who said them. My wife is of Croatian descent and I can read things out in Croatian even without understanding them because the spelling is purely phonetic.
 
Well, English is a bastard love-child of various languages. It doesn't surprise me that it's rough around the edges..

I remember talking to non-native speakers and comparing language experiences.. most languages are "these are the rules, and a few exceptions", English is "all exceptions".
 
oops, haven't logged in for a while.

Yeah, I know there are many linguistical faux-pas being committed—Ich habe in hauptschule Deutsche sprache gelernt, aber ich habe viel vergessen. I just didn't care when I did this : P and went for my own stylistic take. That's it.
 
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