"Heavy Greer" or "Light Hand" (Kings Hand V2)

MichaelW

Well-known member
Or I suppose you could call it "Speed Hand" but given the general maturity of this crowd on the forum that would probably cause some snickering.....:)

This build should have been a lot easier and straightforward than it turned out to be. There was a lot of self inflicted problems I ran into.

I've really been liking my Mach 1 (Greer Lightspeed) paired with my Kings Hand v1 (Kingtone Duellist Side B).

When I originally built the Mach 1 it didn't knock my socks off, but the more I played it the more I found that I liked it more than my other "low gain" OD's.
Something about it is just super appealing to me. I've mentioned before how much I like my Kings Hand, it's in the vein of the Paragon/Pauper but with a bit more thickness and chewy-ness to it. Stacking the Mach 1 into the Kings Hand gives me all kinds of cool sounds, enough so that I decided to build them into a combo.

This is where @PedalPCB stepped in and sent me the V2 of the Kings Hand board. The V2 is more aligned to the Kingtone Heavy Hand in that the Body toggle is now a potentiometer and it has the added toggle settings for different clipping arrangements. (THANK YOU ROBERT!)

What I did not think through was that the V2 board is longer than the V1 and won't fit into a 1590 like the V1 did.
Of course I was so intent on doing the combo build that I didn't even think to measure until I had already marked and drilled the potentiometer holes.

I'm going to blame this oversight on jet lag from travel to Europe and uhm....my Tele build, I had P90's on my mind, heh.
Actually, it was just plain old carelessness.

Anyway, since I already drilled the enclosure I was determined to make it all work, so there was a lot of creative bending, switch modifications, and strategic shrink tube insulating. Not to mention quite a few bent capacitors to make it all fit into a 1590BB. There was also a face palm "whoopsie" for where I originally located the DC jack (see pics below). But in the end it all works! Not my most elegant build, but as they say, once the back cover is screwed on, who's gonna know right? :)

I used an NE5532P on the Mach 1 side and a 4558 on the Kings Hand side. The King's Hand has some oddball resistor values so there were some subs and one Macgyver'd resistor (133k, like wtf right?) The V2 version of the King's Hand is pretty cool, it sounds pretty much like the V1 but the clipping options can give you a more compressed sound without needing to access the dip switches. I'm still figuring out what the "Body" pot does, it's a little counterintuitive how it works but there's some interesting sounds in there. @harmaes The V2 will definitely give you the Open-Stock-Comp clipping settings you were originally looking for with no modifications necessary.

Having said that, if I were not building this combo I don't think I'd build the V2 of the King's Hand just for the sake of the extra controls. The V1 sounds pretty awesome as is.

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This obviously would not work on a pedal board with the toggle switches sticking up like that, but since I'm a "desktop stomper" it's fine for me.

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I don't know wtf I was thinking when I drilled the DC jack hole there (blue arrow) Obviously would not work, so I had to relocate that. I stuck a clipped dummy DC jack in just to plug the hole. Duh......

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This pic gives you an idea of the contortionist moves necessary to make this board fit into the enclosure. I'm actually quite surprised that it all worked and there are no grounding shorts anywhere. But there was some judicious use of heat shrink tubing and electrical tape insulating the back of the clipped toggle switches.

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I was pretty tempted a few times to just scrap it and just put the KH V2 in a 125B but walking away from the bench, grabbing a smoke, and coming back to it with a fresh perspective let me "work the problem".

The KH V2 is definitely a cool overdrive pedal with a wide range of sounds. The controls are flipped from the KingTone version but it's all there.
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That’s a pretty tight build. ;)
So how are they sounding stacked into each other?

The body knob on the Soloist is quite useful for controlling the low end for different guitars and also with the edge/glass settings it can be raised somewhat to balance the increased upper mids/highs.

So how would you define the bass levels of the v1 versus the body knob range?
 
That’s a pretty tight build. ;)
So how are they sounding stacked into each other?

The body knob on the Soloist is quite useful for controlling the low end for different guitars and also with the edge/glass settings it can be raised somewhat to balance the increased upper mids/highs.

So how would you define the bass levels of the v1 versus the body knob range?
Ok I have them both side by side right now:

On the V1 with the Body toggle in "Fat" compared to the V2 with the Body pot all the way CCW, the V2 has more bass.

I'm not sure if I did something wrong or if the way the PCB is designed doesn't match the original but FAT is not at 12 o'clock like the original but all the way CCW.

The Body pot at noon sounds like "Stock" on the V1 toggle to me.
Also from about 1 o'clock to full CW there's no change in sound. It basically gets to the top end of the range at a bit past noon.

Also the V2 has a lot more volume. Not sure why but its got about a good 15-20% more output.

Comparing them both, the V2 is definitely more tweak able and you can fatten up a Strat or Tele more than the V1, but the V1 still sounds darn good.

I was in Madrid last week for work. There just long enough to get over my jet lag to turn around and do it again:)

I've just transitioned to a global role in my company and my team mates are spread all over the world now. Makes for some interesting meeting times with my colleagues in Sydney and my boss who's in Helsinki. We have an office in Madrid and its probably going to be our central meeting place for face to face meetings going forward.

Edit: Stacking the Mach 1 into the KH acts more like a boost depending on how the Mach 1 is set. But it adds some sizzle to the KH that's not natively part of the sound.
 
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Ok one other discovery. I had left the internal dip switches in their default "OFF" position for Symmetrical clipping and "Hard" clipping off.

I just turned those both on and the V1 and V2 sound almost identical now. Interesting because I typically prefer Asym clipping in most circuits but I think I like the Sym clipping on this pedal better. I know it would be pretty much impossible on this build to fit one more toggle somewhere, but if I were to build the V2 as a dedicated pedal in a 125B enclosure I think I would expose those dip switches as another toggle. Yet some more sounds to be had.
 
Looks great! I was just getting back into my Mach1 when I built a Chickenhead and it's made it redundant (for me). I would recommend if you have a spare Ge NPN floating around..
 
Looks great! I was just getting back into my Mach1 when I built a Chickenhead and it's made it redundant (for me). I would recommend if you have a spare Ge NPN floating around..
I should be swimming in them soon.....if my Ukraine order ever gets here:)
 
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