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.
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.
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......
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.
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.
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.
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.
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......
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.
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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