A New Klon Klone - from a New Source!

I don't often wax political on this blog. When Russia began it's unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine back in February, I was angry (and remain so), and wanted to show solidarity with and support of Ukraine. At the time, I posted a build report covering the "blue and yellow" Blues Driver pedal build I'd just finished. In the interim I've built a couple of pedals for auction on Pedals for Ukraine. I've also donated to various agencies supporting Ukraine. A few months ago, a Ukrainian builder, South Obolon FX, began posting files so you could get your own circuit boards made. All he asked in return was a donation to the ongoing efforts in Ukraine, donations I was more than happy to make. One of the boards he provided files for was the Kent Rev 2, a Klon Centaur clone with a few added twists, so I figured I'd take a chance and have a few boards made up!

The boards are designed to go in a 1590BB enclosure - I typically always go with a 1590BB2 as it gives me a little extra depth to work with. The board also includes a couple of internal SPDT switches. One of the switches changes one of the tone capacitors for "more body / low end" and the other changes the clipping from the germanium diodes to LEDs. I went ahead and included both mods, but I'll probably run the pedal stock most of the time.

I was sort of shooting for a Klon KTR clone for this build so I didn't use exactly the same BOM as I use for my pure Klon Centaur clone, the Centrosaurus. I went ahead and used the same mix of carbon film and metal film resistors (based on the Ceriatone Centura), but all of the film capacitors are modern box capacitors, not Panasonic or Topmay. The electrolytic capacitors are all polarized like a late Centaur as opposed to the mix of polarized and bipolar I run on my early Klon clone. The big difference comes in my diode choice. I use 1N34A diodes (at least the same model as the original) on my Centaur clone, but went in a different direction here. Keeping with the pro-Ukrainian theme, I purchased some D2D diodes from a seller in Ukraine. I've found these tend to match the voltage drop of the 1N34A diodes, so they're a reasonable substitute. 

The wiring is a little different from previous Klon clones I'd built, but the included wiring diagram was clear. There is a bit more manual wiring as well, as there is no provision on the board for the LED. As always I'm using my normal grounding configuration and heat shrink tubing on the jack connections. I'm also using a red DC jack to match the rest of the enclosure.

I've published screen shots of the enclosure art before, but this is the debut of the enclosure itself. It is very much a tongue in cheek reference to the Klon KTR, but personally I think it's a lot more fun because... dinosaur! I also decided to add a gloss layer with the dinosaur skeletons in the black field to provide a little more visual interest. I went through several knob combinations before settling on these MXR style knobs. In terms of sound, honestly it's really good. I need to pull out the Ceriatone and Centrosaurus and do a real head to head comparison, but it's definitely a Klon clone and stacks really nicely with both my Chapman and my Fender strat.