It May Sound Kliche - Building the PedalPCB Kliche Mini Klon Clone!

When asked how many more Klon clones and Klon variants I'm going to build, the answer is pretty much always, "at least one more." I've built several different boards at this point - AionFX, Ceriatone, two different Tone Geek versions, a South Obolon FX version, and even a Puzzle Sounds (that I still need to work up an enclosure for!). However this is my first crack at a PedalPCB Klon clone. PedalPCB made up a set of validation boards for the special edition Kliche Mini (which has the dials offset like on the Klon KTR), and was nice enough to send me some!

The photo above shows one of the mostly populated PCBs (with the very special edition dinosaur silkscreen) - it's only missing the integrated circuits. Unlike my previous builds where I used the Ceriatone suggested mix of carbon film and metal film resistors, this one goes with all 1% tolerance metal film resistors from Yageo and KOA Speer. The film capacitors are Panasonic, Topmay, and WIMA. For the electrolytic capacitors, they're all minimum 25V Nichicons. I was able to match the size of all of the different electrolytic capacitors, which made the board a bit easier to work with. The diodes are D9V diodes with a slightly different forward voltage drop (around 0.3V on my multimeter) as compared the 1N34A from the Kloned Centrosaurus or the D2D from the Kloned Kentrosaurus (both of which average 0.35V on my multimeter). 

For the wiring I went in a slightly different direction this time. The PCB itself is set up very well with three ground, a +9V, In, and Out pads for offboard wiring. I therefore decided rather than going with my typical star ground on the input, I'd use the multiple individual ground connections from the PCB itself. This keeps the wiring fairly tight and neat - though I added some length above and beyond what I absolutely had to because I wanted to use heat shrink tubing on the connections. Another unique feature of this board is that it uses 9mm potentiometers. There are also two possible locations for the bypass / on LED. I chose the upper location because it worked with the enclosure art I had in mind!

For the enclosure, I wanted to continue to try and bring out the Klon KTR vibe a little, so I brought the "Always remember..." text over from the Kloned Kentrosaurus over to this pedal as well. All of the text in the upper half of the enclosure is just the chromium paint of the enclosure itself showing through. I also included a couple of Maiasaura icons in gloss at the top as well. I hear there's another John M that uses a Klon, but I don't think there's any relation to the Maiasaura.

I'm still running through tests on the pedal, but so far I'm really liking what I hear. I'm going to have to get all of my Klon variants out and do some sort of a paired comparison to understand exactly how much the voltage drop on the diodes matters in the final tonal quality of the pedal. I'm also planning on running it on a couple of different amps, because while my Boss Katana practice amp's clean channel is good and plays well with around 90% of pedals, they often sound a bit different when running through a good tube amp.