An Interesting Take on the Klon Centaur - the Skelekloned Kentrosaurus

The Klon Centaur is one of the most popular overdrive circuits in the market today (largely because of the number of clones available). I've built several Klon clones of various types and by and large these all work extremely well. There is, however, an issue with the Klon. Because the design includes a charge pump, that charge pump and buffer can sometimes create interference when coupled with clock-driven modulation effects - like the vintage Electric Mistress and other similar effects. Since a lot of people (including me) like to couple a Klon with more vintage effects, I went in search of designs that eliminated the charge pump - and hopefully the interference with vintage modulation effects. I found a couple of options and this is the first one I've gotten built up.

For this first build I'm using the Effects Layouts Skeleklone MK II PCB - which unfortunately appears to be unavailable at this point. It's a cool design very much based on the original Klon layout, with a few modifications. As such, I decided to go with the normal mix of carbon film and metal film resistors I use on my Klon clones (based on the original Centaur and Ceriatone Centura layouts). I'm using many of the same metal film capacitors I use on those builds as well, though this design makes greater use of higher rated film capacitors, so there are more WIMA capacitors, and fewer electrolytic capacitors in the mix. For the standard diodes, I'm using D2D diodes to mirror the regular Kentrosaurus builds I've done in the past as well. Rather than a charge pump and two single op-amps, the design uses a single quad op-amp and the charge pump is deleted.

The design also includes a couple of toggle switches. There is one for the "fat" mod which increases the bass on the pedal. There is also a toggle switch that lets you move between two sets of clipping diodes: the normal germanium ones and silicon (1N4148).

The PCB came from Effects Layouts with its own daughter board, and I decided to hand wire the LED so that I could put the LED next to the stomp switch. The daughter board is connected to the PCB with a single ribbon cable. The jacks are all connected directly to the main PCB with aviation grade hook-up wire. All of the jack connections are insulated with heat shrink tubing as well.

For the enclosure, I decided to have a bit of fun. Since the original PCB was the "Skeleklone" and I'd already done a Kloned Kentrosaurus - going to a Skelekloned Kentrosaurus was a very small jump! I found a really nice image of a Kentrosaurus Skeleton and went with basic white on black for the rest of the enclosure - including white and silver knobs.

In terms of the sound, it is definitely Klon-like, but I really need to work with it more to get a more detailed feel for it. I'm also going to hand one off to a friend to get additional feedback on. Given the PCB for this one appears to be going out of production, I may end up only building a couple of these. I have an alternate PCB design for a Klon sans charge pump I'm going to try as well which will be the subject of a future build report.