A Tale of Two Mini-Taurs - Klon Clones in a Convenient Travel Size

As much fun as I had building my first functional Klon Centaur clone, it has one major drawback - it's bleedin' huge! Don't get me wrong, I really love the aesthetics of the enclosure - especially with the very tongue-in-cheek theme on that particular one - but it isn't the most practical pedal to be carting about unless you're going with a very limited board as it takes up the space of at least two 125B-sized pedals - if not a bit more. Shortly after releasing the BFK full-sized board, The Tone Geek released the "Mini-taur" - a faithful 1:1 signal recreation of the original Klon Centaur suitable for use with a 125B enclosure. I'd had so much fun building the full-sized pedal, I decided to not only take the plunge with the "mini," but use the opportunity to build one for a friend as well.

One Klone to Rule them All

The Klon Centaur - one of the most sought after overdrive pedals. Originally built by Bill Finnegan from 1994-2008, he was never able to keep up with demand and prices quickly rose. With only about 8000 produced it is an exceedingly rare beast, and prices for originals currently range from about $5000 to $7500. Because of its price and popularity, a number of clones of the original have sprung up - arguably more than just about any other pedal out there. Available pedals cover the full range range from faithful copies to cheap Chinese rip-offs with modifications, improvements, and variations of every stripe in between. 

In the interest of full disclosure, the first guitar pedal I tried to build was the Ceriatone Centura - a near exact copy of the original Klon Centaur, right down to the enclosure and knobs. That build wasn't entirely successful, and to be honest, I'm still debugging it. Fast forward a few months and The Tone Geek has released his BFK, a signal copy of the original Klon Centaur using a more modern 2-layer PCB with thicker traces and better grounding. It would also fit in the original style enclosure, and as I happened to have a spare Centura enclosure with a damaged paint job, I repainted it for this new build.