Another Ceriatone??? The Goth Version...

When I finally finished my first Ceriatone Centura a few weeks ago, I still had a spare unpopulated board lying about. I'd picked it up several months ago along with the one I used for the gold enclosure built along with some other parts for... another project I'm working on. One I hope to feature on the blog in the future, but I digress! My previous Centura build sounds awesome, but now that I had one working, I really wanted to try and build one using the component load-out from the original Centura. So, I set about populating a new board!

First Pedal Started - Just Now Finished - the Ceriatone Centura

Despite the number of clones on the market, the original Klon Centaur remains an extremely expensive pedal to buy with originals approaching, or exceeding, the $9000 mark. The "affordable" Klon variant from Bill Finnegan seems to run anywhere from $700-$800 (used) and over $1500 (new). As I mentioned in my Tone Geek BFK build entry last September, the very first pedal I tried to build was a Klon Centaur Clone - the Ceriatone Centura. I'd picked up the kit intending to use it to help my son get his electronics merit badge in Scouts. To say that the build was not "entirely successful" would be a bit of an understatement. I'd tried to populate a second board, but received similar poor results. My debugging skills at the time were poor, so I decided to have one last crack at it...

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.