King of Tone

[Sicman71]

Does anyone use a King of Tone pedal with boogie amps? Or, a variant of such a pedal? Seems to me most are running Fenders. I guess I am trying to justify purchasing a clone of K of T. I primarily run amps pretty dirty. I do use slight break up sounds too.

Thanks all

 

[DrKev]

Does anyone use a King of Tone pedal with boogie amps? Or, a variant of such a pedal? Seems to me most are running Fenders. I guess I am trying to justify purchasing a clone of K of T. I primarily run amps pretty dirty. I do use slight break up sounds too.

I have the MXR Duke of Tone and I love it. I run my Express mostly on the clean channel use the DoT to boost my other gain pedals (Keeley Super Phat Mod and El Rey Dorado) but sometimes use the amp's Burn channel too. In OD mode, the DoT has a little more bass and less mid boost than a Tubescreamer. In Distortion mode it actually has less gain than OD mode but uses hard clipping diodes which gives more aggressive highs and even more low cut. Into a heavily distorted amp, it's a killer sound. With the internal trim pot for adding high frequencies, it's a very versatile pedal. (The stock position is minimum extra treble, and in OD mode that's also closest in tone to the original Bluesbreaker pedal it's based on).

 

[Sicman71]

Thank you so much for the detailed info.

 

[Rick]

If you get to order a KoT from Analogman (the waitlist is years long), you have different gain options on each side. My first one was high gain on red side only, but I found there was really not a lot of usefulness in the low side of the stock channel, so later got one with the high-gain option on both sides. I recommend that to just about anyone as there’s really no downside to getting that extra bit of drive.

Even with the higher gain, it’s not a massively gainy pedal, which I much prefer. Like the Klon Centaur, the main reason you see these used by lower wattage amp guys is that they excel at taking a amp at the edge into a kind of drive that just turning up a preamp knob doesn’t accomplish. I’m not saying you can’t put one in front of a Recto, but these pedals made their magic in that classic rock and blues sort of overdrive, rather than crushing distortion. And they are superb at that thing they do.

Prices on them in the used market aren’t Klon-stupid, but they’re definitely high. But if you like what they do, then beauty (and the cost of owning it) is in the eye of the beholder!