Any KTR love among us?

[HeftyMetalGuitar]

Just bought my second KTR as a backup. It's that good! Anyone else love the KTR or are you one of those silver/gold Centaur loyalists?

[jeremy]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

i prefer timmy

[HeftyMetalGuitar]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

i prefer timmy

I never tried a Timmy. If you compared them directly then I would like to hear your thoughts.

[jeremy]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

a friend of mine has a klon, got a timmy, then got a ktr. he kept the klon and timmy but got rid of the ktr. he liked the klon better than the ktr (and he didnt pay a stupid price for it, hes had it for a long time) and liked timmy enough to keep it too. they are different and i prefer timmy. i dont like the high end of the klon as much as i like the high end on timmy. maybe because there are bass (pre overdrive) and treble (post overdrive) controls it lets me shape the sound a little better. the klon and ktr are fine pedals, i just prefer the tone of timmy.

[HeftyMetalGuitar]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

a friend of mine has a klon, got a timmy, then got a ktr. he kept the klon and timmy but got rid of the ktr. he liked the klon better than the ktr (and he didnt pay a stupid price for it, hes had it for a long time) and liked timmy enough to keep it too. they are different and i prefer timmy. i dont like the high end of the klon as much as i like the high end on timmy. maybe because there are bass (pre overdrive) and treble (post overdrive) controls it lets me shape the sound a little better. the klon and ktr are fine pedals, i just prefer the tone of timmy.

Bill Fennigan said in an interview that the Centaur and KTR are exactly the same pedal with different housings, and that any tonal differences between them are the same tonal differences between any two KTRs or Centaurs. The only difference besides the housing is a buffer on/off switch in the KTR. There is no difference in the way the silver, gold or KTR sounds at all unless you compare them with exactly the same control settings and a marginal adjustment of the controls makes them exactly the same. This is exactly my experience in trying them every way possible so I have to believe everything Finnegan said. Klons are not for everyone so to each his own delight is what I say. People say a lot of good things about the Timmy. I guess there is also a Tim version too??? I have a master overdrive collection so it interests me to add one to the variety, but I admit my skepticism because I cannot think of any one pedal that can plug into any rig as friendly as a Klon. Every pedal experience I have has some amazing tonal flavor but is in some way emphasized in one quality or another. Some drives are coarser, brighter, darker, bassier and so on. Maybe the sense of touch is significant in a pedal so that it always makes the feel at your fingertips as if they are touching against an adaptive surface.

Pedals may be likened to speaker damping in this way don't you think? Sometimes a pedal forces you to increase the gain or level so that it does not respond so tightly or in a dry manner. In contrast bright pedals seem to me to have more elasticity in the feel so that it bounces the way a clean Fender would. This and two other qualities of the Klons makes them so desirable among players in my view. In any rig the Klon seems like you are plugging into the same comfortable amp which is not an experience I have gotten from any other pedal, but the thing maybe you hear most about the Klons is the perfect level of transparency and body it gives to your amp sound.

I don't know and call me crazy if you want but I have developed a complex idea of overdrive pedals in the years I played guitar. Some of the rich guys have ultimate amp arsenals that make you feel like your salary is a joke but for me it is relatively affordable to buy a myriad of distortions. Ask me years ago if a Klon was worth $800 and I would have laughed as I have zero loyalty to any brand or make of anything, but when your curiosity is to discover the most ideal overdrive platform then you probably understand my fascination with the likes of overdrive pedals. Luckily for me this is the case because I have an acquaintance who has an odd obsession with vintage tape delays and those things which could easily afford a person nice guitars and amps.

[jeremy]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

ive heard the same thing about the klon and ktr but i noticed a difference when we a/b'd them. very subtle but you could pick it out. in a band situation youd NEVER hear the difference but my friend said he could feel a difference. i dont have a horse in that race so dont really care, he knows what he likes and thats good for him.

i think if you dont start with a good amp then the rest doesnt matter. i usually use an old deluxe reverb, i have other stuff too tweeds, marshall, other fenders, and timmy works really well for me. it takes a little time to figure out how to get the best out of the eq but once you kinda grasp how it works there is a ton of versatility.

tim is the big brother to timmy with more bells and whistles and a boost as well as the overdrive. i dont have one but a few friends do.

[HeftyMetalGuitar]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

ive heard the same thing about the klon and ktr but i noticed a difference when we a/b'd them. very subtle but you could pick it out. in a band situation youd NEVER hear the difference but my friend said he could feel a difference. i dont have a horse in that race so dont really care, he knows what he likes and thats good for him.

i think if you dont start with a good amp then the rest doesnt matter. i usually use an old deluxe reverb, i have other stuff too tweeds, marshall, other fenders, and timmy works really well for me. it takes a little time to figure out how to get the best out of the eq but once you kinda grasp how it works there is a ton of versatility.

tim is the big brother to timmy with more bells and whistles and a boost as well as the overdrive. i dont have one but a few friends do.

It sounds like a good pedal. I'm definitely going to find one to try out. Thanks for the info.

[PFDarkside]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

Sorry for the Hijack! (I've gotten the emails about the KTR, but I keep putting off trying one, and I just haven't tried the Soul Food)

Jeremy, what else are you using live on your board? Do you have an H&K Rotosphere? Any other gain pedals other than Timmy?

(I recently got a Timmy, I like the way you can just leave it on, boosting the front end of a Fender, then back off the volume for clean. I like to have another higher gain, TS type for leads too though, like a Full Drive 2 or Zendrive.)

[jeremy]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

i have two timmys, one floats around in the pedal bag with a analogman red dot sunface and the other is on my little board that has timmy->jetter red shift->deja vu. if i can get away with it i crank the amp up to 7 and thats all i need. if i cant do that then ill use timmy, sometimes with the red dot in front of it. if i am doing a trio thing ill usually use the small board just to have a little delay. the redshift is shifted to be more purple and the two work really well together. i think timmy stacks really well with just about anything ive tried it with.

my big board has a lot of fun toys but i dont use it all that much, too bulky and heavy. barber ltd (at 12v)->dual loop box-> pup booster-> rotosphere. loop1 has vox valvetone analogman silver mod-> mi audio blues pro-> boss oc2-> catalinbread dls mkii (at 18v). loop2 has deja vu->shape shifter->carbon copy. if i use the big board i always run two amps which is why the rotosphere is at the end. sounds amazingly swirly

[jimijames]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

Just FWIW from the schematics of the timmy that have found their way on to the internet (never owned a timmy myself so I can't comment on the genuine article)

No wonder the OD is transparent - there's hardly anything between your input signal and the amplified output. Lots of pedals have buffers this and capacitors in gain stages and resistors limiting negative feedback etc etc. The timmy is remarkable for how eloquent it is. So if you like your guitar and you like your amp you'll probably like a timmy in there too.

The klon is a different beast altogether - it has a parallel clean boost with a gain-dependent eq section that uses a shared potentiometer so as you turn up the gain the eq of the parallel clean boost changes too. The parallel clean boost (1) makes it feel less compressed because the final result is a mixture of a compressed distorted sound and an uncompressed clean sound, and (2) mixes with the distorted sound in different ways through the travel of the 'gain' pot. Similarly it has an active eq section post-distortion whereas the timmy is passive.

The paul cochrane jfet boost schematic floating around the internet is the same way - it has a buffer with a passive bass bleed control and a post-boost treble bleed. But it also has very little in the way of capacitors in the actual signal path.

FWIW I can't see the KTR sounding the same as the original Klon for a variety of reasons... I mean, in a live setting of course there's so much going on you wouldn't be able to tell, but just from a practical perspective, you hear about design changes all the time with even the original gold and silver klons... Hell, you probably couldn't tell the difference between a tubescreamer and a klon once you add in enough instruments.

I mean it was one guy making them, so of course there's going to be some variance even if he used all the same parts down to the diodes. Especially if he used Russian diodes - for real if you think the QC in soviet russia was good enough to ensure uniform anything other than by product of random chance then you probably missed the part of the Iraq war where all their soviet tanks broke down. I mean, that's not an outright disparagement against anything soviet - they did detonate the largest nuclear bomb this planet has ever seen (which was a scaled down version of the design so they are good at some things, but in terms of consistency for mass produced items...) but the gist and sting of the matter is that even with exemplary tolerances the human ear is a random and unpredictable mistress.

That being said I've never played a klon so idk. I mean, I've played a copy (mythical overdrive) which sounded heavenly with fender amps but meh with marshalls. I still believe that one statement I see quoted all the time - "practice cures most tone issues." I forget whose signature it is.

[HeftyMetalGuitar]

Re: Any KTR love among us?

Just FWIW from the schematics of the timmy that have found their way on to the internet (never owned a timmy myself so I can't comment on the genuine article)

No wonder the OD is transparent - there's hardly anything between your input signal and the amplified output. Lots of pedals have buffers this and capacitors in gain stages and resistors limiting negative feedback etc etc. The timmy is remarkable for how eloquent it is. So if you like your guitar and you like your amp you'll probably like a timmy in there too.

The klon is a different beast altogether - it has a parallel clean boost with a gain-dependent eq section that uses a shared potentiometer so as you turn up the gain the eq of the parallel clean boost changes too. The parallel clean boost (1) makes it feel less compressed because the final result is a mixture of a compressed distorted sound and an uncompressed clean sound, and (2) mixes with the distorted sound in different ways through the travel of the 'gain' pot. Similarly it has an active eq section post-distortion whereas the timmy is passive.

The paul cochrane jfet boost schematic floating around the internet is the same way - it has a buffer with a passive bass bleed control and a post-boost treble bleed. But it also has very little in the way of capacitors in the actual signal path.

FWIW I can't see the KTR sounding the same as the original Klon for a variety of reasons... I mean, in a live setting of course there's so much going on you wouldn't be able to tell, but just from a practical perspective, you hear about design changes all the time with even the original gold and silver klons... Hell, you probably couldn't tell the difference between a tubescreamer and a klon once you add in enough instruments.

I mean it was one guy making them, so of course there's going to be some variance even if he used all the same parts down to the diodes. Especially if he used Russian diodes - for real if you think the QC in soviet russia was good enough to ensure uniform anything other than by product of random chance then you probably missed the part of the Iraq war where all their soviet tanks broke down. I mean, that's not an outright disparagement against anything soviet - they did detonate the largest nuclear bomb this planet has ever seen (which was a scaled down version of the design so they are good at some things, but in terms of consistency for mass produced items...) but the gist and sting of the matter is that even with exemplary tolerances the human ear is a random and unpredictable mistress.

That being said I've never played a klon so idk. I mean, I've played a copy (mythical overdrive) which sounded heavenly with fender amps but meh with marshalls. I still believe that one statement I see quoted all the time - "practice cures most tone issues." I forget whose signature it is.

Thanks for the technical info. It makes my quest to find a Timmy to try out more urgent. Me and three other guitarist and a bass player sat around with all three Klons and at first it seemed like the biggest difference was the gold one which sounded a little darker and softer, but after experimenting with the controls, they all sounded the same with only the most subtle differences. Everyone of us agreed. I think the problem is that most people who talk about how the three Klons compare never actually had all three to compare together. The difference between the three is the same difference between two exact same tube screamers for example. By the way there is a very good difference between them and the tube screamers as I have 4 Ibanez ts808 versions to compare and an entire collection of other high-end overdrives. They really don't sound the same when you compare them. There is a difference between my 2010 KTR and the 2015 on I just got yesterday. The newest one is slightly less warm and reminds me exactly of the small difference I heard between the KTR and gold Centaur. Electronics are funny thing because they can be manufactured with precision and somehow still have some differences in sound and performance, and seems to get better with age which makes me wonder about the question of whether my new KTR will sound like my 2010 KTR after 5 years.