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I've had my Analogman King of Tone for quite some time now and have decided that what it does it does well, but what it does isn't worth spending $300 on and 6 years of waiting. It does a really good edge of breakup tone with single coils, but that's about it. The knobs have way to much range, I tweak the knobs to match the guitar I'm putting in it. The red side (with the high gain mod) is never above 10 o clock, the tone is usually right around 11 o clock, and the volume is at unity. The yellow side is a clean boost with the tone at about 1 o clock. It's got a little bit of the same issue an MT-2 has. It has too many knobs with too much range, and if one of them is off the whole thing doesn't sound that great. I think the pedal would be fine to be honest with 4 controls: output volume, gain 1, gain 2, and master tone. The internal presence trim pot is a better designed control to me than the external tone knob. Another issue with this pedal is the gain knobs go way to high. It has that same BD-2 issue of high gain fizz. It's less prominent on the red side with the high gain mod. This is nonissue as I don't use the pedal as a high gain workhorse. Stacked into a BD-2 or SD-1 or even a DN-2 makes for an extremely dynamic higher gain sound.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a negative review. The KoT is one of the few stompbox distortions that manages to impress me, but it doesn't quite align 100% with my use cases. I will most likely crack mine open and mod the tone controls to be way more subtle. Also worth noting, I find the best settings to be OD on the red side and OD on the yellow side, even though I use the yellow side as a clean boost. Clean boost side is great if you purely get your distortion from the amp, I use it for more of a lead boost however. The high gain setting on the DIP switch is not very useful IMO.
This is what sticks out the most to me, I will field any questions.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a negative review. The KoT is one of the few stompbox distortions that manages to impress me, but it doesn't quite align 100% with my use cases. I will most likely crack mine open and mod the tone controls to be way more subtle. Also worth noting, I find the best settings to be OD on the red side and OD on the yellow side, even though I use the yellow side as a clean boost. Clean boost side is great if you purely get your distortion from the amp, I use it for more of a lead boost however. The high gain setting on the DIP switch is not very useful IMO.
This is what sticks out the most to me, I will field any questions.
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