King of Tone, revisited

C

Chistopher

malapterurus electricus tonewood instigator
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.
 
I've only tried one a few times with humbuckers, but only used 1 side of it. I do like the tone of the distortion, though, and it seems dynamic enough if you don't go crazy with the gain. I suppose I could get by with a Prince of Tone.
 
You can also grab a duke of tone off reverb for a bill. There's not too much you would need both sides for unless you really wanted to stack identical overdrives
 
i really loved the tone of the clean setting with the gain cranked, but it was so loud into a clean amp that it wasnt practical. lots of good tones to be had in that box though
 
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