My take on the klon

So yesterday the MOSKY GOLDEN HORSE landed.

I like it!

It sits exactly in a void slot.

I dont hear that magic but i like it quite a lot. It goes from a boost to a mild and quite transparent drive . It tops almost where a tube screamer starts. you can imagine. i guess. But to be quite honestit is a real complement to the other overdrive i have.

I ordered this pedal randomly, it was on the list and was pretty cheap but i am quite happy, so i will concentrate on the search of an high gain thing and i will add the missing spots on the low gain later.

My 12 degree of distortion version

My Klon clone has just arrived and i've made a picture of where i am heading:

If you want to understand more just go here:

https://www.guitarpedalx.com

I think i will do some change, the more i listen to the Metal muff clones the mor ei think this is not for me, althrough i have developed the idea that i need to try by mysel f before make some mind.

Eric Johnson Cliffs of Dover with the Plexion

This is my 2 minutes attemp on this really nice tone.

Set the tone between 10 and 11 the gain between 10 and 12 in normal mode.

The thing is (to my hears) that you should have more basses than trebles so you need to tame the highs with tone knob.

Also i noticed that the TC Electronic dark matter is a marshall in a box. The interesting thing is that it looks like it has less gain than the MI AUDIO CRUNCH BOX clones, so it could be an interesting purchase to complement with the plexion.

notes on my stomps

I will try go in the same order i've found it:

1 - low gain, british middish bluesy stratty solo tone: plexion gain very slightly above 9, volume at noon, tone at 11
2 - my texas blues tone: greenizer, gain at 10, volume as usual (1-2), tones at 1-2
3 - mellow fuzz tone: black teeth volume at noon, filter at 3 and dist maxed
4 - mesa/prog/petrucci: plexion in bright mode same as setting 1 but with with gain at 11 boosted by the greenizer setting at 2

also as if stated before the plexion in normal mode and drive at noon is good for iron maiden, switching to bright it goes Satriani but need time to tweak it!

The things with stomps is that one stomp can do many, especially the ones with switch, to have all at your feets you will need more of the same model with different settings.

The Overdrive stomp inside the mustang

I'm talking about the venerable and only overdrive included in the Mustang V1.

Recently i've been affected by a sort of pedal mania. It has geven its fruits but i still play with my amp too and apply my findings to the inner soul of our beloved stang.

So i made some easy test to answer to 2 basic question: how do this pedal color the guitar signal? How can i set it to use like a transparent boost?

So, here we can see how to set the pedal to be totally transparent:

As you can see the level is set around 2 o'clock the get unity gain, the gain is obviosly set to 0, the low are set to noon so i will say that basses are near or less untouched by the pedal.  We have to fully cut the mids so either the pedal is pushing the mids or the knoq is an active eq (in a real pedal would likely be the first but this is just a dsp algo so all is possibile). The High pot need to be set fully crnaked so we can guess it is a passive filter. My guess will be that all the knobs are passive filters and pedal is pushing  a bit the basses and al lot the mids.

After you set the pedal this way you can boost by rising the level.

What if we want to to overdrive while keeping it neuter like the fomous Klon Centaur will do?
That's it:

As a general rule, while you rise the gain you always roll back the highs, so here it is.

If you push it further you need to push back a bit the basses and free some of the mids.

Hope this will be of inspiration for some experiment.

About the greenizer from tom'sline - how to use the boost mode

I was tweaking a bit on my pedals, tryng to understand how they color the sound.

How a tube screamer works is pretty obvious, but the greenizer has that switch into boost mode that i did not fully understand until today. If you just switch from your TS setting it does not works well.

2 reasons.

First: like many green clones, the greenizer need the volume to be set at at least 1 o'clock  to get unity gain. In boost mode this is way too much. Noon is is sweet spot.

Second: the tone control is high passive, so to get a trasparent tone at low levels you need to crank it to the max. Then as with every gain control you compensate the high frequencies of the rise of the gain by rolling off. Noon is the extreme left limit in my opinion.

So, switch in boost position, volume at noon, tone at max and just a tiny tiny bit of gain you are in fully transparent position. Rise another tiny bit the gain and you are getting that kick without driving the sound to the overdrive. The brakup zone. Very nice. I think this is exactly what many player search in a transparent booster. Over there you are in the overdrive territory, but without the colors of the TS. However, extreme settings will not be so easy and nice.

about crunch and plexi pedals

I really like my tomsline plexion so i digged some information about this kind of pedals.

First thing the majortiy of the plexi clones (TC electronics Dark Matter, Mooer Cruncher, Joyo ultimate drive, ENO Classic DS, Valaton LA Charger) are based on the MI AUDIO CRUNCH BOX design.

The crunchbox is based on the Marshall guvnor (some will say Blues braker that is an evolution of the guvnor...) stealing some design tips from the Fulltone OCD .  The guvnor  is based on the Marshall Plexi.

Also the famous Analogman King of tone and the JHS Morning Glory are based on  Bluesbreaker.

Then there is the Suhr Riot and all its clones that are based on the Crunch Box but with more bite.

The Plexion is something slightly different to the rest of the Crunch Box clones. This is a clone of the MI AUDIO SUPER CRUNCH BOX. The main differnce are the switch that allow a hotter setting that was called the "Josè mid drive". I suggest to lower the level when the switch is engaged. Obviously the SUPER CRUNCH has some more control. Maybe other trimmer are inside the Plexion, but i did not open it.

The conclusion: unless you are a plexi maniac just buy only one of this plexi ballpark pedals since they are all similar flavor.