Kingslayer tweaks

[MikeM]

Hey folks

So I am building a couple of Kingslayers for myself and friends.. Besides the mods listed in the pdf (C7 for more bass, C15 for the tone control and R11 for gain and then the clippers) can anyone give me some pointers of anything else interesting to do?

I plan to breadboard the clipping sections so I can test out a bunch of diodes I have here, 1n34s, bat41s, bat46s, red leds, 1n4001s and 1N4148XTRs (Will they work?). From what I understand, tweaking the value of C8 will also affect the treble? I've got some high and low ESR electrolytics that I'm going to test to see if there's any difference. Besides that, I'm pretty clueless as to what else I can do. I will be building 5, so I'd like to see if I can get a whole bunch of A/B/C/D/E testing out of the way

[JakeFuzz]

There are a few things you can do. This circuit responds very well to diode changes so you may want to get a few more varieties to try out in the hard clipping section. The favorite diode here seems to be the Telefunken OA126 (I agree that it sounds great!). Others to try include 1N695, OA128, LM313H (easier to find the LM385 or LM285). Ive also got these wacky Motorola zener diodes that start with 'SA' that sounds pretty good.

I usually change the value of R9 as well. I believe my KS has R9 shorted. This will increase the gain of the clipping stage.

Try increasing or decreasing the value of C14. This low pass filter cuts very high frequencies and it can be interesting to get smooth or harsh drive variations.

This circuit also responds mildly well to opamp changes. I would get the suggested substitutions to test. Actually Tayda has quite a few quad amps for cheap if you wanted to test more.   

These are all pretty subtle changes to the KS sound. For more drastic changes you can mess around with the coupling cap values and some of the filtering to re-EQ but I always find myself coming back to the original EQ. The original filter values sound very balanced to me.

Good luck! That is quite a building task you are taking on 

[MikeM]

Thanks very much Jake!!

I'm getting around to them finally now and I have two smallish questions.


The capacitors for the charge pump, would increasing them have any effect? I don't have any 10uFs, but have a good few 100uFs spare.

Secondly, would it be possible to replace all the 1uFs (coupling style ones) with electrolytics, purely for experimenting sake?

[warriorpoet]

Two great tweaks I don't do my Klon-ishes without unless I'm specifically going for as close as possible to the real unicorn:

Gain boost: http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=13158.0

Bass contour knob: http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=13353.0

[warriorpoet]

...
Secondly, would it be possible to replace all the 1uFs (coupling style ones) with electrolytics, purely for experimenting sake?

Yes you can, and it does make a VERY subtle difference, but you'll want to go with non-polarized electrolytics for that use.