Tell Me About The BYOC Silver Pony (Klon Clone)

[toomanycats]

I'm asking because last week I picked up a pre-built one at a pawn shop for $29, was mightily impressed with how it sounded in my pedal chain, and have subsequently gigged with it four times.

Oddly enough (considering how long I've been playing) I had never tried either a real Klon or any number of the clones out there. Chuck it up to the fact that I'm not really an adventurous guy with pedals, and that the tones I'm after are inspired by players who established their distinctive sound way before the Klon came on the scene in 1994.

Oh boy was I wrong for being such a stick in the mud and not trying this circuit before. Everything I'm after in terms of tone . . . musical gain, touch sensitivity, lack of any strong coloration, not overly compressed . . . that's what this circuit does in spades.

I'm not sure if I find the "traffic cone orange" knobs that the builder chose uniquely attractive against the grey, or if it's offensively ugly. Sorta like how I feel about Shelley Duvall.

I've included some gut shots so you pedal gurus can have a close look.
Does anyone know if there is a difference between this newest Rev 2.1 version and the earliest BYOC Silver Pony that came out around 2010? If so, is it for the better or the worse?
How about that chip, is that the good one to have in a Klon clone?
In any case, does the chip look socketed so as to make swapping easier?
I've heard lots about the germanium diodes that are crucial to the Klon sound. Does this appear to have those?

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Pic from yesterday afternoon's gig.
Signal chain is: Guitar → BOSS tuner → BYOC Silver Pony → Bogner Ecstasy Blue → MXR Script Phase 90 → Chase Tone Secret Pre → Spitter box out to 2 amps (Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 and a VOX AC4)

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[Chocol8]

I was slow to get on the Klone bandwagon myself, but ended up with a Tumnus and it immediately became my most used pedal.

I don’t know much about the the BYOC kit or the secret super special diodes, but I do know most of the Klones sound really close to each other, and when I tried a bunch, some of the pricier ones advertising magic diodes and other crap were actually towards the bottom of my list. The Tumnus has a little extra girth to the lower mids that I liked and while it wasn’t one of the cheaper options, it wasn’t unreasonable either so that’s what I went with. The Decibelics Golden Horsie is another great sounding Klone to my ears, and it has been on my want list for a while, if I could justify two klones on one board. That said, the differences between those two, the KTR, the Myhical OD, and a cheap Soul Food are all relatively small. I assume your BYOC would fit right in and hold its own with all of them except for the pickiest nit pickers. The circuit just isn’t that hard to copy apparently.

[Chocol8]

BTW, I would send that to @Floridian FX and ask for a gold leaf finish and a knob upgrade. That will probably improve the tone as much as a chip swap or new diodes!

[mozz]

Try this experiment. Go straight into the klon. Do not use the tuner. Most all Boss pedals have a output buffer, even when turned off. I'm thinking you may be missing some guitar volume control interaction by not going straight into it. This also applies to most all genuine fuzz, tonebender and a few other pedals. Many people do like the sounds of using Boss pedals. I do see 2 diodes that may be germanium, but the catch is most anything actually sold today marked as germanium are in fact not. They often sell Shottky diodes as germanium, the forward voltage drop is close to a old germanium but not exact, the curve and the knee is wrong and the leakage current is different, hence a poor substitute yet it works.

[toomanycats]

I was slow to get on the Klone bandwagon myself, but ended up with a Tumnus and it immediately became my most used pedal.

I don’t know much about the the BYOC kit or the secret super special diodes, but I do know most of the Klones sound really close to each other, and when I tried a bunch, some of the pricier ones advertising magic diodes and other crap were actually towards the bottom of my list. The Tumnus has a little extra girth to the lower mids that I liked and while it wasn’t one of the cheaper options, it wasn’t unreasonable either so that’s what I went with. The Decibelics Golden Horsie is another great sounding Klone to my ears, and it has been on my want list for a while, if I could justify two klones on one board. That said, the differences between those two, the KTR, the Myhical OD, and a cheap Soul Food are all relatively small. I assume your BYOC would fit right in and hold its own with all of them except for the pickiest nit pickers. The circuit just isn’t that hard to copy apparently.

I've located the germanium diodes. There are four blank spots next to the pair. The previous iteration of this pedal used the same circuit board and had a switch that allowed selection between silicon and and germanium diodes, hence the blank spaces. For some reason they got rid of this toggle switch.

The close up pic of the chip I provided is apparently one that operates as the pump, or something like that, which internally kicks it up to 18 volts.

Bottom line, this thing sounds glorious, so I guess it really doesn't matter what's under the hood. The proof is in the tonz.

Off topic, I see that you were giving them hell on TGP regarding that controversial Gibson build. Nice to see a fellow AGFer over there fighting the good fight.

[toomanycats]

Try this experiment. Go straight into the klon. Do not use the tuner. Most all Boss pedals have a output buffer, even when turned off. I'm thinking you may be missing some guitar volume control interaction by not going straight into it. This also applies to most all genuine fuzz, tonebender and a few other pedals. Many people do like the sounds of using Boss pedals. I do see 2 diodes that may be germanium, but the catch is most anything actually sold today marked as germanium are in fact not. They often sell Shottky diodes as germanium, the forward voltage drop is close to a old germanium but not exact, the curve and the knee is wrong and the leakage current is different, hence a poor substitute yet it works.

Thanks, I'll try going straight into the Klon clone.

Now you've got me thinking about capacitance and tone suck since my pedal chain has now grown to *gasp* five units. Honestly, at one of my gigs over the last week I thought my sound was just "off," as in slightly flat, lacking the usual dynamics and bite. I kept notching the treble further up on the amp to compensate for this perceived lack of clarity and headroom. I may have an issue of proper buffering to address. Never had to think about that before because I typically ran just a couple pedals, a single short patch or two, and keep my cables 10 ft or under in length.

[Chocol8]

Most klones have a good buffer, another reason to put them first, except if you have one of the buffer hating fuzz pedals.

[Chocol8]

Bottom line, this thing sounds glorious, so I guess it really doesn't matter what's under the hood. The proof is in the tonz.

That was my conclusion after playing a bunch of them. It doesn’t matter what’s in them, the name painted on them or the price, they pretty much all sound good, including my least favorite the Soul Food. Some are a tiny bit clearer or tiny bit fuller, or sound a bit better with the gain cranked or a bit better clean etc. but without looking it takes effort to tell them apart. Without being able to A/B I could never identify which klone I was playing without dumb luck.

[aullucci]

I'm going to have to try another version. I had the Soul Food, and I thought it was...fine. I actually tended to use it more as a boost than a separate drive, but I never really bonded with it so I flipped it. Might have to give the circuit another shot. Glad you're enjoying yours

[jtcnj]

congrats on a great find!

Oh, and

wendy axe.jpg

jack axe.gif

[toomanycats]

I'm going to have to try another version. I had the Soul Food, and I thought it was...fine. I actually tended to use it more as a boost than a separate drive, but I never really bonded with it so I flipped it. Might have to give the circuit another shot. Glad you're enjoying yours

There are basically two ways I've been using the Silver Pony.
The first is as a boost, with the gain dialed way back and the level turned up.
The second is as an overdrive pedal, with the gain turned up and the level pulled back.
This circuit sounds very good when used in both applications.
But even before playing around with the settings, with all three knobs at 12 o'clock, which is my standard "I'm trying this out for the first time" protocol, the Silver Pony put a big smile on my face.

[glasshand]

I'm going to have to try another version. I had the Soul Food, and I thought it was...fine. I actually tended to use it more as a boost than a separate drive, but I never really bonded with it so I flipped it. Might have to give the circuit another shot. Glad you're enjoying yours

You're not the only one. I had a Mythical Overdrive, and my reaction was about the same. But hey, it would be a boring world if we all liked exactly the same thing.

[toomanycats]

My Silver Pony is Version 2.1., which was released June 15, 2020. It's kinda weird that less than a year ago somebody ordered it as a kit, took the time to build it, and then pawned it. Perhaps this pedal build was a Covid lockdown boredom project.

[aullucci]

I'm going to have to try another version. I had the Soul Food, and I thought it was...fine. I actually tended to use it more as a boost than a separate drive, but I never really bonded with it so I flipped it. Might have to give the circuit another shot. Glad you're enjoying yours

There are basically two ways I've been using the Silver Pony.
The first is as a boost, with the gain dialed way back and the level turned up.
The second is as an overdrive pedal, with the gain turned up and the level pulled back.
This circuit sounds very good when used in both applications.
But even before playing around with the settings, with all three knobs at 12 o'clock, which is my standard "I'm trying this out for the first time" protocol, the Silver Pony put a big smile on my face.

I used the Soul Food most frequently as a boost like you do - level up, gain down. It was fine for what it was, but for me it never got past fine. I did use it as an OD more than a few times, but it was my least favorite OD; again, I wouldn't say it was bad, but that moment where you sit there and play something and just smile when it hits your ears, that never happened for me with the Soul Food.

It's interesting the wildly varying prices for clones, too. I've read a number of absolutely glowing reviews of the $25 Mosky Golden Horse (Caline makes a cheapie that gets love, too), and a number of glowing reviews of the $250 Ceriatone Horsebreaker. There are a lot of kit builds that have great reviews, too. I'm pretty sure our own DCW makes one, too. Given their huge availability, I assume I'll have some version of this circuit again.

[aullucci]

I'm going to have to try another version. I had the Soul Food, and I thought it was...fine. I actually tended to use it more as a boost than a separate drive, but I never really bonded with it so I flipped it. Might have to give the circuit another shot. Glad you're enjoying yours

You're not the only one. I had a Mythical Overdrive, and my reaction was about the same. But hey, it would be a boring world if we all liked exactly the same thing.

Amen. I think I'm going to try treble boosters next. Haven't plunged into that rabbit hole yet...

[Sinster]

Can't beat 29.. for a good pedal. Looks like a clean build as well.


I built a klon to see what all the hype was about as my mindset was WTF would someone pay 5k for this pedal. Let me just say it's my favorite pedal that I have built. Even after not using it for about 2 weeks because I wanted the honeymoon phase to wear off. It still sounded great.. very transparent. Not sure how a real Klon would compare, but I'm happy with mine.


https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/kliche/
Here's mine along with my zuul clone.

[andrewsrea]

Welcome to the Klone club!

It was truly an innovative and well thought out circuit and most are very useful. Like @Sinster, I would not pay more than $100 for one. I've built a few killer Klones for like $60 in parts.

Ok - the questions on vairants or tweaks:

First off, IMHO, a great Klone requires no adjustments to the volume knob for any changes in gain. That is the mark of a well made Klone. So that is the important tweak one can make, which is getting the two parallel circuits balanced on the extremes. You need to have the other variables tweaked before balancing is done. Balancing with the 'by-pass' circuit is also important, as the original design is not true bypass and not quite a simple buffer.

The next variable is the diodes. The type used will affect how soon on the gain continuum, that the hair will start and also how thick the extreme gain will be. I use Germanium D025 (0.27Vf & fast) which are very close to the D9E's once used in the vintage Klons. The warmth and hair begins at 11 'o-clock on the gain. The lower the Vf of the diode, the grittier it will sound and the sooner it will distort for a given gain. The faster it reacts, the more clarity and transients. The slower, it will sound fatter and compressed. The EHX Soul Food uses 1N414 type diodes (0.64Vf and fast), which makes the distortion sound tight, but doesn't kick (IMHO) in until the last 75%. I feel the balance is off on the SF and use mine as a clean boost.

I have a 3-position switch for the ones I build for 1.) the D025's symmetrical (stock Klon), 2.) symmetrical 1n414s and 3.) D025's asymmetrical. The stock is my favorite, but the asymmetrical has its place. I balance for the stock position.

The last variable is EQ. The Klon does cut some bass on the input and off the top of my head, it isn't as much as a Tube Screamer does. The Klon also favors the mid-range (around 1Khz?), yet not as humpy (IMHO) - flatter as others have mentioned. You can change the peak frequency and how strong or subtle the mid peak is. I prefer it stock.

You could change the ICs, but I did not hear a massive change in tone when substituting and prefer the TL072's. Increasing the gain of the circuit sounds awful and decreasing is pointless, as you can get pretty clean as it is. You can also change the tone circuit, but why? It is one of those tone circuits that has usefulness over the entire sweep of the knob.

To achieve all this, a Klon or Klone's secret is the use of high tolerance parts. I believe this is why people prefer different generations of the real Klons and the builder, Bill Finnegan said there are minor value changes to a few resistor and cap values between the variants.

I use my Klon with guitar once in a while, but I use it on bass a lot! My favorite AMI version is a dual pedal - the Klone with the diode switch and bass-boost switch, plus a high-headroom adjustable up to 25dB of clean boost, which can be switched before or after the Klon circuit. Aptly named 'King Kong Grenade' by the guy who asked me for this combo.

AMI KKG 2 - Chris Thompson.jpg

[jhull54]

I'm going to have to try another version. I had the Soul Food, and I thought it was...fine. I actually tended to use it more as a boost than a separate drive, but I never really bonded with it so I flipped it. Might have to give the circuit another shot.

Me too.

I had the SF, and tried and tried to get the sound I was looking for out of it, and found it just...okay. I ended up flipping it as well. Maybe I need to keep looking. (Lord help me...)

@toomanycats That beard man... Awesome!