I breadboarded my first partly-original pedal design this afternoon, and it worked!
The Kingman Anti-Drive is a passive volume cut circuit based on the Kinman treble bleed. It’s designed to give guitarists a clean/clean-ish/cleaner sound when placed in front of a saturated amplifier or overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedal. Unlike turning down the guitar’s volume knob (which results in a dark, bass-heavy sound) or the Kinman circuit (which is optimized for only one particular point on the volume knob) the Kingman Anti-Drive offers a customizable frequency response with controls for volume, treble level, and treble cutoff frequency.
It’s simple (three pots, two capacitors, and wiring) but really, really useful. My basic live pedal setup for Mars Lights is an always-on treble boost and a Bass Big Muff Pi for choruses and big riffs, but I’m planning to replace that with an always-on Catalinbread Karma Suture (Happy Winter Non-Denominational Snow Time to me) and the Kingman in front of it for verses and quieter parts. (See how it works kind of backwards? You kick it *on* for “less”/quiet parts/cleaner sounds.)
It was really fun to play around with the volume turned pretty far down, the treble level about mid-way, and the cutoff anywhere at all. (Adjusting the cutoff is effectively a mids control, varying from a cool mid-scooped sound to a fairly flat frequency response.) Once I got the circuit in place I played Stones-y riffs for a solid 20 minutes just for kicks.
I’m also breadboarding on a new rig. The briefcase* and mounts for power, input and output jacks, and potentiometers, lets me store and transport breadboarded circuits safely. This first draft of the Kingman will be making its way to Mars Lights practice next week for a bit of testing.
A first test run on Kingmen will be completed in the next month or two I hope. Once everything is worked out I intend to open a store on Reverb.com with the first products being my “Jack of All” DS-1 mod and the Kingman.
Nice to have something work on the first attempt after some months of experimentation, frustrated Googling, and spending money on parts I wasn’t sure I’d need.
If you’re interested in the Kingman and have my email address, please reach out; I’ll be ordering parts this coming week. If you don’t have my email, I’ll be sure to announce the opening of the Reverb store here.
* My old pedalboard, back to howie&scott days