Klon Centaur

Bill Finnegan's hand-built, two-stage transparent overdrive — the pedal that invented the term 'transparent overdrive' and the source of one of the most absurd resale markets in guitar history. The Centaur blends a clean signal path with a gain stage that hard-clips through germanium diodes to ground, voiced to add gain without removing the underlying tone of the amp and guitar. About 8,000 original Klons were built between 1994 and 2009; values rose from a $329 list price to $5,000+ on the used market. Tonally, the Centaur sits behind a dirty amp the way a magnifying glass sits behind a candle — it makes the amp louder, slightly thicker, and slightly more aggressive without altering its character. Famously, Finnegan poured the circuit in resin to discourage cloning, which slowed but did not stop the dozens of clones (Tumnus, Soul Food, Archer, etc.) that now define the market alongside Finnegan's own KTR.

• 01transparent — adds gain without coloring the amp
• 02treble knob is more useful than the gain knob
• 03stack-friendly as either pre or post boost
• 04the 'magic' is the clean blend around germanium-diode clipping
• 05indistinguishable from clones in a blind test (probably)