Landtone Klon Centaur Clone Kit Guide [Fix]

Let me preface this by saying I am not throwing anyone under the bus here, I'm just stating a fact. As I browse r/diypedals, I find that the Landtone Klon Centaur Clone overdrive kit comes up often. A majority of the time the person is seeking help with their build not having output. The issue here is there is a guide online that most people follow, since the instructions included with the kit are useless, that has a mistake in it. I myself used this guide and came up with the same results of no output. Frustrated, I started to remove the cables from the pedal while the amp was still turned on. As the tip of the cable came out of the jack it scraped against the right part, allowing me to hear my guitar. This told me the wiring on the jack was done wrong. All I needed to do was swap two wires and everything worked perfectly.

Every time I see someone needing help with the Landtone Klon clone kit I post an image of my known working wiring because I understand how frustrating it is to build a kit and it not work. It's even more frustrating when a guide is put online and it's WRONG. Which leaves most novice builders completely in the dark as to what happened to their build, and possibly ruining their first experience building a pedal. Which may also ruin them ever wanting to try again. I will provide an imgur link as I don't think blogger will support such a large image. So, if you've purchased a Landtone, or Landtone style kit from TTone or ProLandtone, etc. and your build has no output, check the image provided below. The main problem will be the top jack on the righthand side of the image. The wiring is colored different to make things a bit easier to follow. Hopefully this will help people, maybe even so much so that GuitarGearFinder will fix their guide, or post a correction of some sort.

Correct Landtone Klon Clone Image

After publishing this I went back through and noticed they acknowledge they wired it wrong in the "guide", but they still got it wrong in the image, even though they claim it's corrected. Please note: The image below is the incorrect way to wire the output jack.

There's Something About Centaur Two: Redux

This post may look familiar, that's because it's an edited version of the previous iteration. Please feel free to read it again with the edits or skip it all together. I'm not your parents, you can make your own choice, but I do appreciate you reading at least this part. Thank you!

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Since I built the Centaur clone kit I felt the next logical step would have to be building my own from scratch. Deciding which layout would sound the closest/best was my main concern. I guess they would all have to at least kind of sound like a Centaur, right? So I chose a layout from my favorite website and got to collecting the parts. After that was done I cut the stripboard, made all the necessary trace cuts and got down to making the pedal. To say I was nervous would be a grand understatement. So many components, so many chances to make a mistake.

To be completely honest I've had the parts for this build since early this year, but I've been putting it off due to my lack of self-confidence. The day had finally come, but I still decided to make it a three day event. The first day I soldered on all the lower level components and made sure I had them all in the right place. After going over the board a handful of times my eyes started to get hazy, so even now I'm just assuming all those components are in the right place. Day two was soldering on all the capacitors, which was made easier by the previous day's work as I could use those components as landmarks to make sure the capacitors went in correctly. Or, as correctly as they possibly could be. The third day started off with me building a completely new pedal because I was so put off by the complexity of the wiring the Centaur clone required that I decided to give myself an extra day.

Day four started out wiring up the other pedal I had built as a distraction from having to wire up the Centaur clone. I told myself that if this pedal worked fine after I wired it all up and tested it that I would finish the Centaur clone as well, but only if the first pedal worked right. Upon testing the distraction pedal I noticed the drive control didn't work properly, but it mysteriously fixed itself. Not kidding, it just fixed itself. I guess someone on the other side really wants to see me finally finish this Centaur clone, so I did. I was so beaten by the wiring process I almost wanted to extend this event into a day five, but I decided against that. I'm kind of glad I did, because the pedal worked right away, which was a surprise, as well as a massive confidence boost.

It sounded good and the controls functioned as they should, but when I compared it to the Centaur clone kit I built earlier this year I noticed there's just something odd going on when the clipping diodes are mixed in. For some reason it gets dark, even more dark than the treble control seems to be able to compensate for. With the gain turned off completely I would say this pedal sounds the same as the Centaur kit, but with the drive turned up it starts to darken up in a way that I don't like, compared to the kit. On it's own the newest build isn't bad, it's just different. It has the Centaur thing going on and sounds pretty good, but my only complaint is comparing it to the kit I built. Maybe I shouldn't be relying on a clone kit to be the benchmark I'm shooting for when it comes to what I hear out of this pedal.

After doing extensive research I found there is some debate on which value resistor goes where on the treble control of the Klon Centaur and its clones. I looked at everything from my kit build, the Centura layout, Aion FX boards, BYOC boards and everything in between. It seems the general consensus is that the layout I used has them swapped backwards, thus making the pedal sound darker when more gain is added. I decided to swap the resistors around and could tell right away that this was far more on track with what I was expecting than what I was previously getting. It still may not be 100%, but I'm gaining ground toward what I expect to hear from a Centaur clone. In the future I might do a more gain mod, but I'm not convinced this one needs it. I guess we'll see what happens.

So for clarity: anyone having an issue with a Klon Centaur clone being dark and muddy, the 1.8k resistor goes on Treble 3, and the 4.7k resistor goes on Treble 1. That's what fixed it for me.

There's Something About Centaur

After I refurbished Kali, my Kalamazoo Model 1, I started feeling the need to expand my effects pedal collection, which at that point was merely two pedals and a Zoom 506. Eventually the DIYer in me decided it would be more fun to just build clones of the pedals I've always wanted on my own. Once one pedal was done I would often research for hours on end, trying to find out which pedal I wanted to build next. It has to be said that no other pedal has taken up more of my research time than the legendary Klon Centaur.

Admittedly I was completely unaware of this pedal's existence until after I started building pedals. The more I researched the Centaur the more intrigued I became with it. One man's quest to replicate the way guitar amps sound when they have reached harmonic perfection, while doing so at any volume, at any venue. After years of testing and help from engineers the Centaur was born, all according to legend. Although I'm nowhere near that level of pedal builder, still I connected deeply with the one-person operation aspect.

I will most likely never even see a real Klon Centaur pedal, let alone own one, so my DIY pedal builder instincts kicked in. I started researching what would be the most accurate Centaur clone that I could build for myself. One option that kept coming up was the LandTone clone, often purchased from Wish.com preassembled and ready to go. I watched as many comparisons as I could find of this pedal beside either a real Centaur or highly accurate clones. Even through youtube I could tell the inexpensive little pedal wasn't a 100% accurate recreation, but it did sound fairly close to what the comparison pedal was doing. So close that I decided to purchase the pedal kit from Amazon and build one for myself.

I've gone over my building of the clone kit before, so I won't bother with that here, but I have to say I've become enamored with what the little pedal does. From clean boost, treble boost to an overdrive that is super dynamic depending on your pick attack. This pedal really seems to offer a lot in one pedal, and that's just the clone pedal I've built. I can only imagine what a real Centaur would offer, which I feel would have to be better to some degree.

For the longest time I felt the tube screamer was the cream of the crop, and while I still love the TS808 clone I built, I think this Centaur clone kit just opened a completely new door. There is just something about the Centaur that I really connect with tonally. The blend feature, I think, is really where the magic is, allowing this pedal to go from clean boost to all out overdrive, with the aforementioned other features allowed to dwell within that spectrum. Of course I'll still use my TS808, Boss OD-1, DOD 250 and whatever other drive clones I've built when they're needed, but I have to keep saying there is just something about the Centaur that sets it apart in a great way.