I did the buy/sell/trade thing with boost, overdrive, fuzz, and compressor pedals for a few years - mostly boutique stuff. Buying low and selling high made it possible to try pretty much everything without spending much more than my initial purchases. Looking at the circuits that were not gooped it became readily apparent that there's not much new under the sun (clones and variants of the Rat, Range Master, Big Muff, Fuzz Face, DynaComp, Orange Squeezer, Bluesbreaker, Tube Screamer TS9 & TS808, and others). There are some unique circuits out there but they'd be more the exception than the rule.
After playing through so many (and seeing inside a fair number among them) I decided to start building my own as a hobby. I'd build commonly used circuits (TS808, Bluesbreaker, Big Muff, etc.) and tweak them to suit my playing style well. Those that turned out really well I made schematics and project build diagrams for and posted the projects online (forums, etc) for free DIY use, sometimes posting sound samples to accompany the project.
The purpose of posting the projects and associated media was to further dispel the notion that circuits can have 'Mojo'. Though in conversation it quite often led to a a less mythical view of many hyped pedals (I was sure to help maintain a healthy respect for boutique pedal builders regardless of the communities hype - these guys are most often building out of love for the activity and a passion for music and the tools used I it's creation - I guess this described me well too) it also led quite unintentionally to me building pedals for others for the cost of parts and a cheap labor rate. I fell ill not long after and had to quit building them.
On an up-note this same condition led me to the decision to buy an AxeFX and sell my amps. The AxeFX is the single best music related purchase I have ever made!
The pedal circuits I worked on were mainly to replace my favorites among the many boutique circuits that stayed on my pedal board for any stretch of time with similar circuits tweaked to be improved versions for my preferences and playing style. It didn't take me long to completely repopulate my board with pedals I built for myself (save for a Turbo Tuner and one particularly great sounding '70s MXR' script logo' Phase 45). After buying the AxeFX there seemed little to no chance that any of these would see use again so I sold all of my custom builds and kept only the prototypes for circuits I built for sale, the Turbo Tuner, and the Phase 45.
That was perhaps more long-winded than necessary considering what my primary thought driving this post, which was:
The Klon was among the many boutique pedals I'd tried out while buying and selling and it left me less than impressed. Yes - it certainly affected the signal in a nice way but no better than a half dozen other pedals commonly used as a signal boost (IMHO of course). In short: the Klon hype was/is lost on me. To my liking there are several approaches to modding the much loved TS808 Tube Screamer circuit to achieve results that equal (as in equally as pleasing) or even surpass those achieved using a Klon (my favorite approach being aTS808 with the transistor I/O buffers removed, a dual opamp I swap from the JRC4558 to a Burr Brown OPA2134PA, clipping diodes swapped for red LED's, and a few passive component changes to change the circuits EQ'ing).
A later attempt to build a Klon (once the circuit became known) led me to the same conclusion: the Klon is not for me.
One man's garbage is anothers treasure. My opinion isn't necessarily right for anyone except me.
