Anouncing the Kingsley Jester - a point to point wired tube overdrive pedal, now up-dated to include foot-switchable boost!

Update. The Jester is shipping and the feedback has been excellent. If you are interested in getting on the list for a Jester please send us an email. No downpayment is required.

The Kingsley Jester is a tube overdrive pedal that uses two 12ax7 tubes running at high voltage. The circuit is point to point wired and features true by-pass on/off footswitches.

The overdrive circuit is designed to capture the essence of the Kingsley Deluxe series overdrive tone in a footpedal format. The circuit is based on the overdrive channels of the Deluxe 32 and ToneBaron amplifiers, with the necessary adjustments made to allow the circuit to drive the front end of other amps.

The controls are: gain, volume, treble, middle and bass, with a three-way voicing switch that changes the gain range from low to medium to high.

A seperate foot-switchable tube boost function is also included with a boost level control. This boost circuit can function with the Jester ovedrive circuit or independently as a clean boost. Effectively this means that the the user has four footswitchable sounds available: by-pass, clean boost, overdrive and boosted overdrive. The boost on its own works great for a clean boost or for pushing the front end of an amp into overdrive.

Boost up-date: The Jester boost has been improved. It now features a 3-way mode switch for additional verstaility. Position 1 is a warm boost, position 2 is a brighter boost and position 3 is a mid boost. Also, the boost is now situated after the overdrive circuit. With the boost circuit situated before the OD circuit, if the OD is active when you step on the boost, the sound gets more saturated and compressed and does not offer much of a volume boost. Having the boost after the OD circuit allows it to function much better as a true boost when combing the OD and boost functions, so this how the boost works on the Jester. In this way you can set the Jester for a rhythm OD sound and activate the boost for as much volume boost as is needed.

Switching up-date: The Jester comes standard with true by-pass switching, but is also available with an alternative by-pass switching circuit that is not true by-pass, but results in quieter switching. True mechanical by-pass can cause some popping through the speaker when activating the overdrive circuit, especially if the gain level is set high. The alternative is a hard-wire by-pass circuit that leaves the overdrive input connected, even when by-passing the effect, resulting in quiet switching between the effect and by-pass mode. This switching method has been used a lot in the past and is still used today on many effects. If the input impedance of the effect is not very high, then this hard-wire by-pass is not a good choice as tone-sucking will occur (the by-passed sound will suffer). This has often been the case with a great many effects and as a result true by-pass is almost always preffered. However, in the case of the Jester overdrive circuit the input impedance is high enough that there is no loss of performance when using hard-wire by-pass. Either switching method can be requested by the customer as it is very easy to switch from one to the other.

The Jester uses a 9VAC adapter (which is supplied with the pedal). The tube filaments are DC operated and the 9VAC gets stepped up inside the pedal chassis to supply 250VDC to the tube circuit.

Measurements: 7.5" wide x 6" deep x 1 1/4" high at the front, sloping up to 2 1/4" high at the back. With the tube guard in place the height at the back is 3"

Weight: 3 lbs (1320g)

Fender Strat clips, using a Kingsley Classic 30 w/Celestion G12-65:

1 - strat clean reference clip

2 - very mild breakup, neck pickup

3 - mild OD, neck pickup

4 - medium gain, bridge pickup

5 - medium crunch, bridge pickup

These next clips were all recorded through a 30W Kingsley amplifier (a custom variation of a Deluxe 32 using the clean channel, set at low volume). Clips 1-5 are through a Celestion G12H30 and clips 6-11 are through a Celestion Gold:

Les Paul Deluxe:

1 - clean reference clip with Celestion G12H30

2 - medium gain -shows touch sensitivity

3 - medium crunch

4 - smoother

5 - bluesy

6 - clean reference clip with Celestion Gold

7 - slight gain

8 - a little more gain

9 - medium gain

10 - "all the things you are" w/mild OD

11 - "all the things you are" w/smooth OD

The introductory price for the Kingsley Jester is $375