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K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12724] Fri, 22 January 2010 22:34   milo Messages: 44 Registered: July 2009 Member I rigged up a temporary footswitch for my recently purchased K200B-3 and was able to test out the Selective Boost and the Harmonic Clipper effects. The Boost works fine...I'm not so sure if the Clipper is working correctly, though. I know not to expect a great distortion effect, however, I'm getting what sounds almost like an oscillating volume change that seems to vary with how hard I hit the strings. The amount of distortion/effect also seems to waver as the notes sustain and it sometimes seems like they decay faster than without the effect turned on. Is this pretty much how the Harmonic Clipper sounds or is there most likely a failing component? Any usual suspects if this is indeed an issue with the amp? Everything else seems to work great and the amp sounds fine otherwise. Thanks. Report message to a moderator

Re: K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12726 is a reply to message #12724] Sat, 23 January 2010 10:39 ironman Messages: 12 Registered: January 2010 Location: Chicago Junior Member I'm not familiar with all of the features on your amp. Is there onboard trem or Reverb that could be leaching into your signal. Just a thought... Dave Report message to a moderator

Re: K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12727 is a reply to message #12724] Sat, 23 January 2010 13:20   milo Messages: 44 Registered: July 2009 Member No verb or trem. It just has the selective boost (which is like a frequency filter) and the Harmonic Clipping. Report message to a moderator

Re: K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12729 is a reply to message #12724] Sat, 23 January 2010 13:24 rodak Messages: 511 Registered: October 2001 Location: Georgia Senior Member Doesn't sound like it's working properly. I would expect the Clipper to sound like a fuzz box. When you "Clip" a waveform, you transform it into sort of a square wave, which has a lot of "Harmonics" - that's the basic sound of the traditional fuzz box. www.combo-organ.com Report message to a moderator

Re: K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12730 is a reply to message #12729] Sat, 23 January 2010 13:30   milo Messages: 44 Registered: July 2009 Member That's kind of what I expected. I knew that it may not be a real good distortion compared to modern pedals, but I did think it would sound pretty much typical of a basic mid '60s fuzz sound. It just has an unevenness to is, sort of like when a battery is dieing in a fuzz pedal. Is there a schematic available and/or any good place to start for troubleshooting? Thanks again, guys. Report message to a moderator

Re: K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12735 is a reply to message #12730] Sun, 24 January 2010 11:06   pleat Messages: 1452 Registered: June 2004 Location: Belding, Mi Senior Member You described the harmonic clipper as if a battery were dying, which is exactly how the clipper sounds on all of the Kustom amps I've owned over the last 40 years. I've never owned any that the clipper sounded good. I've owned 5 or 6 of the #4 heads in both the A and the B models and the clipper on both models is terrible sounding in my opinion. The cheapest fuzz on the market today will out perform the built in fuzz on the kustoms. If I had to choose between the A and the B models with clipper, I'd take the B series, since the selective boost and harmonic clipper works on the right normal channel. The A series, the clipper worked on the left Bright channel and is a really bright thin sounding channel. pleat Report message to a moderator

Re: K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12740 is a reply to message #12724] Sun, 24 January 2010 19:23   milo Messages: 44 Registered: July 2009 Member I just realized that I made a typo on my model number...I have a K200A-3, not the B series. I'm going to guess that the clipper effect is working properly, then, based on your description. Having heard the K250 series I kind of expected it to work at least a little better than it did and wondered if I may have had a bad ground through the switch or a bad transistor internally. It's nothing I can see myself using but if there was an issue with it I would have fixed it. If that is how these are supposed to sound it really is worse than the worst pedal I have ever run across. I hadn't really noticed that the left or right channel was terribly brighter than the other, and that's with Telecasters. I don't particularly care for the "high" inputs, but I really like the "low" with the bright switch on. I also like using the Selective Boost for tone shaping. Thanks for the info. Report message to a moderator

Re: K200B Harmonic Clipper [message #12745 is a reply to message #12740] Mon, 25 January 2010 12:01 chicagobill Messages: 2005 Registered: April 2003 Senior Member The one thing that I have found in regard to the clipper circuit is that the signal going into the distortion stage is controlled by the volume control. If you are playing at lower volumes there isn't enough signal to really drive the clipper into smooth distortion. If you turn up the volume control all the way and turn down the clipper control to adjust the output volume, you will usually get a better sounding distortion. The problem here is that when you turn off the clipper, the volume of the amp is full on. Not a really useful setting. I guess you could set up the right channel of a 200B-4 for distortion sound only, and then set up the left channel for your clean sound and use an A/B switch in front of the amp to channel switch. There really should be an additional gain stage at the front of the clipper circuit. Report message to a moderator

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