After a several month wait, my Notaklon is here. It is hard to believe that JHS Pedals has sold (direct) over 30,000 of the Notaklon. (My order was 30,0096).
Yes, it is THAT good.
The JHS Notaklon is a clone of the Klon KTR, with the added low boost (standard) that Josh Scott tweaked on his first KTR customizations made by JHS.
What sets the Notaklon apart from the other Klon clones (that I covered in Attack of the Clones – 5 Best Klon Clones), is that it is a kit.
No, it’s not difficult. You are not soldering diodes. The circuit board is complete. You just separate it, connect the two boards, and screw it into the case. Takes about 15-20 minutes.
Unboxing the Notaklon
The original Klon circuitry was originally completely covered in epoxy. It took years for someone to remove enough epoxy to document the components. Since then everyone has made a Klon clone.
In typical JHS humor, they provide a tube of Goop that you can squeeze out on a portion of the circuit board that says “Magic Diode”. LOL.
I didn’t do this, because I wanted to get up and playing ASAP.
How does the Notaklon sound?
I put the Notaklon head to head with the Warm Audio Centavo. Using the exact same knob settings, the Notaklon was not quite as loud, but had more overdrive and compression.
AND the Notaklon is smaller than the Centavo, which is too big to effectively fit on my board.
Genius marketing by JHS
Everyone does a Klon clone. So why the hype??
JHS took it a step farther and made a kit (with very little effort to put together). Then JHS did their usually funny marketing videos, even including Josh’s kid to put it together – (proving that “it’s so easy that a kid can do it!”).
3,000 pedals sold out within hours. Now they’ve created a buzz.
Then the huge backorder wait list, with a wait up to five months (mine was about 3 months).
Dudes are building this pedal with their kids. Really, this is cool.
Look, this is cool. It’s not the usual $200 pedal (it cost $100 plus some minor labor).
Since it is a bland white pedal enclosure, like Series 3, since you built it you could add your own artwork or a custom stamp like JHS Pedals did in the early days.
It was fun to do, and it sounds as good or better than the other clone pedals. Thumbs up from me!
