Here’s What Catalinbread Say About the Katzenkonig
Katzenkönig. The Cat King. It sings like a fuzz, yet is tight like a distortion. It loves single coils and humbuckers. It sounds great into a clean amp or into an overdriven amp (or pedal). So, is it a fuzztortion? Or is it a distorfuzz? We’ll leave the semantics up to you but what we can tell you is that Katzenkönig combines the best elements of a Tone Bender MkII fuzz with a Rat distortion. That’s right! The circuit is all discrete, using a trio of silicon transistors in a modified Tone Bender MkII arrangement with the output section of a Rat, including its clipping section, filter, and output buffer. Katzenkönig was tuned to offer a huge range of response from a really beautiful singing tone, to tight, harmonically rich crunch, all the way to fuzz mayhem.
A simple, four knob control scheme allows you to dial in your sound quickly and without much fuss:
Input
Controls the input sensitivity. Turn it down when using higher output pickups and humbuckers or to dial in your wah sound (more on that later). Turn it up for lower output pickups or for when you want to go over-the-top!
Gain
Controls the gain of the second gain stage. It is not a conventional gain control, rather, it controls the amount of negative feedback in that stage. What does that mean for you? It means you get a wide ranging gain control that sounds great throughout it’s entire rotation!
Filter
Allows you to dial in your final tone from smooth and creamy all the way to bright and cutting. You can quickly find the sweet spot for your rig with this control. If you are familiar with the Filter control on a Rat then what you’ll find is that this is an even better version of that idea!
Volume
Standard volume control. You’ll find that Katzenkönig sounds great turned down quiet or cranked up and loud!
