Origin Effects have announced the release of the Halcyon Gold Overdrive, an adaptive overdrive pedal based on the Klon Centaur. The latest pedal to feature their proprietary Adaptive Circuitry, this unique design allows it to adapt its voicing in response to pick attack and volume knob changes. Origin Effects have gone to great lengths to recreate the Centaur’s famous, mid-forward voicing and the exact characteristics of unobtainable vintage diodes, but also built in some innovative features that go beyond the capabilities of the original.
The Halcyon Gold Overdrive’s headline feature is its Adapt switch. This allows the pedal’s mid-forward voicing to fade away as the pedal cleans up from the guitar volume knob, gradually reintroducing the bass and treble frequencies as the signal falls below the clipping threshold. This allows players to move seamlessly between the Centaur’s coveted mid-forward overdrive and transparent boost tones, without adjusting the controls on the pedal.
Other changes to the Klon circuit are the Voice switch and Dry control. The Voice switch selects between two flavours of mid hump and overdrive character. The KLN setting is the classic Klon recipe, with an aggressive mid peak and the clipping characteristics of unobtainable vintage diodes faithfully recreated using modern parts. The MOD setting has a softer overdrive and a broader mid hump which pairs particularly well with single coil pickups and clean amp tones.
The Dry control lets you adjust the level of the dry signal that makes up part of this classic drive tone, offering independent control over the balance between clean and overdriven signals. The Dry control can be boosted to add body and definition when boosting a low-gain amp sound or turned down to get the most out of this pedal’s higher gain tones, especially when using a clean amp. We have also made improvements to this dry path, changing the overload characteristics when stacking with other pedals, giving you access to even more flavours of drive.
Built in the UK to Origin’s usual high standards, the Halcyon Gold Overdrive is a unique and versatile spin on one of the world’s most-cloned pedals. Full details can be found at www.origineffects.com.
RRP: £249 GBP inc. VAT | $299 USD ex. tax | €249 EUR ex. tax