designed + built
Designed by Howard Gee
Handbuilt
in our Portland workshop
Welcome to kcFX where we design and build the most responsive guitar pedals ever! We obsess over every little detail in our quest for the ultimate in sound + response.
We believe that pedals are not just "effects" but musical instruments too. Our pedals are painstakingly designed to bring out every nuance of your playing and to make your rig sound bigger and more dynamic.
You're here because you want to be a wizard of your instrument. And if you're going to be a wizard you might as well be a groovy one!
kittycasterFX is an expression of guitarist Howard Gee’s decades of obsession with electric guitar tone and the magic of rock and roll. For Howard, the quest has always been about sound + response. If it doesn’t feel right to play, it’s not right yet. To that end, he prefers to use classic all-discrete circuit elements, often running at higher voltages, combined, voiced, and tuned to achieve his exacting vision for what the sound + response should be.
A lot of effect pedals focus on just the “effect” part and aren’t designed with much attention to the audio path circuitry. Howard’s design philosophy makes sure that there are no compromises in the audio path so not only do you get your effect but your guitar sounds bigger, better, and more dynamically responsive.
Our custom enclosure is made in the USA and was designed by Howard because he wanted a pedal enclosure that had lines evocative of the classic pedals from the 60s and 70s, but was stage ergonomic, pedalboard friendly, easy to build, and easy to maintain/repair. Like Leo’s Stratocaster, form follows function can be sexy! Made from 2.5mm sheet aluminum for strength and tonal properties, the enclosure is bead-blasted and anodized before the artwork is silkscreened by hand.
In the circuit design process, every ingredient in the recipe is carefully selected, down to specific capacitor types and brands. Our pedals are hand-soldered and built with through-hole components - no tiny little SMD parts here! But we don’t use “mojo parts” for their own sake. We use an exact combination of specific components to deliver the desired sound + response.
Designed by guitar freaks for guitar freaks
Intentional Design
kcFX pedals take up about as much room as standard size pedals and are designed to fit perfectly on your nano-sized grab-n-go boards while giving more space for your foot in the footswitch area as well as larger knobs that make it easier to see and change settings.
Top-mounted jacks and power inputs combined with our side-by-side sloping wedge design helps you maximize your pedalboard real estate while giving you the ease-of-use of a larger enclosure.
Every kcFX pedal comes equipped with rubber feet integrated mounting screws that provide great nonslip stability. You can also simply twist them with your fingers to gain access for quick battery changes.
But if you will be velcro-ing your kcFX pedal to your pedalboard, we’ve got you covered too. Included is a set of countersunk screws to create a perfectly flat surface for applying velcro. We’ve thought of every detail!
We’ve found that running pedal circuits at higher than the common 9-volts helps us on our quest for pedals that respond to playing dynamics like a fine instrument does. But we wanted to avoid having to use special power supplies with our pedals like 18 or 24-volt wall warts.
Tremdriver accepts a standard 9-volt power input and internally converts that into a specially tuned 24-volt power supply optimized for its high-headroom JFET preamp stages.
Groovy Wizard can also accept a standard 9-volt input but it can also accept any voltage higher than that, up to 18 volts, for increased dynamics, headroom, and punch. For battery operation, it runs on two 9-volt batteries for a unique combination of punch and smooth attack. The coolest thing though is taking those used batteries from your junk drawer. If they each had six volts left on them, combined they would give you twelve volts of warm response. All these different powering options customizes the sound + response of Groovy Wizard so you can find what works perfect for you.
We offer our own custom carbon-zinc 9-volt batteries. Carbon-zinc generally gives a warmer, smoother tone than alkaline types, especially in fuzz circuits.
kcFX pedals gives you the convenience of standard 9-volt capability combined with the advantages of running at higher voltages!
We are stoked to be partnering with @weirdbeard72, graphics artist extraordinaire, as our visual director.
