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Mini-taur? Shrinking the footprint of a 1:1 Klon Centaur Circuit

Updated: Feb 10, 2022

A lot of the circuit boards I've been designing lately have been to address my own needs. One of those is a smaller footprint Klon Centaur pedal. Yes, I could buy one of the thousands available however, I already had the schematic drawn for the BFK so it was easy to create my own 125B-sized pedal by arranging the parts differently. Proudly making things is fun!


My goal with creating a new circuit board was:

  • 1:1 Signal of the original Centaur.

  • Needs to comfortably fit inside a 125B enclosure.

  • Thick signal and power traces.

  • Parts selection for both 1:1 original parts as well as room for more exotic parts selections.

  • Make the circuit board BLACK.

  • Improve the grounding and overall manufacturing utilizing 2-layer 1.6mm boards.

Above is an example of using the same parts selection as the original Centaur. Mainly the Panasonic caps, resistor type, op amps, etc.


Build Resources:

Circuit boards can be purchased here






1x 100KB Dual Gang


2x 10KB


For "magic diodes" are germanium-based with a forward voltage drop (vF) of .35v. Buy a few of them so you can measure using your DMM.


I recently bought a bunch of these with good luck finding exactly .35v


Traditional Centaur Component Selection.

The early Centaur (up to mid-silver enclosure) circuits used bi-polar capacitors for C9, C10, C2, and C15. These are green MUSE caps in the BOM.


The later Centaur and new Centaurs use standard electrolytic capacitors for C9, C10, C2, and C15. You can follow the very nice Ceriatone Centura Documentation for circuit differences and even more information on the early vs later circuit differences.


Tayda Drill Coordinates above for their 125B drill service.


The Tone Geek Touch Component Selection

I'm still tweaking what this perfect component selection looks like however every option I'm considering is included int he above BOM.



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13 Comments


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Jun 14, 2023

I don't see the MUSE caps in the Mouser Project page?

Also, which diode should replace by the germanium based "magic diodes"?


Thank you!

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Kris Roe
Kris Roe
Nov 22, 2021

Are you going to be doing another run of these?

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Ivan Delado
Ivan Delado
Nov 11, 2021

this come with a faceplate like the valvescreamer?

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Ryan
Ryan
Nov 11, 2021
Replying to

Yup! 😀

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Todd Zino
Todd Zino
Oct 09, 2021

I’m assuming since it’s a one for one with the original that this is a buffered bypass?

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Ryan
Ryan
Oct 09, 2021
Replying to

Hey Todd! Correct, this includes the original buffer bypass as well.

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fingolfen01
fingolfen01
Oct 07, 2021

Do you have just an overall part list at this point? I'm thinking about going with all metal film resistors at a tighter tolerance on one build to compare to the larger build with the full-sized PCB.

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fingolfen01
fingolfen01
Nov 13, 2021
Replying to

I just got the build using your BOM (though I substituted my own Ge diodes - I found two at about 0.34V) into its final box and got to play around with it a bit more. Holy CRAP this thing is amazing. The boost is clean and clear and the gain really comes in nicely as well. It was my second build of the "mini" - I built one up for a friend as well, though used a more standard parts load out (though all of the resistors were 1% metal film). It's sweet too! Keep up the great work!

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