King of Tone

In 1991, Marshall released its "Bluesbreaker" overdrive, an attempt to recreate, in pedal format, the tone of the brand's famous Bluesbreaker amplifier.{{cite web |last1=Olezco |first1=Ed |title=The Big Review: MXR Duke of Tone – believe the hype? The King has come to the people |url=https://guitar.com/reviews/effects-pedal/the-big-review-mxr-duke-of-tone/ |website=guitar.com |publisher=Guitar Magazine |access-date=28 April 2025}} While later regarded as a classic overdrive circuit, the Bluesbreaker pedal was limited in its gain and tonal range and failed to sell well, with its discontinuation coming the following year. Jim Weider of The Band expressed his desire for an improved version of Marshall's pedal to Mike Piera of Bethel, Connecticut. Under the name "Analog.Man", Piera had begun dealing in vintage guitar gear while employed as a software engineer in Tokyo, Japan in the early 1990s, before turning to modifying effects pedals and then designing his own.{{cite web |last1=Hunter |first1=Dave |title=“We don’t have our pedals on shelves ready to ship”: Analog Man’s Mike Piera on his customer-driven approach |url=https://guitar.com/features/interviews/mike-piera-analog-man/ |website=guitar.com |publisher=Guitar Magazine |access-date=28 April 2025}}

Piera's collaboration with Weider resulted in the King of Tone in 2005.{{cite web |last1=Busemeyer |first1=Stephen |title=In Bethel, an analog man builds guitar pedal icons |url=https://ctmirror.org/2024/07/29/bethel-ct-analog-man-guitar-effects/ |website=ctmirror.org |publisher=Connecticut Mirror |access-date=31 July 2024}} It was essentially two modified Bluesbreaker-style overdrive circuits in one enclosure, each with independent controls and internal DIP switches to choose between boost, overdrive, and distortion modes. (JHS Pedals founder Josh Scott later wrote that while the King of Tone's topology is based on that of the Bluesbreaker, the end result of Piera's changes is a "very, very different" pedal, and that claims of the King of Tone being a Bluesbreaker "clone" are incorrect.{{cite web |last1=Scott |first1=Josh |title=What is a Bluesbreaker? |url=https://jhspedals.info/blogs/news/what-is-a-bluesbreaker |website=jhspedals.info |publisher=JHS Pedals |access-date=6 June 2025}})

The King of Tone sold well upon release, with Piera initially building units himself by hand. His pedal developed a more significant following, however, after Piera appeared on the YouTube channel "That Pedal Show" in 2017. Orders soon reached 200 per day—far more than Piera could keep up with—and the King of Tone developed a famously years-long waiting list, while prices on the used market far exceeded the cost of a new pedal. Guitar.com partly attributed this to Piera being so meticulous in his builds that he will rely on components even if they are already out of production and inevitably difficult to source.{{cite web |last1=Seah |first1=Daniel |title=“Retirement is looking better every day” Analog Man’s Mike Piera fumes as fake components slow down King Of Tone production |url=https://guitar.com/news/mike-piera-analog-man-king-of-tone-fake-components/ |website=guitar.com |publisher=Guitar Magazine |access-date=28 April 2025}} In 2025, the waiting list for a new King of Tone stood at approximately four years while used "V2" versions of the pedal from the early 2000s could surpass $2,000, the highest secondhand prices for an overdrive pedal behind only the Klon Centaur. Piera has rejected theories that the waiting list is a marketing strategy designed to create hype around the King of Tone, stating that maintaining the list was an administrative hassle he had to hire another employee just to deal with.{{cite web |last1=Millevoi |first1=Nick |title=Why Is the AnalogMan King of Tone in Such High Demand? |url=https://reverb.com/news/why-is-the-analogman-king-of-tone-in-such-high-demand |website=reverb.com |publisher=Reverb |access-date=29 April 2025}} Piera also rejected the notion of large price increases in response to public demand for his pedal, as Piera does not want to price the pedal out of the average player's reach. In 2019, the price of a standard King of Tone was $245. That price had risen to $335 by 2025 due to tariffs and the increasing costs of difficult-to-source parts.{{cite web |title=Pricing |url=https://www.analogman.com/kingtone.htm#pricing |website=buyanalogman.com |publisher=Analog.Man Official Site |access-date=2 May 2025}}

Unable to meet demand and unwilling to cut corners to speed up manufacturing, Piera developed a single-sided variation, the Prince of Tone, that would be manufactured in China. The Prince of Tone incorporated several revisions to the King of Tone design, increasing the gain and improving the distortion mode. However, Piera's preferred components were scarce and the pedal was made in limited numbers that still sold out quickly.

In 2022, Piera partnered with MXR to release a mini-format, mass-produced version of the Prince of Tone, dubbed the Duke of Tone. The collaboration began when Jeorge Tripps, founder of Way Huge and MXR's chief designer, suggested pairing Piera's design with MXR's global manufacturing capacity. In response to the pedal's impending release, the "online guitar world lost their collective shit." By the next year, the Duke of Tone was already MXR's bestselling pedal. Piera engaged in a second collaboration on a King of Tone-style pedal, this time in 2025 with Chase Bliss Audio on their AM Brothers overdrive, which combines analog and digital architecture to give the user extended controls of the pedal.{{cite web |last1=Horsley |first1=Jonathan |title=“Instead of labouring over a perfect recreation, we decided to make an expanded counterpart”: Chase Bliss teams up with Mike Piera for Analog Man collab based on the legendary King Of Tone |url=https://www.musicradar.com/guitars/chase-bliss-x-analog-man-brothers-am |website=musicradar.com |publisher=Music Radar |access-date=29 April 2025}}

The King of Tone is one of the most celebrated overdrive pedals ever made, with Vintage Guitar dubbing it one of a few "holy grail" overdrives and Guitar.com attributing it "near-mythical" status within the industry. The latter wrote:

{{Blockquote|text=...the KOT is adored for its dynamic and touch-sensitive responsive, alloyed with very tonally open gain and boost capabilities. At gig volume, the KOT shines with unparalleled clarity, integrating seamlessly with your rig. Offering more volume, more gain, and wider tonal flexibility than the Bluesbreaker, its more cultured midrange voice and delicate bass roll off demand more from a player but the rewards are sonic bliss – especially with the flexibility of two separate circuits.}}

Notable fans of the pedal include Ed O'Brien, Brad Whitford, Tom Bukovac, and Noel Gallagher.

• List of distortion pedals

{{reflist}}

• [https://www.analogman.com/kingtone.htm Official site]

Category:Effects units

Category:MXR

Category:Products introduced in 2005