KS Designs

KS Designs series are my design takes on ElectricNim's current lineup of pedals. I've always wanted to design for a pedal brand. Happy how these turned out.

ElectricNim is a local pedal maker in the Philippines specializing in hand-wired custom pedals - predominantly drive pedals. Nim has made his own versions of highly sought after drive pedals.

Blue Maya Overdrive || KS Design

Gain: Low to Medium
Characteristic: Transparent, Woody, Bright

Current Draw: < 10mA

Voltage: 9V (center negative)

Bypass: True Bypass

Blue Maya Overdrive is ElectricNim's take on the famous Marshall Blues Breaker Pedal, but with more gain and output.

The Warm/Bright switch allows you to toggle between classic sounding BB tones or add very subtle "Echo-Plex" like preamp that acts like a treble boost.

The Maya is the Philippine national bird. One can argue that transparent BB style pedals are as ubiquitous as these little avian friends.

Lifetime service warranty.

Design Notes

I wanted to capture the mid flight and acrobatic form of the Maya. This represents the free and expressive blues genre and what this tone is best known for. The flowing and visualized air currents (light blue curves) add to design feel that represents the dance and flow that guitarists do in this genre.

Escolta Overdrive || KS Design

Gain: Low to Medium
Characteristic: Tube-like, Transparent, Warm, Mid-focused

Current Draw: < 10mA

Voltage: 9V (center negative)

Bypass: True Bypass

The Escolta Overdrive is ElectricNim's take on the famous Dumble-style amp tone. While you are able to achieve these tones, Nim has included a lot more gain and output on tap, giving you hot rodded tones as you turn up the gain knob.

Escolta is the name of a very historical street in Manila, and one of the oldest. Escolta was lined with many boutique shops from all over the world. Quite a fitting name for classic, boutique, high-end tone. I'd say if a Dumble could be sold back then, you'd find it in Escolta.

Lifetime service warranty.

Design Notes

I wanted to capture the Art Deco designs seen in the buildings of Escolta back then. This would embody the classy boutique high-end feel that the street exuded - which is also what the Dumble amp exudes.

Bigote Overdrive || KS Design

Gain: Low to Medium
Characteristic: Preamp-like, Creamy, Smooth Low End

Current Draw: 10mA

Voltage: 9V (center negative)

Bypass: True Bypass

Bigote means "Moustache". This is a nod to one of the Philippine Heroes that sports a distinct looking moustache. He was a General and a fierce one at that.

Bigote Overdrive is a transparent, full bodied sounding drive pedal. Perfect for rhythm and light gain lead tones whether in front of a solid state, amp simulator, or a real tube amp. Works amazingly well when you stack it with other dirt pedals. Two band EQ for tone shaping.

TECH TALK!

Bigote Overdrive as a Preamp

Yes! Bigote Overdrive can be a good preamp. Whether in front of cabsim, or plugged directly to the power amp's input (FX loop: Return).

Trim that bigote!

The Bass Knob circuit goes before the Drive circuit, so you can control how much low end contributes to the drive characteristics. Also, when the gain knob is at full, it will make the distortion sound smoother... like a well-groomed thick moustache.

Bigote Overdrive Prototype (this one!)

A limited run version that has a Presence Control (Color knob) and a Blend knob. Not your typical Blend Knob though. At about 12 o'clock, The Blend Knob acts like a summing Amplifier or a mixer - 100% signal from the FX's input and 100% Bigote Signal is summed. This gives you more control over the overall tone as you are able to blend the pedal's characteristics with the signal that's coming into it (coming from boosts or other drives)

Lifetime service warranty.

Design Notes

I wanted to capture the distinct moustache and general's cap that General Luna is most known for. I added an abstracted military rank heraldry in the back to solidify the look and feel that this pedal is associated with.

Supremo Distortion Ultra || KS Design

Gain: Low to High Gain
Characteristic: Saturated Rock Tones

Current Draw: 20mA

Voltage: 9V (center negative)

Bypass: True Bypass

Supremo Distortion ULTRA is the overkill version of our Classic 4-knob Supremo Distortion that gives you fat classic 80s rock tones to scooped and tight metal tones.

4-Band EQ (Bass, Mid, Treble and Presence)

The Ultra version makes tone shaping even more versatile to dial in the kind of tone and match it with a variety of amps, sims, and pedal platforms.

Color Knob ("Tightness" Control)

This allows low end compression if you want a tighter sound, like running a tubescreamer into a cranked amp (fully clockwise) to a fat sounding tone (fully counter-clockwise)

Blend Knob

Supremo Ultra's Gainstage design is a series of four whopping gain stages (opamp clippers). The Blend Knob will allow you to clean up the front stage clipper. This gives you a less muddy yet not so brittle sounding overdrive. However, you can do the opposite and go Full counter-clockwise to push the front end to distort even more!

3-way Flavor switch

This gives you three clipping flavors: Rock (Left), Clean Boost (Center), Metal (Right)

Supremo is the moniker of the Philippine Hero who led a fiery revolution to gain independence. A fitting name for a drive circuit that can produce scorching tones, and a tribute to actions that were "very metal".

Lifetime service warranty.

Design Notes

I wanted to capture a more abstracted Philippine flag. Red was chosen since this is the color side that is up in times of war (when flown from a flagpole). While the flag was used only after gaining independence, the color red was the color used by the revolutionaries. Combined, this red pedal symbolizes the fiery revolution and courage that burned in their hearts.

Anito || KS Design

This custom pdeal is a combination of the Lapu-Lapu Analog Chorus and the Liwayway Analog Delay. This was my first custom pedal collaboration with Nim in 2021

Concept Notes

'Anito' means ancestor spirits / deities in indigenous Philippines folk religion. Based on the pedal concepts, this was a good name because Lapu-Lapu is an ancestor spirit in a sense, and Liwayway is the goddess of the morning.

The 'sunrise over the sea' design

One version of the Lapu-Lapu legend says he never died but turned to stone to forever protect the seas of Mactan - hence the waves. Then the sunrise is from Liwayway which means dawn.