King of Hearts FET Preamp

The DOD 210 is a legendary piece of utility gear for a reason. It’s a straightforward, no-nonsense FET boost that hits the front end of a tube amp exactly the way it should. But as great as the original circuit is, it can sometimes be a blunt instrument. Depending on your guitar and amp pairing, a flat volume boost might add harshness to a bright rig or muddiness to a dark one.

For the King of Hearts, we took the core of that classic 210 circuit and added a highly interactive Tone control. This simple addition turns a standard volume boost into a versatile tone-shaping tool. Keep it at noon for that classic transparent push, roll it back to tame the ice-pick highs of a bridge single-coil, or crank it to add a little extra bite to a dark humbucker.

It’s designed to be the pedal you leave on all night to sweeten your base tone, or the one you kick on to make your solos jump out of the mix.

The Controls

• Vol: Dictates your output. Unity gain is roughly around 9 o'clock, leaving a massive amount of headroom on tap to slam your amp's preamp section.

• Tone: A passive high-cut/low-cut filter. Noon is neutral. Turn left to roll off top-end frequencies; turn right to add presence and cut.