A Perfect Throuple: Eddie Rifkind’s Karen, Karen X, and Ken Guitar Pedals

For a long time, I’ve thought these pedals were a hilarious joke, but it turns out they also sound alright!

These is a lot to unpack with these three pedals! First off, they’re hilarious sporting a Karen silhouette, Elon Musk, and then Ken looks far too much like Julian from Trailer Park Boys. However, these Eddie Rifkind pedals are a lot more than just pedal sized memes.

The Ken is a dual boost pedal that’s partially designed by JSA Effects (who we just reviewed!), with a Fender-style boost on left and a silicon treble booster on the right with three EQ options via the toggle switch. Highly useful, and not as aggressive or overly harsh as the name/theme of the pedal may suggest!

Of course everyone knows Karen by now, a Speaker Cranker-inspired drive pedal that is calling out everyone’s favorite privileged suburban citizen. The Karen Speaker Manager has some cool specs though, including both treble and bass EQ controls that allow you to shape the tone quite a bit. There’s also two toggle switches, including the “don’t take that tone with me” which varies the EQ spectra that the concentric treble/bass knob shapes. Then there is the haircuit toggle, for when you need a slightly different flavor of Karen.

Arguably the best of the bunch in terms of humor, the KarenX pokes fun at everyone’s favorite man child, Elon Musk. The Twitter Manager is a fuzz, loosely based on the one knob Tone Bender but with the Karen’s switchable tone stack. Once again, you get both high and low EQ controls, plus gain and volume controls.

Demo Time

I’m running these pedals in between my Maybach Little Wing and UAFX Dream amp sim per usual!

My Thoughts

My favorite of the toxic trio were the Ken Aggressive Pusher and KarenX. The Ken dual boost is just super utilitarian and convenient. You want a clean boost? you want a dirty boost? You want an overdrive? It nails all that while just taking up one normal pedal enclosure’s worth of board space. It’s highly user friendly and sounds great to my ears. It’s also interesting to see a cleaner Fender-ish boost sound paired with a punchier silicon boost in one pedal.

Similarly the KarenX can cover a lot of ground from drive to distortion and fuzz, all while also being the most hilarious of the bunch if you ask me. It’s a cool, sort of lo-fi gain stage that’s not quite as easy to place into the fuzz category as others. But that’s a good thing, it’s not just another derivative Tone Bender clone at all.

I know the Karen is the most famous and recognizable of the bunch, but it definitely impressed me to a lesser degree than it’s siblings. It’s not a bad drive pedal at all, and I particularly liked it when the gain was pushed up into a crunchier, fatter voicing. But for the lighter gain sounds, I actually preferred using the Ken as a lighter drive instead of the Karen. I think there was a bit more natural volume but really it’s all a matter of preference.

Overall there’s not a single thing wrong with these three pedals, and they’re much more than just funny faceplates. They’re all highly functional compared to your average 3 knob overdrive or 2 knob fuzz. Having the multitude of EQ options that they all offer makes them much easier to fit into your rig, especially if you use lots of different guitars and pedals around them like I do. I need to be able to adjust for the bass or mid profiles of my P90 and humbucker guitars, and these pedals let me do that.

These are all great examples of how a builder can make something new and useful without completely reinventing the wheel. As opposed to basing the circuits on another tube screamer or klon, there’s some unique archetypes that inspired the Ken, Karen, and KarenX. Using a cleaner SHO/Fender boost on one side of the Ken is a great example of this. Likewise, making the Karen in the vein of the Special Cranker or old Electra overdrive is also a neat idea. Adding all the tone shaping options makes it a great idea. In a sea of copious clones, at least there’s something novel here!

Plus, it’s worth noting that Eddie Rifkind Effects isn’t charging an arm and a leg for these. The standard issue versions of these pedals are all about $110 or so, though you can shell out for more deluxe hand painted versions if you wish. So combining variable EQ controls with cool circuits and nice prices results in a firmly above average rating from me. Not bad for a couple of pedals that I thought were Chibson memes??