Is This The “King Of Klones”? Summer School Electronics Releases The Double Major, Dual Centaur Clones In A Box.

Two overdrives in one box and each has a toggle for switching from hard to soft clipping, giving you supreme versatility.

Two Modified Klon Centaur Clones In One Pedal

I’ve long been a fan of Summer School Electronics’ work with gain pedals. I even sport a custom dual Gus Drive on my own pedal board, using it for the gain and distortion sounds in my band. While Summer School has messed with the idea of dual pedals in creative ways like the Snow Day Delay, Science Fair, Class Reunion, and the Smoking In The Boys Room pedals, they haven’t ever actually put out a more traditional dual drive pedal that wasn’t a custom job. That now changes with the Double Major pedal.

The Double Major contains two independent Klon Centaur-style overdrive circuits in one box, each with their own footswitch. The fun wrinkle is that each of the circuits has a toggle to choose between hard or soft clipping. Hard clipping is the more traditional Klon option, but by adding in a soft clipping option there’s a lot more versatility here that makes this a pedalboard-friendly choice.

Demo Time & My Thoughts

I have the Double Major running into the Quad Cortex MINI set to a clean Jazz Chorus-style sound, and I’m playing my dual humbucker MD96 guitar from Jade Works Instruments. You may remember that I spent a considerable amount of time covering Klon-style overdrives for Ultimate Guitar, so I’m in pretty familiar territory. I would be much less excited if this was just a standalone Klon clone from Summer School, but so much of the value and greatness of this pedal comes from the utility and versatility of having something like this on your board. It’s two overdrives in one, and we all know how convenient dual drives are for us gain lovers. But the addition of the toggle for soft/hard clipping is actually a small but really impactful tweak.

Most overdrives that get rave reviews from me involve some way of keeping the pedal on your board. I.e. it’s not that easy to get bored, because you can always flip a switch and get a different sound, akin to a new pedal. By now we all know that TS808 sounds great, and that a Centaur is an excellent transparent(ish) drive. So what I love to see is pedals that encourage you to keep THAT specific TS808 or Klon on your board. Mark from Summer School Electronics accomplishes that here thanks to the hard/soft switching, which really changes the character and depth of the drive sound. If the Klon Centaur sound is your preferred overdrive, this is one of the most functional versions of the pedal you’ll find. And if the Klon Centaur isn’t really your thing, this is also the version that you may actually like thanks to the expand tonal capabilities via stacking and using the soft clipping mode.

This is a familiar and trusted drive tone with some fun quirks that make it easier to fit on a board relative to other Klones. It may not be a particularly innovative release, but it is a fun and useful one. I have a much easier time justifying the need for this pedal compared to so many of the retread circuits that have been crowding my Instagram and YouTube feed recently. This is an exciting release and one that I’m eager to get on my gigging board to put through some more tests! Head over to Summer School Electronics to grab your own!