4 of a Kind Five Knob Klon Klones

This post has much to do with one Scotty Smith - the engineer behind the original Manticore. He’s always been a great engineer, but somewhat suspect on the business front - with a number of of bankrupt / failed and indebted businesses to his name. He last ended up at Pogo Pedals - most famous for their Zen Ray Overdrive, while that business has fallen by the wayside too. His current whereabouts are unclear.

He first released the 4-knob V1 Manticore back in 2017 - with the 5th knob V2 version being added a year later and in the format we see here. With the arrival of the V2 he shifted the manufacture to Jon Cusack (Cusack Music and Mojo Hand FX). Scotty received those pedals on an advance - but then didn’t pay his bills and in a later court ruling Mojo Hand FX inherited the Trademark for that pedal as reparation for outstanding payments. So the ’Sermon’ is simply a re-badge of the Manticore that Cusack Music / Mojo Hand FX was already manufacturing.

Still later on - Etsy-based Toketone cloned that circuit and shrunk it down to compact pedal dimensions and released that as the Manticore after that name had lapsed. So those 3 make up he main part of this article. I then had to find another suitable 5-knob Klone variant to complete the set. And I felt that the DS Custom T.E.O. was the closest match to the Manticore - even though it has a slightly different control topology. Ideally I would have found another Manticore clone - but I could not unearth another - and hence we have this particular set!

My featured 4 are as follows (alphabetical) :

• DS Custom Audio Electronics T.E.O. - €218 / $256
• Mojo Hand FX Sericon Overdrive - $199
• ProAnalog Devices Manticore Overdrive - $239
• Toketone Manticore Overdrive Klone - $125

Further Details and Demos below - note that 3 of these are the same circuit - so I will describe the Manticore in full for that particular record and then kind of ditto the others, apart from the DS Custom T.E.O. which is somewhat different!