The Mystery of KMD Pedals

KMD pedals are a sort of an enigma among guitar pedal enthusiasts and guitar pedal collectors, because there's not a lot of information about who designed these, what factory they were made in, and who actually made them. There's actually a juicy TMZ style rumor that BOSS Roland actually manufactured these secretly. I find that hard to believe, but I kind of want to believe it.**

**Cue the “X Files” theme song.

And honestly, I've seen these pedals around for about 10 years and I haven't slept a night since then because I need answers. And today this episode has one goal: to get me some answers, and to share answers with you. So I can sleep.

So, the first thing we need to know: who is KMD, what are they, where are they from? What's the deal? Number two, did BOSS make these secretly in a hidden factory in Japan, like a modern-day Willy Wonka? And number three, do these pedals sound good? ‘Cause that kind of matters.

Let’s solve this mystery together, gang**.

**I’m just trying to channel some Fred Jones vibes here.

The History

Well, it all started in 1835, when a company called Bruno & Son came out with an original wholesale musical catalog to sell stuff.

Yeah, you heard that right. 1835.

Picture it: you're a cowboy (obviously). You’re on your horse. You're exhausted. You've been riding through the desert on a horse with no name. The sun is burning. People are shooting at you. You get off your horse. You're thirsty. You go into the general store, you buy some whiskey, you buy a hat for your horse (because, let’s face it, he’s your best friend), and then you notice the catalog sitting on a shelf, kind of apart from the other products.

And then in the back of that book, there's musical stuff. Jaw harps, harmonicas, fiddles, banjos, the works. You're a cowboy, but you’re also an artist. You want an instrument. You buy it. You cut them a check, and a few weeks later the banjo arrives at your front door. You’re able to quit your day job as a cowboy to pursue your dream of being a banjo laureate. You become a famous banjo player. The rest is history.

That's the whole idea behind Bruno & Son.

Okay, let’s move forward roughly 110 years. Yup. 110 years.

We have a new character. He's not a cowboy, but he's still awesome. He's Chuck ‘Helicopter Man’ Kaman. Now Chuck's name is Charles, but I feel like if I knew him, I'd call him Chuck. He makes helicopters for the military, and the military pays him roughly 1.4 bazillion dollars. He's filthy rich, he's living his best life, and he's a guitar player with a dream.

He invents a guitar in his mind (where everything's invented first), and then he hires these engineers with his amazing helicopter money from the government, and they invent the Ovation guitar in 1966. You know, that guitar that's plastic and wood and you can't play it sitting down, or else it slides off your lap? He invents that thing

In the 1970’s, Kaman Aerospace was getting paid literally millions of dollars in advance from the government to make these helicopters, so they had a huge pile of cash. Charles was finally able to purchase other existing guitar/gear companies, including Bruno & Son (you know, the company we looked at way back in 1835) and Coast Wholesale, who just happened to be the two biggest musical instrument wholesalers at the time. Then Chuck decided to spin off his own music corporation with those two companies under the umbrella, and they took the name KMC (Kaman Musical Corporation).

Then in the ’80s, Chuck's still wholesaling instruments and gear. He's selling stuff for everybody. And he says, “I want my own products. I have KMC as a wholesaler, but I need my own line of products and I'm going to call those KMD (Kaman Musical Devices).” They sell like hotcakes because people like Bon Jovi love Chuck and his company. He’s wildly successful and makes even more money. He’s basically Tony Stark with a guitar.

And he lives happily ever after.

The Mystery

So, here’s the second question, and herein lies the mystery: KMD pedals, released by KMC, are extremely similar in style and function to BOSS pedals of the 80s, so precisely that it brings up the reasonable question: did BOSS make KMD pedals on the sly and distribute them under a different company name? Lots of people believe this.

But there’s a pretty solid stack of evidence against it, honestly.

First off, when you crack open a KMD pedal to look at the inner workings, they appear to be BOSS OEMs, and certainly look like they were supposed to be related to BOSS, but there's enough oddity about them that some people, like my friend Graig, think they were just cloning the look - very, very closely. The case itself is also what a lot of people get hung up on. Yeah, it's the same dimensions as the BOSS counterpart. Exactly the same. But looks can be deceiving. Just like with the OEMs, there are enough slight differences between them that we can confidently say this is not a direct clone, but just very similar.

Secondly, these pedals are way too heavy to be made by BOSS. Trust me on that. It's very strange; they weigh like 50 pounds a piece. Now inside the manufacturing methods are different: ribbon cables, the capacitors, just chock full of strange stuff that BOSS has never and would never use. Honestly, my takeaway here is: if you're going to copy a BOSS pedal, do it better. There are tons of companies that have cloned BOSS better, right down to the same pedal names. That's not the point here. It's just BOSS had a huge impact, and people picked up the form factor.

So the similarity in the enclosure style in no way proves that BOSS made these. It's kind of a silly argument, honestly.

Third, some people argue that the country of origin proves that these must be BOSS pedals. People say that if the pedals were produced in Japan, then that means it must be BOSS. Here’s the thing: Japan's full of companies. You’ve got Maxon, who made stuff for Bruno and Ibanez. You have Shin Ei who made stuff for a UniVox. Basically, the country of origin proves nothing. Japan was full of companies who made pedals for everyone on the planet, and BOSS was just one of them.

So, after reviewing the evidence, my opinion is that BOSS absolutely did not make KMD pedals.

These are really unusual pedals manufactured for Mr. Kaman, and he probably engineered them uniquely. You can pretty much know that for certain, because when you see distributors and wholesalers slapping their name on something, you end up with multiple pedals that look identical from different companies. If KMD had been manufactured by a typical OEM manufacturer, we would see this happen. You would have a KMD and then you'd have the Polaris version, Washburn version, Cutec version, but there's no such thing. So these are uniquely created, engineered pedals for Kaman and they're awesome.

So, on to the third question: how do they sound?

KMD Distortion

The first pedal in this series is the KMD Distortion. It's a beautiful plum, Barney-the-dinosaur color. For controls, you’ve got treble, bass, level, and distortion. I gotta shoot straight on this: treble and bass on a distortion in the mid ’80s is pretty odd. The bass frequency on this is also a low mid frequency, which is unusual. So it's a weird pedal, but it is similar in style to the BOSS DS1. It has clipping diodes in it, for sure.

I couldn't really get a grasp on the circuit from looking at it from the outside, and I didn't want to take it apart any further, so we played it instead. Hop over the JHS show episode if you want to experience the KMD purple distortion of glory. And who wouldn't want that?

KMD Analog Delay

Next up, we’ve got the KMD Analog Delay. This has four controls: delay, tone, mix, and repeat. Again, for the mid ’80s, tone on a delay is really wild. It's just not something you see. So as you turn that tone knob, you can make the repeats darker or brighter, which is a really cool option to have.

And of course, because this is the ’80s, this is a bucket brigade delay. So it's true analog, the MN3207 bucket brigade chip set. It sounds fantastic. It does all the quirky analog things like runaway and it has a really nice range of time. It doesn't just do slapback like a lot of other delays; it actually has some extension at a time, not quite a second, but fairly close.

This thing is very, very versatile. Try it out.

KMD Phaser

The KMD Phaser is a thing of beauty. I want to point out a couple of things that I love about this pedal, but first and most importantly, it’s the color of an Alaskan wild-caught salmon. Even though I've never been to Alaska, I've never caught a wild salmon, and I've never even seen a salmon in real life other than the grocery store or on a plate at a restaurant, I’m pretty confident about this.

There's also a tone control, which for a phaser is very odd, very unique, very cool. It makes this pedal really versatile. This doesn't do a lot of crazy sounds (you're not going to turn this phaser on and join Incubus), but you can turn it on and play a lot of classic rock. You can do some nice, subtle phasing sounds, which I really enjoy.

And again, the color is fantastic. If for no other reason than that, buy these pedals completely unusable and broken, put them in your living room on the mantle, and boom: Martha Stewart is suddenly there and she’s crying because it looks so good. It's a beautiful color, and it kind of goes with any decor. #themoreyouknow

KMD Overdrive

Next up is the KMD Overdrive, which I have in the box. Sure, the box is a little damaged, but I have it. You don't have the box. I have the box. Or do I? Maybe we’re in the Matrix. Maybe there is no box. Then you will see it is not the box that opens, but only yourself.

Whoa. I just blew my own mind.

This is a great pedal. For knobs, you have treble, bass, level, and drive. In that way, it’s a lot like the distortion, but they use very different circuits. I’m going to be honest with you: this is one of the weirdest overdrives I've ever played. I'm not sure what I think about it, whether I actually like it or I’m just intrigued. Just like the other pedals in this series, it's very unique. It feels like there's always a bit of clean signal, and the bass frequency is this really odd, picked-out, low mids thing, much like the distortion.

If you're looking for something you've never heard, this is it.

KMD Flanger

KMD also released the Flanger. Now I have a lot of good things to say about this pedal, but I want to lead with this: I think it's my favorite color from the series. We had the Barney purple distortion. We had the Alaskan wild caught salmon phaser. But this is green. Not just green, but like Kermit the frog singing on a lonely log with a banjo alongside the jolly green giant, while the Emerald city looms in the background-- that kind of green. This is absolute. This is the pinnacle of green. It also happens to be my favorite shade of green.

I just want y'all to know that we’re already off to a great start with the Flanger.

Now here's the other point: the controls aren't fully labeled, so I'm going to interpret to you what they actually say. We’ve got depth, speed, manual, and resonance.

When we demo’d this pedal, we found out that it does a great chorus sound. All flangers do. I keep telling you guys that and you don't listen. Do yourself a favor: take your flanger, turn the settings down, and voila. Beautiful chorus.

KMD Stereo Chorus

Lastly, we have the KMD Stereo Chorus. Now, it's really great. It is a MN3207 bucket brigade chip set, just like the Flanger, and it has three controls: depth, speed, and (in true KMD fashion) tone control. This is essentially a BOSS CE2 kind of thing. With the added tone control, it lets you darken it up or brighten it, which is really nice if you use chorus with distortion.

As far as the yellow-ish color on this? I'm not crazy about it, but it’s all right. Honestly, the Flanger set up a pretty high expectation on color, so if we can’t top that, I get it.

Hopefully, you've discovered a brand new pedal line in these KMD. Whether or not we officially solved the mystery of where the heck these pedals come from, we can all agree that they sound good. At the end of the day, I’d play a pedal from Mars if it sounded good.**

**Feel free to quote me on that when the Martians invade.
You can find these at pawn shops or online for super cheap, so buy them up. They sound really cool, plus there’s a great opportunity here to experiment with tone. You will not regret it.