KHDK Electronics is moving into electric guitar design. The small-batch stompbox company headed up by Dave Karon debuted a host of all-new shapes and styles at Guitar Summit in Mannheim at the weekend, promising release news before the year is out – and revealing that there are artist collaborations in the pipeline.
This is the company that has developed signature guitar effects pedals for some of the biggest names in metal guitar, and most recently collaborated with Deftones frontman, Chino Moreno, on the Digital Bath delay pedal, which involved a huge amount of R&D to put the sound of White Pony into a compact stompbox [you can hear the results above].
Moving into guitars was not a move we would have predicted, and yet, with a decade of experience doing artist relations at Washburn, Karon has had plenty of experience in drafting new shapes and styles, working with the likes of Dimebag Darrell, Paul Stanley, Dan Donegan and Scott Ian.
This, he says, was a creative itch that he had to scratch.
“The rumors are true – KHDK is diving headfirst into guitars. We unveiled them this past weekend at Guitar Summit in Mannheim, and damn, it felt right,” writes Karon, on Instagram. “It started with a wild creative itch: I wanted to sculpt something off-kilter, a shape that’s equal parts eye-candy and ‘what the hell is that?’ – the kind folks either adore or swear off forever. Not built to win over the room, but to scratch that weird-guitar itch I’ve carried since forever.”
That reminds us of the ethos behind KHDK in the first place, which was founded by Karon and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett (he is the “KH” in the brandname, Karon the “DK”) in 2012.
KHDK’s first stompbox, the No. 1 overdrive pedal, was an all-original design. That set the tone for what was to come.
“It was something we really wanted to create because it was a tone we had in our heads for a long time; if you’re a touring musician and can’t afford to fly all your gear, you can use this pedal to replace some of it,” said Karon, speaking to Inc. in 2016. “We also didn’t want our first product to be derivative. We wanted it to be something new.
In a teaser Instagram reel, KHDK showed off some of its new builds. Sure, the aggressive radical shape electrics catch the eye – there is a beefed-up single-cut that looks like a heavy-duty riffer, and all-black model with a reverse six-in-line headstock and a body shape that looks like something KK Downing might have played in the year of our Lord, 1984.
But there’s also a grown-up singlecut with P-90 style electric guitar pickups, white pickup housings completing the retro surf-rock look, and a Bigsby vibrato that speaks to a sound a million miles away from, say, Scott Ian’s Sgt D Stormtroopers Of Death rhythm tone that KHDK put in a pedal format for the Anthrax guitarist.
It started with a wild creative itch: I wanted to sculpt something off-kilter, a shape that’s equal parts eye-candy and ‘what the hell is that?’
That doublecut looks like a more aggressive, and more aggressively contoured take on the SG archetype. By the sounds of it, it will be the pointy one that KHDK will launch with. And that would be on brand.
“It’s the Model 101, all pointy – my love letter to Eastern Europe’s brutalist architecture, now that I’m calling this place home. But I couldn’t resist softening it with the fluid playability of a modern guitar,” says Karon.
Watch this space. Find out more about Karon’s pedal lineup at KDHK Electronics.
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