Son of Kong
Professional-grade parametric EQ/gain pedal with studio-quality DI, based on the circuit Arthur Sloatman installed in all of Frank Zappa's stage guitars beginning in 1979, offering up to 55dB gain and surgical frequency control.
The Son of Kong is a legendary piece of guitar electronics history brought to pedal format by Arthur Midget Sloatman, the audio architect behind Frank Zappa's distinctive guitar tones from 1979 until Zappa's passing. This EQ/gain pedal and DI of massive aural proportions was designed to solve a specific problem: Zappa wanted to tune his guitars to the resonant frequency of whatever room he was playing, giving him massive sustain and total control over feedback while producing a wide assortment of studio sounds in live settings. The circuit Sloatman designed became an integral part of every Zappa stage guitar for over a decade.
The Son of Kong provides up to 55dB of maximum possible gain through its dual-channel architecture. V1 channel offers up to 15dB of clean gain, while V2 channel provides up to 35dB, and both can be stacked for maximum amplification. The fully parametric EQ section, always in the V1 signal path, offers 20dB of boost or cut at frequencies infinitely variable from 35Hz to 5kHz, with bandwidth adjustable from two octaves wide to as narrow as a single note. This surgical precision allows guitarists to emphasize or eliminate specific frequencies with studio-level control, making it possible to tune guitars to room resonances, eliminate feedback frequencies, or dramatically reshape tonal character.
The parametric EQ's narrow bandwidth capability is particularly powerful - you can boost a single harmonic to enhance sustain and overtones, or notch out a problematic frequency without affecting surrounding tones. This level of control was previously available only in expensive studio processors, now accessible in a guitar pedal format. The studio-quality DI output makes the Son of Kong equally valuable in recording environments, providing balanced output for direct connection to mixing consoles or audio interfaces.
Remarkably, the Son of Kong runs on a single 9V battery with 100-hour life, though it also accepts up to 40V from external power supplies for increased headroom and pristine transient response. Built in Nashville by Spontaneous Audio Devices, each unit is handcrafted using high-quality components to achieve Sloatman's vision of stellar sounds. The Son of Kong represents decades of professional audio engineering distilled into a pedal format, offering Zappa-level sonic control to players seeking to master their instrument's interaction with acoustic spaces and amplification systems.
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