Flattley Centurion Transparent Overdrive Pedal

Here's what Flattley say about the Flattley Centurion Transparent Overdrive Pedal:

The “Centurion” pedal is Flattley Guitar Pedals version of a very famous type of transparent overdrive pedal. This pedal is perfect to use on its own to get mild gain sounds that just starts to break up or go full tilt to get a full-on overdrive sound when your amp is set on the clean channel. Alternatively, you can use this pedal to boost an over-driven tube amp or overdrive, distortion, fuzz and muff pedals that will give an amazing sound, clarity and tone. This pedal also cleans up when you turn down the guitar volume without losing the overall volume levels so it is a very versatile pedal that can be used for many different types of applications.

Centurion hints and tips:

The Centurion is a transparent overdrive in the same way that a Klon Centaur is. Transparent means that it doesn’t drastically change the colour of your tone so when you turn the pedal on, it won’t sound like a different guitar tone. It will sound like the same tone, but better. My Strat is just “more Strat”… etc.

This is achieved by separating the frequency spectrum up into several bands and treating each differently. Bass frequencies are passed through untouched giving a full bottom end, treble frequencies also pass through but can be boosted by the tone control, mid frequencies go through a soft clipping circuit to give them an amplitude dependent boost to the harmonics. The gain control controls gain and volume simultaneously to vary the sensitivity and width of the mid band of frequencies.

The pedal also acts as a buffer when in standby which is an advantage if you use it as the first pedal in a chain of effects. This gives you two ways to use the Centurion…

It can be used as a clean boost for your amplifier. A booster adds some extra girth to your signal to push your amp a little harder. Set up a clean tone on your amp and experiment with the pedal. Start off with a low drive level, then gradually build the pedal gain up as you play. You’ll learn how the pedal changes as you add in more gain. If you have a tube amp, you’ll be able to hear how the pedal also begins to push your amp at a certain stage.

You can also set your amp to the point where it’s on the verge of breaking up, then use the pedal to push the amp into overdrive. This is another common way of using a transparent overdrive pedal.

Another way to use a Centurion is to stack it with other drive pedals. You can use a pedal (or your amp) to produce your main drive tone, then you can add in the Centurion when you want your tone to have a bit more sparkle or boost.

The purple halo light ring installed diffuses the light when playing live, avoiding being blinded by the standard LEDs just as you are about to go into that all important solo thus giving a larger area to see where the pedal is located easily on the pedal board on darkened stages. The addition of the aluminium foot topper gives you more real estate for contact when switching the pedal on and off during quick changes when playing live.

All Flattley “Platinum Range” pedals are hand processed in our Flattley paint shop. The bare aluminium enclosure is abraded prior to painting with the etch primer. The etch primer acts as a anti corrosive layer and allows the primer to bond to the enclosure ensuring a tough resilient paint finish.

Multiple coats of base coat primer are applied which are then lightly abraded to remove any blemishes or paint speckles prior to the application of the base colour. We apply several coats of base colour until an even coverage occurs and the base colour develops rich smooth depth. Metallic holographic chrome flake is then applied using a clear inter coat which adds that all important Flattley sparkle.

The pedal enclosure is now ready to be hydro dipped in its Flattley graphics. This is the process whereby the graphics are applied using water activated film, the residual PVA film is then washed off and the enclosure is then allowed to dry naturally.

Once dried the lacquer process begins. Each “Flattley Platinum” pedal has a minimum of three coats of lacquer which are all wet sanded between coats. Once the lacquer has hardened, it is then hand polished using three different grades of polishing compounds and it then has a final polish to achieve a high gloss finish using a wool finishing pad. This process gives the smooth deep lustre finish that is inherent in all Flattley Guitar and Bass effects pedals.