JHS Owner Sells First-Ever Klon Centaur for $500,000

January 15, 2021 · 4 sources

Josh Scott, owner of JHS Pedals, put his Klon Centaur #2 up for sale on Reverb for $500,000. The pedal is an overdrive made by Klon, and Scott's unit is not just any Centaur: it is the first one ever made and sold¹².

The serial number carries some history. Klon designer Bill Finnegan made Klon number #2 first, and kept number one for himself, which he built later. Finnegan set aside #1 for himself and constructed it at a later date, making serial #2 the first Centaur to actually leave the bench¹³.

Scott's listing was written with a tongue-in-cheek tone, ending with the line "Buy it or don't, I don't really care"². On the listing he made his pitch plainly:

The listing's terms were unusual:

• The pedal would be hand-delivered by Scott, in person, to anywhere on earth for free
• Buyers were to allow 30 days from the date of purchase for delivery
• No box was included, just the pedal
• The listing showed one picture only²

The story took a turn when Music Is Win's Tyler Larson appeared to have bought the $500,000 Centaur from Scott, as Guitar.com reported under the headline "Music Is Win's Tyler Larson 'buys' $500,000 Klon centaur from JHS' Josh Scott". The listing ended and redirected to the Centaur's page on Reverb, but the Reverb price history graph did not show a sale at $500,000, leaving the actual outcome unclear².

The Klon Centaur has long held a special place among overdrive pedals, with original units commanding high prices on the used market. Scott, through the JHS Show YouTube channel, had previously documented the pedal, noting that "the pedal is actually called the centaur and it's by klon"⁴. For players tracking the JHS Pedals story, the sale put a dollar figure on the most storied Centaur of them all.