Mod Kits Saturator

The Mod Kits Saturator is an overdrive pedal kit: you buy it as a bag of parts and solder it together yourself. Once built, it covers a wide stretch of gain territory in one small box. Guitar World described it as offering "everything from a clean boost to full-on saturated distortion"¹, and Guitar.com's Cillian Breathnach wrote that its single control can sweep the pedal through "subtle-to-heavy saturated overdrive sounds and straight into distortion territory"².

That range comes from a deliberately simple design. The pedal has just two controls on the outside: a Level (volume) knob and the Soak knob¹. Everything else is decided by the circuit, which applies symmetrical soft clipping to the guitar signal³.

The Soak knob and symmetrical soft clipping

The Saturator's character comes from one control. Mod Electronics explains that "the saturation is controlled with the Soak knob, which dials in the amount of symmetrical soft-clipping applied to the guitar signal"³. Soft clipping is the gentler cousin of the hard clipping used in many distortion pedals: instead of slicing the waveform off abruptly, it rounds the peaks, which players generally hear as smoother, more amp-like overdrive. Symmetrical clipping means the top and bottom of the waveform are shaped the same way.

The knob's range is wide:

• Fully counterclockwise: the guitar signal is unaffected and clean³
• Rotating clockwise: the soft clipping increases incrementally, moving through overdrive and into distortion territory³
• Backed off with Level up: Guitar.com notes the pedal becomes "a completely clean boost, with up to 30dB on tap"²

That last point matters for players comparing it with a dedicated boost pedal. Because the Soak knob can be set so the signal passes through untouched, the Saturator can sit at the front of a board purely as a level lift, pushing an amp harder without adding its own grit, and then be rolled up when drive is wanted²¹³.

Building the kit

The Saturator is a soldering project rather than an assembled pedal, and Mod Kits rates its build difficulty as 2 out of 5³, toward the accessible end of the scale. The kit is complete: all necessary parts are included, and beyond that you need only hand tools, a soldering iron and solder¹. The build uses point-to-point wiring rather than a printed circuit board, and all kits come with instructions¹. Mod Electronics also publishes the Saturator's instructions and schematic as downloadable PDFs on the product page³.

The enclosure is part of the package. The kit comes with a pre-drilled enclosure, so no metalwork is needed, and the Saturator's box carries Mod Kits' first laser-etched design¹. That etching means the finish is done at the factory rather than left to the builder.

Price and availability

The Saturator is available for $47.95¹². Guitar.com reported it sold through amplifiedparts.com at that price², and Guitar World listed the same figure¹. For a point of comparison in the wider drive market, that price positions the kit well below most factory-built overdrades, though the trade-off is the build work and the soldering iron.

What the press said

Coverage of the Saturator was positive about its simplicity. Guitar.com called it "its latest DIY kit that offers a simple-but-effective set of overdrive sounds"², and Guitar World highlighted the two-knob control set and the clean-to-distortion range as the pedal's core appeal¹. The sound descriptions above come from the maker's own account of the circuit and from launch coverage rather than from a reviewer's extended time with the finished unit.

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