Kuro Custom Audio's Bakeneko EQ / Clean Boost is a Precision Calibrated Tone-Shaper and Balancing Equalizer

This is the essence of an EQ - carving out and enhancing frequency profiles for pedals which have inadequate tone-shaping abilities of their own. This means that the Bakeneko is the ideal companion for all your favourite single Tone/Filter/EQ-knob pedals. And means tempering the mids on a Tube Screamer, boosting mids on a Big Muff, or beefing up the Lows on a Rat pedal for instance.

There are several scenarios that suggest themselves for Tone-Shaping - and no shortage of pedals that can be enhanced and re-voiced by such an EQ. The Tone-Shaping dynamic is typically about enhancement and improvement - helping to make a pedal stand out better in the mix - or smoothing off certain rough edges in order to achieve a more rounded tonality.

Balancing EQ is really about signal maintenance - where the task is to match inputs and throughputs to a preferred baseline signal profile. A great example of this is matching different guitars to a rig - where the EQ can bring a wide variety into alignment with the signal baseline - where one guitar's input may be louder, sharper, darker or otherwise differentiated from the desired outcome and the typical norm.

For Balancing purposes that sort of EQ is often found near the start of the chain - to bring each of those different guitars in line. Another use of Balancing EQ is towards the end of the chain - where I typically deploy a Balancing EQ to restore Highs lost in the patch cabling, or otherwise slightly filtered out by my noise gate.

I also often deploy such an EQ in Treble-Booster mode - to enhance upstream fuzzes in particular. In fact most Fuzzes have very limited tone-shaping options - so deploying those in conjunction with a Bakeneko EQ often makes a lot of sense.

There is actually a 3rd mode of deployment which Giulio tells me the Bakeneko is being increasingly used for - and that is as a Tone Sweetener connected before Digital Multi-FX Processors like the AxeFX, Kemper and Helix. Players are setting their Bakeneko up very flat where even with all dials at noon - it enhances frequency response and delivers more warmth and dynamics - which sort of tempers the typically slightly colder more brittle nature of some digital effects.

My use of Preamp Boost, Compressor and Germanium Booster at the head of my pedal-chain does a similar task for my core signal. You see the 29 Pedals EUNA doing a similar magic - where it combines some sort of preamp booster with EQ enhancements - very much to deliver that same sort of Tone Sweetening. Obviously the Bakeneko is a far more pedalboard-friendly format for that sort of thing!

I personally run a very long chain of 41 pedals - and I apply a variety of EQ's throughout the chain - particularly in those classic Front, Middle and End positions / slots - where the top-and-tail EQ's tend to be on balancing duties, and the middle one is more of a tone-shaper.

Obviously if you're needing to add a lot of Volume - and the Bakeneko can indeed provide a clean boost of +40dB - which means that a significant volume in front of whatever you're EQ'ing will mean a not insignificant gain boost - which is why I almost entirely deploy a Tone-Shaping EQ after the pedal I am targeting, while for a Balancing EQ - and as long as your volume is not set too high - you can have that either before or after very successfully.