Ed O'Brien auctions his Klon and echoes for refugee charities

Ed O'Brien is selling pedals and rack effects from his collection at auction through his friends at Soundgas, the London vintage gear dealer. The lot everyone is watching is his gold Klon Centaur overdrive, serial 1537, which he bought in Los Angeles and used on The King of Limbs and A Moon Shaped Pool and on the tours for both. His settings are still marked beside the knobs, because Soundgas chose not to clean them off. Bidding on it stood at $8,805 on 26 May, Guitar World reports, about what any Klon Centaur fetches.

Two Line 6 Echo Pros, an Echoplex EP-2 and a Roland SVC-350 vocoder are in the sale, with two echoes that did heavy work on Earth, his 2020 solo album: a Korg SE-300 Stage Echo and a restored Binson Echorec PE603-T modified with varispeed. Soundgas restored the Echorec in the first place and showed it on That Pedal Show, and it was the reason O'Brien and the producer Flood went to the Soundgas studio to collect it and other gear for the Earth sessions.

A tenth of the price of every item goes to two charities chosen by O'Brien and the dealer: Safe Passage, which helps child refugees reach the UK, and Ukraine Equestrian Relief, whose horse transporters carry medicines, food and clothes to refugee centres on the Poland-Ukraine border.

O'Brien announced the sale on Instagram as a clear-out of the cupboard to make room for new sounds. I am trying so hard not to be a hoarder. I want to use the stuff that I have and if I don't, then it needs to move on.¹