I was interested in this response to the KoT from another thread, but this is really a thread of it's own. I thought people might find this use of distortion interesting.
I got a KoT about 2 months ago and have been trying to figure out how to fit it into my rotation. I have about 5 overdrives (I just really love overdrive) and while this one was different, it was always more of "another" overdrive instead of "the magic" overdrive. I guess that's to be expected. It is a really nice circuit. Well worth the money to me, but not "magic."
But recently I swapped the left side to distortion mode, and the magic happened. In response to @micguy from the other thread, it does lose low-end, and it is noticeable in my bass amp rig too. But in one particular use, it worked really well for me.
I've mentioned before that I fill a lot of lead lines behind an acoustic guitar. I've tried 5 different octave pedals with an octave up option. I've always wanted to have the option of getting a bit more into that guitar sound for just that part. But octave pedals all sound…awful. Just tinny and whiney and digitized and awful. So I never ended up keeping any of them.
Amazingly, what I wanted was exactly what the distortion mode of the KoT gives me. Instead of trying to push a full octave, I dialed it so it saps the low-end and adds some nice bite and brightness. It's like a clean boost if the clean boost made your bass sound a bit more like a guitar. Sure, if you were trying to sound like a distorted bass, you might be unhappy. But if you were trying to get just a bit of a guitar like quality for a lead or solo, you might be amazed. It's total perfection to me. It's also really great for laying down a bass groove on the looper and then hitting distortion to wail a raw solo on top of it.
No more octave pedals for me to try to hit those higher lead lines. With the KoT I have one more option for overdrive on the front channel, and a really nice high-end shifted boost on the back channel. It's a great pedal for me.
