Bearfoot Honey Beest

Been awhile since a new post on the main site. Life can get in the way, but here's a new one. Keep an eye out for more, we still here and going strong.

From the Source:

Descended from the Honey Bee, this one is capable of more dynamic dirt and quicker and thicker honey. If that’s what you’re after, the Beest can help.

The Honey Beest is an extension of the classic Honey Bee, adding saturation and treble to a much loved design. The heart of the Beest is the addition of a pregain booster controlled by the Pregain knob. The pregain booster is not a simple linear booster, but has an intentional upper mid and treble accent that lets you mix the two gain stages to get just the right saturation and treble. The Nature and Pregain knobs make a wide-ranging EQ section. The Drive and Pregain knobs give full control of the distortion saturation and compression. This also makes the “big bottom” part of the Nature control more useful. Turning the Nature knob full left and the Pregain full right creates a full range overdrive…sort of like if you’ve got a 50-watt 4×12 Supro. 

 

 

 

BJFE Baby Blue OD

The BJFE Baby Blue OD is described as a dynamic pre-amp tube distortion, although it is technically more of a fuzz pedal with dynamic overdrive features.  It is a killer fuzzy OD with a ton of dynamic and tonal range.

So according to the thread over at FSB there's no mention of the specific JFETs in the original other than they're N-JFET. It's possible they're either BF244 or 2N5952 both of which Bjorn is known to use. So I decided to make 2 layouts, one with a DGS pinout (BF244) and one with DSG (2N5952) so either can be made. There is also a question as to whether or not the 47k resistor going from Drain of Q1 to the power rail actually being 14.7k like the drains of Q2 and Q3, so as of now if you build this you may want to socket that resistor so you can try both and see which sounds better.

BF244 (DGS) Layout

2N5952 (DSG) Layout

BJFE Sparkling Yellow Overdrive V2

Not much info on this. From what I've read from the BJFE forum is that the 3 knob Sparkling Yellow Overdrive was a short BJFE Customshop run that's supposed to have that old school early American tones, think Fender Tweed, Blonde, and Brownface.

Video of the 3 Knob

Video of Bearfoot version of the 4 Knob (Closest Video I could find)

Original 3 Knob Limited Run

4 Knob Production Version With M Knob

Mad Professor Amber Overdrive

Direct from the source:

One of the most sought after guitar tones is a combination of a great overdrive or fuzz pedal into overdriven tube amplifier. Amber Overdrive produces this sound even when running though a clean amplifier. It produces a very thick sound whether playing chords or single notes – fat and juicy with just a hint of fuzz.

Though highly saturated, this dynamic overdrive can be cleaned up with the volume control of your guitar. As with all Mad Professor pedals, it offers a wide range of dynamics and expressive touch sensitivity.

When you plug it into a clean amplifier, Amber Overdrive can give you the massive sound of a saturated amplifier running wide open. It can also be used as a slightly distorted boost to increase saturation on slightly overdriven amplifiers.

NOTICE: Amber Overdrive is a medium input impedance device that places a light load on your guitar pickups to produce a smoother tone. it will work best as the first pedal in the chain. if you run a buffered pedal ahead of Amber Overdrive you will get an increase in treble and upper midrange.

Bearfoot Emerald Green Distortion Machine

Today is Bearfoot day.  Info about the original

For the Vox lover in all of us, Bearfoot FX has created the Emerald Green Distortion Machine- a pedal which captures the chimey, crunchy essence of the AC series amps and provides a faithful simulation of the Vox tone through a variety of amps. Used through a Vox, this pedal acts as a booster driver to really push your amp into sonic heaven.  The EGDM Distortion and Voice controls are interactive and used together will take you from the low, clean tones of an AC all the way up to the screaming tone of a cranked Vox. The EGDM is extremely responsive to picking dynamics and your guitar’s volume knob.  

Bearfoot FX is the brainchild of Bjorn Juhl of BJF Design and Donner Rusk of Donnerbox. Every pedal is handpainted and no two are exactly alike. The pedals now ship with a plain, unpainted bottom plate to help ensure the most secure contact with adhesive Velcro for use on pedalboards. Bearfoot FX pedals are handmade in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. 

Bearfoot Candy Apple Fuzz Gold

There was a resistor missing from the schematic so the layout has now been fixed. If anyone has already built this then if you can add a 2K resistor somewhere between the germ transistor emitters and ground that should sort it out.  Or you can use then fix layout John did at the bottom of this page.  The main layout has been fixed with an extra column being added to accommodate the resistor

As usual with Bjorn designed stompboxes, a great sounding fuzz.  2N1308s should be available on eBay but if you can't find them, just throw any NPN germaniums in there.

Info about the original:
The Candy Apple Fuzz is one of Bjorns first BJFe circuits (along with the BBOD and DRD) ... it was made to cover the nastier side of vintage fuzzes and it does just that and more … over the years the one recurring request was to make it a bit smoother and more musically manageable ... when it came time for the BearFoot version he did just that by adding a treble control to reign in the rasp as needed… and he also adjusted the circuit to germanium transitors, which are smoother and more musical to most ears ... BUT silicon has its own musicality and many just like the full on unruliness and extra rip of silicon ... now you have a choice as we introduce the original silicon formula CAF ... Silver/Silicon ... Gold/Germanium

And the quick fix for anyone who built using the original layout, the resistor value should be 2K.

BJFE Folk Fuzz 3.5%

Another one of John's here, this time for Bjorn's DIY project, the Folk Fuzz.  I can't find the original post with Bjorn describing this but I think most people know what it is.

BJFE Pale Green Compressor

From John K. Info about the original:

This compressor captures the natural feel of your amp and speakers compressing as they are pushed.The PGC really shines in a live situation with a band where the heavier handed compressors, that sound good at home in a room, often sound thick and lifeless against other real instruments… … The PGC is already famous for its nearly transparent compression and dead quiet operation. You will also wonder if its on at all ~ until you turn it off to make sure and then turn it back on as quickly as possible.

BJFE / Bearfoot Model G

I was struggling to get this one 21 columns wide max, so Miro will have to forgive me for the placing the Nature pot wires at different sides of the board.  Sorry mate :o)

Info about the original:

The Model G captures the unique voice and response of an often overlooked brand of amps from the 50s/60s ~ the Gibsons that were right there at the beginning with Fender, Valco ,Vox and Marshall..

Somewhere near the tweeds and supros but with a stronger and clearer voice, and a particular upper mid sound and snarl.

The Model G is related to the Honey Bee the same way a Gibson Falcon or GA40 is related to a Supro … cousins with obvious similarities, but important differences.

The volume, drive and nature controls are on both models.

The C knob is a big part of the difference – it controls several things at once:  the upper mids eq and snarl and  slight speaker compression … like adjusting to different speaker choices and ages or even like moving a mic aimed at the speaker.

BJFE / Bearfoot Pink Purple Fuzz

To keep the collection complete this is the second recently reversed BJFE/Bearfoot pedal, drawn up by mmolteratx, thanks again Matt.  Again this one sounds great to me.

Info about the original:

The Bearfoot FX Pink Purple Fuzz blurs the lines. Is it pink or purple? Is it fuzz, overdrive, or distortion? In terms of the color—can’t it be both? In terms of the tone? It’s all three, depending on how you dial it in. The Pink Purple is very high gain, while remaining very low-noise, housing all your daily fuzztones (no crazy octaves or gated fuzz here) and blurring the lines between fuzz, distortion, and overdrive—with a versatile mid-EQ knob that takes you through a range of useful fuzztones.

Bearfoot FX is the brainchild of Bjorn Juhl of BJF Design and Donner Rusk of Donnerbox. Every pedal is handpainted and no two are exactly alike. The pedals now ship with a plain, unpainted bottom plate to help ensure the most secure contact with adhesive Velcro for use on pedalboards. Bearfoot FX pedals are handmade in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

BJFE / Bearfoot Arctic White Fuzz

Back from holiday and thought I'd do a new layout to try to cheer myself up after feeling the difference in temperature :o)

The BJFE/Bearfoot Arctic White Fuzz is YAFF but certainly has been souped up and sounds great to me.  I'm sure it will be as popular as Bjorn's other effects.  Thanks to Matt for the schematic.

Info about the original:

Another favorite from the BJFe research program .... The Arctic White fuzz purrrs like a snow leopard at lower levels and attacks with full vintage growl when pushed ...... this is the most straight forward of the BearFoot fuzzes .... vintage in sound and feel with its own voice and personality.... and its a great recording fuzz as Bjorn wiped out the backround noise found in most fuzzes... 8-18v ... Volume Level - Fuzz Level and Tone control with just the right amount of treble control to match the Arctic to your little piece of the tundra .....and your Honey Bees new best friend.

Mad Professor Snow White Autowah

I did this as a bit of an experiment.  I want to build one and this has always been one of those that would prefer to do on a PCB, but I thought I'd still like to put a layout together to see how small I could get it using my methods and as I have I may as well put the results on here.

At 20 x 29 is may just fit in a 1590B if you aren't using a battery and have the stomp switch mounted right at the bottom, but with it having 4 pots, I think I'd probably opt for a 125B which should be a more comfortable fit.

Avoiding 19 links is another of the reasons why I would prefer a PCB :o)

Info about the great sounding original:

BJF design guitar and bass Auto Wah / Voltage Control Filter pedal

Hand-made in Finland premium quality auto wah pedal.

The SNOW WHITE AUTOWAH (SWAW) circuit is based on a 1991 BJF rack mount remote wah circuit and is tuned like a real wah.

The circuit was redesigned with envelope controls and built into small size pedal.

It has very fast tracking and accuracy rarely found on auto wahs/ envelope filters. With the four knobs you can have total control of the effect.

SWAW works both with guitar and bass and you can fine-tune the pedal to suit your instru-ment, your playing style and your taste of tone.

The pedal has a unique decay control for the filter frequency fall speed. You can set it to be fast for wah effects on every note, or slower for a more traditional auto wah sound.

Like all Mad Professor pedals SWAW is hand made in Finland using only premium compo-nents, to give years of trouble free operation with superb musical tone.

Controls

SENSITIVITY: Sets the filter trigger level, tune this carefully to fit your guitar/bass output and your playing touch.
You can further change the sensitivity from your guitar volume knob while playing.

BIAS: Controls the filter resonance frequency. When Sensitivity is turned fully off the Bias can be used as a sweepable filter.

RESONANCE: Controls the sharpness or Q-factor of the filter.

DECAY: Controls how fast the filter frequency falls back to resting point (that is set with the Bias control). This can be set fast (CW) so you get the wah effect on every note or slow for a more traditional auto wah sound.

PLAYING: Please take time to get used to the controls and as this is a voltage control filter it will react to your playing touch. The envelope control circuit is carefully designed to follow the dynamics of guitar/bass and it might take some time to master the Auto Wah playing technics.

Try also adjusting guitar volume between 8 and 10 to further expand use. 

Modded version as per the improvements discussed below in the comments:

Bearfoot Baby Pink Booster

Info about the Bjorn designed original:

The Baby Pink Booster is a booster with clean transparent boost and very fine Line Driver in bypass position. It sports adjustable and switchable boosts ranging from unity to approximately 8 times or +18 dB, which is the practical limit with the signal levels and supply voltage range used in conventional effects-empirically derived.

Baby Pink Booster was designed to do just the transparent natural clean boost, there is no overdrive or distortion options, to include an overdrive with Clean Boost one would have to compromise one or the other, we recommend Baby Blue OD or Dyna Red Dist for distortion. The unit doesn't have even Tone knob because it doesn't alter your tone, it just boost your signal and doesn't color your tone at all.

And with it's 180 degree phase bend you can even use it to connect the two channels of your vintage Fender amps (more about this later).

Baby Pink Booster doesn't have a True By Pass but a very well designed Line Driver (buffered output).
It is good to have one pedal with buffered output or you would loose some signal and high end even with best cables if you drive two cables and few short one between pedals.

Original version:

True Bypass with Boost/Buffer toggle switch:

Mad Professor Blueberry

Requested by a few people now and I do want to keep the bassists happy too.  In tomorrows blog I'm going to show you how to make pizza boxes, especially for drummers.  Just kidding! :o)

Although the hand built BJF and Mad Professor effects can hurt your wallet, with the new PCB range out they've made them a lot more accessible to the masses.  And as these are great sounding effects and certainly more than Tubescreamers with different input caps, this is another builder that we want to keep making pedals.  Plus Bjorn's a good guy and plays AC/DC and Iron Maiden so I like him! :o)

A few notes: This is small enough to fit in a 1590B with a bit of careful measuring.  Some people have said this is a bass Honey Bee, but doing the layout I found it more similar to the Model H but with diode instead of JFET clipping.  If anyone has trouble with biasing, consider swapping the 30K and 5K6 resistors for appropriate trimmers and aim for around 5 to 5.5V on the JFET drains. 

Info about the original:

BJF design dynamic bass overdrive.

Mad Professor BlueBerry Bass Overdrive (BBBOD) is a high quality dynamic overdrive pedal for electric bass.

It was designed to get light to medium overdrive, reminiscent of vintage tube bass amplifiers.

With the Drive control, you can get natural dynamically controlled overdrive like on those old tube bass amplifiers, or more compressed thick distortion.

At lower drive settings the BBBOD distorts more the harder you strike the strings, and there is no definite clipping point, but rather different shades of distortion as the amplitude changes. Higher settings will give more compressed sounds.

With the clever Nature adjustment one can adjust the tone, and also control what register distorts. From really big and fat with low register distortion to cutting upper midrage solo bass tone.

There is enough volume to use the pedal also as a booster.

While mainly designed for bass guitar, the BBBO can also be used with other instruments for low, dynamically controlled distortion.

Controls:

VOLUME : controls output

DRIVE: sets the amount of distortion and sustain, as well as the type of distortion.

Lower settings give dynamically controlled overdrive, the unit distorts more the harder you strike the strings and there is no definite clipping point, but rather different shades of distortion as the amplitude changes.

Higher settings will give more compressed sounds.
A good starting point with most basses is fully CCW, turn the knob until you find the overdrive level that suits your playing.

Lower settings are good for old school tube amplifier tone, while higher settings gives denser distortion.

NATURE: is a tonecontrol for filtering and to control what register distorts.
Turning CCW gives more lowend and also distortion in the lower registers.

Turning CW gives an emphasis in the upper midrange for more protruding solo bass tone.

Bearfoot Dyna Red Distortion

Info from the builder:

The Dyna Red is a classic distortion that immediatley sounds familiar. What sets the DRD apart is that it also manages to mimic the FEEL of a healthy plexibasketweaver.

While it is known for its crunchy classic  rock  distortion - it also has a  very  tasty 'just above driven' sound that really shows off its  dynamic low dirt capabilities.

the DRD can be safely used between 5 and 15 v. (lower the voltage for easier saturation and raise it to tighten up the response and add headroom)

This has been verified by muhd85:

Mad Professor Stone Grey Distortion

Info about the original:

BJF design distortion pedal for guitar

The new Mad Professor - Stone Grey Distortion (SGD) is a modern high-gain distortion pedal with unparallelled clarity and definition.

This pedal was developed for high gain applications and specifically for clarity at heavy distortion levels.

The Stone Grey Distortion is unique in that it has razor sharp dynamics and high gain intensity. It's ready for drop tuning, 7 string, and modern rock players who are seeking extreme gain with intense "string to string definition".

Play a chord and hear each note distinctly, instead of it turning to "mush" like many other high gain pedals.

With the gain turned down, the Stone Grey Distortion approaches overdrive-like textures and responds to the player's touch and dynamics like our other Mad Professor pedals do.

Build the Mad Professor way: small footprint and big tone.

Controls

VOLUME: sets the output level of the distorted signal

DISTORTION: sets the level of distortion - lower levels more overdrive-like textures - higher with heavier distortion.

TONE: sets the critical treble response for use with various amplifiers.

 

Here's an alternative layout for those who want to use mosfets instead of JFETs:

Now verified and here's Milkit's pics showing the double links, just as an added visual guide:

and Geiri's demo of his build:

Bearfoot Honey Bee

I thought I'd include the Bearfoot version of the Honey Bee, because I've heard quite a few people say they prefer it to the original.  Unfortunately you can't just change a few values using my BJF Honey Bee layout because there is an added resistor that needed cramming in.  Still you can just build both and the MP Sweet Honey as well and then you've got the set! :o)

Info from the maker:

The Honey Bee sounds and reacts like  small vintage combos with nicely worn tubes and speakers.

The Volume control controls the overall volume without changing the distortion.

The Drive control varies the distortion complexity and saturation.

The middle control adjusts the 'nature' of the EQ - begin with this control at  straight up 'noon'  ~  to the right there is a subtle adjust ment to the upper frequencies with the most treble at full clockwise.

... turning this control counterclockwise from noon  adds in lows and changes the distortion saturation interactively with the Drive knob ~ and at full counterclockwise the Honey Bee is fully bloated  and saturated like a small combo pushed to its limits.

Contrary to what you can see in the layout or what you may assume because of the BJF Honey Bee, the Bearfoot Honey uses red LEDs.  I'd strongly suggest socketing these LEDs though, the red ones will give more distortion and compression which will suit some people, but others may prefer the response given by the greens like in the original BJF pedal.

Geiri's demo of his build:

BJFE Little Green Wonder

Information about the original:

BJF design high headroom overdrive with adjustable low/mid EQ balance

Premium quality classic blues/rock pedal that works very well with complex overdriven amp sound. This pedals is now offered as lower priced pcb-model or hand wired pedal.

Both share the same specs and tone.

It's a low compression, high headroom overdrive with high output, and it has a Body knob for adjusting low-mid content and treble.

The LGW was made to be a stackable overdrive that could go anywhere in the pedal chain and the compression normally associated with this type of circuit is reduced same as several distortion mechanisms.

This pedal will work very well with amps and other pedals that have a lot of complexity or compression, a situation that not all pedals work well.

LGW makes a great building block to sound yet it works standalone and especially with humbuckers where normally this type of circuit would not work satisfactory, much due to bass loss and sometimes separated sounds (where transients feed through and a cloud of distortion follows beneath.

Body control gives access to medium midhump at center position and allows treble boost at cw rotation and low mid/treble boost a ccw position and so unit also can provide distortion albeit a smooth type. LGW can be used as an overdrive to already distorting amplifiers or pedals downstream, as well as function as a filter when feed with fuzz pedals that may be rough on some amplifiers and can also be used as light overdrive for just breaking up sounds.

As designer Bjorn Juhl put it:

"Whereas Little Green Wonder is a TS-style pedal, but one for those who don't generally like TS-style pedals.

Big difference between these two pedals would be headroom, distortion style and distortion depth and treble response, output level, function of tone knob, color, symbol.... they do share a common layout of mechanical components."

Mad Professor Sky Blue Overdrive

This is a modded version of the Sky Blue Overdrive, with a Tone control added, Texture control changed from an unnecessary dual to standard single 1K linear pot, and changes to the Z control to make it more useful.  1590B friendly if you can squeeze 5 pots in there.

Info about the original:

BJF design fine-tuned overdrive pedal

Hand-made in Finland premium quality overdrive pedal.

Mad Professor Sky Blue Overdrive (SBOD) is a very unique four knob pedal designed to overdrive already distorted amplifiers as well as provide light overdrive or soft distortion on clean sounds.
Special feature on this pedal is that you can adjust the feel and dynamics with Texture and Z knobs.

The Texture allows changing how and when circuit distorts as well as adjusting overall EQ.

The Z is a control that creates an adjustable load to the instrument connected to the SBOD input. With standard passive pickup loaded guitars dialing this control will adjust the upper resonant peak of the pickups. It also affects the taper of the volumecontrol on the guitar, adjusting how the tone cleans up when using the guitar volume knob.

Like all Mad Professor pedals SBOD is hand made in Finland using only premium components, to give years of trouble free operation with superb musical tone.


Controls

VOLUME:sets the output volume of the effect

DISTORT.: controls the distortion or overdrive effect

Z: is a control that creates an adjustable load to the instrument connected to the SBOD input. With standard guitars dialing this control will adjust the upper resonant peak of the pickups and also affect the taper of the volumecontrol on the guitar for easy setting of clean to distorted just from the volume control of guitar. This effect is masked if SBOD is driven by a buffered output such as from another guitar pedal or from active pickups

TEXTURE: allows changing how and when the circuit distorts as well as adjusting overall EQ. Dialing this control appears to adjust midrange, while it gives this impression from adjusting compression. Turning CCW gives more saturated effect that is easily distorted, turning CW gives a slight treble boost and less compression
(compression is used here to describe density of distortion since overall sound may be distorted throughout the dial)

BJFE Model H

Great sounding pedal designed to emlulate a HiWatt amp, and so one for you Who fans out there.  Again this was an awkward one to keep the width down, but it will fit nicely in a 1590B.

Video of Geiri's build of this layout:

Update (23rd March 2012): Missed cut, use this latest layout