This arrived today:
Hmmm... well, without further ado, let's get it opened up:
A lot of hacking and slashing later, the box is open and most of it is full of air - but what's that black box in the corner?
Got that box opened up and found this little thing inside:
Then I took it out of the plastic bag:
Plugged it in, and fired it up.
It's good!
Seems really well built. And there's a psychotic amount of gain available, and a lot of tonal variation. As you may know, it's based on the Roland Bee Baa fuzz circuit from the early 70s, but in a much smaller enclosure, with the convenience of a 9v socket. The "Notch" footswitch changes the tone abruptly from a mid-boosted, thick fuzz sound to a very scooped, bottom-heavy grind. That mode is more usable than I suspected it would be, although it never sounds as good as the other setting. No matter what mode it's on, it sustains for days with the gain cranked - and when you hold a high note, it blooms into a lovely upper-octave sound. I haven't had a proper play with it yet, my sister is downstairs revising for GCSEs so I can't be making too much noise. But from my quick test, a couple of concerns I do have:
1) Those footswitches are pretty close together. It remains to be seen whether this will be a pain in the arse.
2) It's not actually very loud. I've set it with the volume absolutely cranked and it still feels like there's a little bit of a volume drop when I kick the pedal in from clean. It may be something wrong with my individual example (it was a B-stock item from Thomann) or just a quirk of the circuit, but it might be a problem. I wonder if there are modifications you can do to get more output from it.
I'll report further once I've spent more time with it.
- "I'm going to write a very stiff letter. A VERY stiff letter. On cardboard."
Comments
I've been using a fuzz pedal with a boost after recently (that's a clean boost, not od which sounds like bum). It works great - I'll see if I can find out what the circuit it for you, but it's just a single knob so possibly a super hard on type?
Which Blackstar is it?