BJF Tour Box Sound Samples & Reviews

[aarondavis]

OK here are some samples I threw together in-between hanging with my son and cleaning the house. All done with my Tele and TopHat Club Royale set completely clean.

Empress and Honey Bee: I start with the vibrato sound (with a little delay) and end up with a few Chorus sounds. Settings on Honey Bee: Volume Cranked, Nature 3 oclock, Gain Cranked.
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=5438112&q=hi

Dyna Red, Sea Blue and Moon Phaser: Starts showing bypass of DRD, DRD settings: Volume 2 oclock, Treble almost completely attenuated (counter clockwise), Distortion noon. In middle I show how the Sea Blue can boost gain and lows. At then the I play with the Moon Phaser a bit.
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=5438161&q=hi

Pink Purple Fuzz: Multiple settings, showing gain levels and EQ sweep.
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=5438170&q=hi

[aarondavis]

Reposted here to keep my reviews together:

Have been spending some time with the tour box, taking notes here and there... finally sat down at the keyboard for my first intallment. Over the next few day's I'll write some more reviews and try to record some fun sound samples.

Please note that this group of pedals is a bit overwhelming, seriously. So here goes...

One important issue: This pedal board and tour box is a great example of the drawback of too many true bypass pedals. AFAIK, all the pedals on this board are TB. Therefore, when you plug in "true" tone suck occurs (I think it's funny when people say that Boss pedals "suck tone", it's the opposite due to the buffer) by which your signal seems to be cut in half. To overcome this I put my modded Boss SD-1 in front for the buffer and also a tone comparison.

Empress Chorus
First off, the Empress Chorus. This one I was extremely excited to try cause I’ve recently realized, thanks to my Line 6 Echopark, how cool and “viby” a vibrato can be. First the Vibrato: it’s real soupy and almost lo fi sounding. I guess cause it reminds me of the vibrato on my Lofi Loop Junky, without having to loop your guitar part. Very cool! One main issue though, in vibrato mode there’s a significant “where’s my guitar” volume loss due to the loss in high end (even with the included bright switch engaged). This may be OK in the studio, but live it’d be a bummer to me. What you get is a really cool vibrato that bends your entire pitch, not just splitting the signal and modulating it against the straight signal like a chorus.

As for the Chorus side, this is a nice sound. Maybe a bit different than the normal Boss style boxes I’m used to. A bit more signal enveloping, it actually tweaks your tone a bit, although it’s hard to describe. This is the most tweakable chorus I’ve ever played. Controls: Chorus/Vibrato switch, Bright Switch (which needs to be engaged IMO), Voice Knob, Depth, Velocity and Mix. One thing to note, the mix control works backwards, turn clockwise to reduce effect mix.

The Voice control is where the heart of the Empress is, although some odd shades come out through it’s sweep 11 to 2 oclock are it’s best settings (2 oclock for leslie simulation). The voice is also what you need to focus on in learning how to tweek this pedal. The Depth and Velocity are self explanatory. Another cool feature is the status LED that blinks brightly to the tempo set on the Velocity control. Bottom line, you could spend hours on this pedal alone. It’s a cool sounding pedal, but the volume drop on the vibrato is a downer.

Edit to Empress Review: The key is the mix control, if this is set higher the described volume drip isn't an issue. I like the pedal much more now. May even need to buy one.

Sea Blue EQ
Simply an Incredibility useful pedal. A major musical tone tweaker, seems to simply add a subtle analog vibey juiciness. Works great for a signal boost, booty enhancer and clarity multiplier.

At first try, this seems like a boring pedal (honestly) but after using it a bit (boosting/eq tweaking the Honey Bee) I realize how much of a Swiss Army Knife it could be. Seems like it could fix almost any backline rental amp from hell! Stellar design.

Dyna Red Distortion
Seeing as though I have one, this review may be a little biased. I feel the DRD is in a league joined by only a handful of contenders. To me, it seems distortion (not overdrive or fuzz) is one of the hardest sounds to get right in a pedal. Specifically, for the purpose of playing into a clean amp (completely clean) as I do. This one does it right man!

First the tone control is voiced perfectly, from dark to crystal clear (fine tuned in between), clear enough to sound great through a non-Master 4 input Marshall set clean (nothing sounds right in front of these when they're low enough to be clean!). Some have described the DRD as “fizzy”, but this is with the tone control set to normally assumed positions (noon to 2). For most amps it needs to be almost completely attenuated, but this is well thought out by Bjorn if you ask me.

Now for Gain; it has an incredibly nice low gain tone (light OD’ish) to pretty dang high gain. Like the tone control, every perceivable gradient in-between is great. Also note, with lower gain settings the tone control must be pumped up. Seems like Bjorn thought this part out too. The pedal naturally gets darker the lower the gain setting so he puts an extreme amount of control in the tone pot/circuit.

Volume/Output; here’s the only odd issue with the stock pedal I’ve encountered. For some crazy reason the stock DRD doesn’t have I high output with my TopHats. It’s crazy! Must be some rare component/impedance matching idiosyncrasy. For this reason, I had Bjorn build mine with CRAZY output (an easy change due to the highly responsive interaction with BJF).

It’s main thang: DYNAMICS! Why it’s called the “Dyna” Red Distortion! This pedal has a brilliantly implemented circuit that actually FEELS like a good tube amp. This effect isn’t exaggerated; say like amps that have “sag” controls. It’s a subtle thing based on the “less is more” approach. This effect is reduced the higher you set the gain, which again is brilliantly worked out cause with high gain settings, I want a bit more compression and immediate gain to note “coverage”.

Bottom line: This is one of the best distortion pedals made.

HBE Mimic Delay Mark1
This is a no frills, short time analog delay. It’s a bit more lo fi sounding than my AD900, cause it’s a bit more distorted and murky. If you want a slightly different analog delay, it’s a different take than most I’ve heard. It still proves to me that 300ms is too short for me. I gotta have at least about 400-450ms.

More to come...

[aarondavis]

Here's a couple more reviews:

BJF Pink Purple Fuzz
This may be the “fuzz for people who don’t like fuzz”. It has three controls; Volume, Nature (EQ curve) and Fuzz. This pedal is cool in that it’s not near as buzzy and “fuzzy” as the other classic fuzz pedals (Big Muff, Fuzz Face, Fuzz Factory). It’s more like taking a great distortion and adding some square wave/hard clipping to the mix, not just full bore square wave (like Fuzz Factory).

The Nature control is quite interesting. Full counter clock wise it scoops the mids and adds bass and treble is basically unity (think a good Big Muff), mid way it’s a basic neutral, almost flat EQ. Full clockwise, treble is attenuated big time. Basically, its crazy how many EQ combos you can get from this one control. Kinda like having 10 or so preset EQ curves.

Fuzz control; starts with a hint of uncompressed fuzz that’s real open sounding, all the way to a pretty high amount of gain/fuzz. As with all BJF’s I’ve tried, each single control has a vast and useable range. The PPF is without doubt one of the most refined, ‘easy on the ears’ fuzz I’ve ever heard.

Red Witch Moon Phaser
Of the 3 Red Witch Pedals, this is my favorite. In similar Witch form, this is a unique take on an old fav. It’s supposed to be a mix between Phaser and Tremolo. Three controls consist of Velocity, Trajectory and Cosmology. Velocity of course controls speed, fastest at the counter clockwise position (backwards). Trajectory controls the shape of the wave form and essentially to my ears controls the depth of the selected effect. The Cosmology is the cool part of this effect, it selects several different phase sounds and a couple of tremolo’ish sounds. Unfortunate omission is a status LED and it’s a shame cause not many pedals look as cool as the Witches and the bright, large bezel LEDs is a big part.

This pedal offers a continuum of unique modulation sounds, all of which are excellent. Vibe swoosh, long fairly deep phase (cool for playing funk rhythm) and the classic phase sounds we would expect from the 90/100 moniker. This pedal could be a one stop for players wanting some warble on their pedal board. Every effect can be set to deeply affect or for subtle tastiness. Very cool and it earns an Aaron’s Plectrum award :D:D:D.

[gkelm]

Thanks for posting...I really dig my DRD too.

In some circles Tophats have a rep for not dealing well with pedals...do you have similar issues with other pedals?

Greg

[aarondavis]

Thanks for posting...I really dig my DRD too.

In some circles Tophats have a rep for not dealing well with pedals...do you have similar issues with other pedals?

Greg

Good question about my TopHat's and other pedals. The anser is no. I've never had a type of pedal be so finicky with my amps. The only issue is the volume/output. My DRD has a few "custom" tweaks to it, one being that it's about twice as loud as the other DRD's I've used through my amp (including the one in the tour box).

Interesting enough though, the DRD in the tour box seems voiced nearly identical to mine. The other DRD I've played had too much bass IMO. Mine and the one in the tour box is perfect in that regard.

[OscrDGrch]

Excellent review! Thank you for posting the clips too!