BJFE Golden Acorn OD

[zhivago]

I take it this was a prototype for the One Control pedal. How many of the BJFEs were made?

[ak47]

Hmm.. I must ask BJ. I have one and there is another in Japan I think.. it is verrrry good you know.. right Marty? Haha!

I have the One Control GA on my big delay testing board. Sounds great!

[zhivago]

It looks awesome!

Let me know if you hear from Bjorn, it would be good to have total numbers in this thread, for reference

[melodichaotic]

Hmm.. I must ask BJ. I have one and there is another in Japan I think.. it is verrrry good you know.. right Marty? Haha!

I have the One Control GA on my big delay testing board. Sounds great!

Heh heh....Yeah, the Golden Acorn...that one is another slice of
"Dumble" Pie...completely different from the Model D(I know Bjorn was going more for David Lindsey's tone specifically).

The GAOD has such a great feel to it...boosted it sounds awesome, but by itself it's an excellent OD that is thick and chewy and very different from the rest of the BJFE OD lineup.

Yeah, would dig giving the OC version a spin.

[zhivago]

Thans for chiming in Marty!

Sounds like a very cool pedal!!!

[BJF]

HI

Yes I made a couple of prototypes for Golden Acorn under BJF so yes there is one in Japan at the OC headquarters as Golden Acorn all along was designed for OC in the Amp In A Box sequel of the OC BJF line

Here's a snippet from an interview article on the OC Gloden Acorn and thus a part of what I answered:

"When I was asked to do another Amp In A Box design for One Control I put some further thought to the enigma and it struck me that if you have an overall compressed sound but a window in which you can control amount of distortion you’d have
a compressed feel but distortion at your fingertips.
Now making this kind of function in a box would be a challenge and so I combined all I had learnt through the years about this type of amplifier and funnily I have been asked two times if I wouldn’t want to look into a real D- amp? and both times
kindly declined the offer because I didn’t find it interesting and there was one more signature thing that came with this midrange- and then obviously this would be a kind of amp meant to be played loud because the ear compresses midrange when
sound gets really loud and therefore to balance that out you need to increase midrange or lower bass and treble and further distortion would preferably be made just prior to power amp as then sound feels less processed.
So armed with this I decided to give a small window of controllable distortion in an overall compressed circuit- compressed mostly the meaning gobs of gain to make a sustainable sound and it struck me that it would be fully possible to do and the key
being to amplify to the point of distortion roof and limit just below and then you could get a small window of sound that with a light touch would be seemingly clean but with just a bit harder touch trip into distortion and the rest would just be tailoring what
would be distorted so that the overall impression would be just that window and for setting this with different types of pick ups the Golden Acorn Overdrive Special has a Ratio control. It also has a treble control named Bright and the range of this is set to
make a balanced when this overdrive is played at 75W’s or higher"

Have fun
BJ

[zhivago]

Many thanks for chiming in Bjorn!

I really appreciate it!

[BJF]

Hi

It struck me that the final article in the magazine will only be 300 words and so I think I can post the complete answer I gave which is a little over 800 words:

Hi there, the sound of electric guitar has been a great inspiration to me since I at the age of 12 rented a guitar and a tube amp for my first band and though I had no clue as to how to form a note the mere sound I shall recall and I was hooked.
I’ve been building electronic gadgets since I first converted my mother’s transistor radio to my first practice amp in 1978. The first time I ever heard of Dumble amplifiers was from a guy whose amps I serviced and he told me about the amp he
really wanted and eventually began building years later. In 1999 I started BJF Electronics and the first pedal that rolled out from production was the Baby Blue Overdrive in the year 2000 and it proved later to be my most controversial model.
There were people saying they got the D-sound out of it, while to me Baby Blue OD was still a fuzz and one I'd use for rock sounds.
As time went on and I eventually designed an amplifier that was made in Finland my distributor then of all things BJF sent me a box of CD’s to listen to with artists he said I ought to know more about and later I have had the pleasure of meeting
several of the artists in the CD box and those were many of them artists that had owned or owned a D-amp. Now with the amp I had designed it was an amp with many sounds and the controls for the artist to sculpture his/her tone and again there
were people saying they could get the D- sound out of it- to me I had built in my own sound that I’d use. By that time I got to learn more about this mysterious D-amp as my amp was often dragged into discussions of this elusive D-sound.
When I was asked to do another Amp In A Box design for One Control I put some further thought to the enigma and it struck me that if you have an overall compressed sound but a window in which you can control amount of distortion you’d have
a compressed feel but distortion at your fingertips.
Now making this kind of function in a box would be a challenge and so I combined all I had learnt through the years about this type of amplifier and funnily I have been asked two times if I wouldn’t want to look into a real D- amp? and both times
kindly declined the offer because I didn’t find it interesting and there was one more signature thing that came with this midrange- and then obviously this would be a kind of amp meant to be played loud because the ear compresses midrange when
sound gets really loud and therefore to balance that out you need to increase midrange or lower bass and treble and further distortion would preferably be made just prior to power amp as then sound feels less processed.
So armed with this I decided to give a small window of controllable distortion in an overall compressed circuit- compressed mostly the meaning gobs of gain to make a sustainable sound and it struck me that it would be fully possible to do and the key
being to amplify to the point of distortion roof and limit just below and then you could get a small window of sound that with a light touch would be seemingly clean but with just a bit harder touch trip into distortion and the rest would just be tailoring what
would be distorted so that the overall impression would be just that window and for setting this with different types of pick ups the Golden Acorn Overdrive Special has a Ratio control. It also has a treble control named Bright and the range of this is set to
make a balanced when this overdrive is played at 75W’s or higher- that said you can easily mimic this acoustic power at levels suitable for a bedroom practice at 5 in the morning if you add a slight hint of distortion from your amp so that it appears to be
working at full throttle- I believe you can set a sound that inspires the mind to play certain styles and notes and that that is a sound as a whole of many components and so if you want the feel of very loud amplifiers you’d preferably get the cone moving
but you can for recordings bi amp via a small distorted amp placed close to the strings get on the recording the function of sound being so loud that it acoustically moves the strings and feeds back.


Bjorn Juhl
BJF electronics