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The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 11:47 pm
by soulsonic
Hi everyone, I wanted to let you know about this thing I'm working on; it's going to be a DIY overdrive/boost project inspired by the BJFE Honey Bee. This is something that's been discussed a bit over at Freestomp, but I thought this would be a good (and very appropriate) place to talk about it as well.

Björn personally sent me a Honey Bee to play with for this project, and I received it a few days ago. I've already had a good time listening to it and it has certainly gotten some good ideas growing in my head for fun DIY projects. I think I may come up with several different ones with varying degrees of complexity to appeal to hobbyists with different skill levels. The HB has some interesting characteristics concerning how it responds to dynamics, and it will be fun to explore how similar performance can be realized.

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:35 am
by jfromel
This will be a fun one indeed, I am looking forward to participating in this project.

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:21 am
by DocRock
That's awesome!!! (And further testament to what a class act BJ is.) 8)

Doc :mrgreen:

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 7:24 am
by briggs
I look forward to seeing the fruits Soul. I've been playing with one of my ideas for 3 months now! I must say - Bjorn has helped me very much in it's development, he's answered so many of my ridiculous questions in all those emails - Cheers Bjorn! I'll post it up here when I'm done; it's BJF inspired so I might as well post it up on the BJF forum!

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:05 pm
by Donner
Should be fun and educational!!
Would also be really interesting to send some of your finished homages around in a Tour box to see what some other people thought of them - maybe amongst some of the long time HoneyBee and BJF users here 8)

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 12:11 am
by soulsonic
A tourbox would be a very good idea... thanks for suggesting that Donner!
I already have a couple circuit ideas coming together that are very promising.

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:20 am
by briggs
Have you experimented much more with a single transistor design Soul? I whipped around my breadboard yesterday and got some nice sounds from a single big muff style stage -> LPF -> Clipping diodes to ground -> Feedback loop restricted to higher freqs. Needed some work but I'm sure it was promising.

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 9:41 am
by Donner
Yeah actually the HB 'sound' is fairly complex and there could be many variations on the dynamic EQ and Distortion interactions and intersections --- change any one of them and you have a different sound --- and it reacts differently depending on what it is fed.......


And we could do the Tourbox right here if you like....

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:33 pm
by briggs
Donner wrote:Yeah actually the HB 'sound' is fairly complex and there could be many variations on the dynamic EQ and Distortion interactions and intersections --- change any one of them and you have a different sound --- and it reacts differently depending on what it is fed.......


And we could do the Tourbox right here if you like....


Excuse my ignorance, how do these "Tourboxes" operate? I'm a gear trading n00b - I'd like to put my Hummingbird circuit into the mix though 8)

Re: The Honey Bee Challenge

PostPosted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:38 pm
by Donner
Ive done a bunch of them over the years ..

I send pedals around to a selected group of people who review them and so after a number of stops you get some detqiled direct feedback......

maybe when you and soul get a group you want reviewed let me know Ill set it up ....

Basically your out t he pedal for as long as it takes - but each person pays postage t o the next person so it doenst cost you anything but postage to me....