BearFoot 4knob Honey Beest Initial reviews / research

[Donner]

[amp boy]

HIGH FIVE DONNER !!!!!

[hawaii121]

Just posted this on the other thread...

WOW! I must confess I never quite connected to the HBOD... blasphemy, I know, but I always preferred the tweed vibe of the Model G to the HBOD. This HBOD is something different. I only got to play it for 10 minutes with everything at noon, but through a neck HB'er it's Ry Cooter "Down in Mississippi" in a box (see YouTube video for reference)! What a great surprise.

[Hulakatt]

The beest works much better with a bigger amp than the hbod does. I love my hbod with my tweed champ but the beest works incredibly well with my marshall. The beest definitely tightens everything up over the bee with a much tighter (and obviously loads more) gain.

I don't really "get" the pregain knob though, increasing one while the other is set does mostly the same thing. It's a fine difference between them. Increasing the preamp gain is a bit more wooly while the reg gain higher is a bit tighter but like I said, not much.

[hawaii121]

sneaking in another 15 minutes... The pre gain seems to do most of the work with controlling the overall gain and the actual gain knob seems to do very little, I almost would have figured it to be the other way around, but having been playing cascading gain type amps, I'm guessing it is very similar to how they respond to clean channel gain influencing the type of gain you have in the OD channel (you get a smoother thing going when you run most of your gain in the clean channel vs trying to just crank the gain in the OD side).

I also agree with another post that described the Beast as fuzz like. With the nature knob CCW, it has a smooth classic rock fuzz thing to it. Kind of similar to the way the ALF sounded.

I turned the knobs a bunch and at medium volume most of the range seems usable, but I really like the all noon thing a lot. While it's not exactly the same, I think this could be a good substitute for a model G type pedal. It sounds a lot like how my MG would sound when playing through a loud hot amp.

[Donner]

.... ok, some info .... the pregain knob is something that was preset in the 3 knob version ~ most of the way up.

Think of it as preamp gain on a master volume amp.

It also has some upper mid and treble boost.

This is the T in the BeesT - this is why the Beest has more over all treble than the standard Bee, its being treble boosted pregain.

For me this makes the left side of the nature knob usable, as on the Bee its too dark and bloated - but with the pregain treble it brightens it up.

Try putting the nature full left and the Pgain full right and the top two knobs to taste......

Its closest to a regular Bee with the Pgain full down

[Donner]

Heres a short demovid of the Beest from Harry Maes ....

[hawaii121]

Now I'm even more afraid to do a demo video...

Donner, I think you guys did brilliant work regarding the usability of the nature knob. Rather than getting too dark or "bloated" as you said, it has a smooth fuzzy thing all the way CCW. Having the pre-gain as another thing you can control really expands the pedal to me. For a short bit, I had a Taku Smoky Signal that had a side knob that did something to allow you to 'tune' the pedal to your rig - it was very useful in a similar way. I don't know if it controlled the load (ala Model R) or was more along the lines of the "pre gain" knob, but I think this is a progressive idea for guitar effects and I think it will expand the range of amps that the pedal sounds good with.

Thank you for using your creativity and humor on this release, I think you truly captured the spirit of "fun" that Bjorn so often talks about. Well done, gentlemen!

[SteveA]

Stellar demo!!!!

[Donner]

I sure hope you guys wont stop doing demos !!!!!!
I got a group of guys to do uniform demos of the whole line so people can compare them and in different styles.....
but that sure doesnt mean everyone else should stop ....no no no