BJFE / BearFoot fx Guitar Effects Community

Hello BJFE community.

I've had a BJFE Honey Bee for some years now and it is without question my favorite pedal. I won't go into great detail as I'm sure if you have one of these things you are likely nodding your head in agreement.

Unfortunately mine is getting a little cranky to the point where it made my rig unusable during a soundcheck and I had to reluctantly pull it off my board and replace it with an inferior OD which shall remain nameless.

The symptoms: intermittent rumbling/crackling (this seems to go away when I click the footswitch) and a deafening Pop! when the foot switch is clicked on or off.

I don't know much about diagnosing possible interactions with other pedals but taking the HBOD out of the chain seemed to clear it up. Here was the chain last night:

Telecaster> JHS modded Ernie Ball Volume Pedal > Fulltone SoulBender > HBOD > Maxon AD-80 > Carr Rambler

Any help diagnosing and pointing me in the direction to getting this fixed would be most appreciated. Sorry if I wasn't diligent enough in scouring the forums and have duplicated an issue already dealt with there.

just sounds like a switch going bad or dirty. Several people here have cleaned them or replaced them under the guidance of Bjorn or you could contact Bjorn about having him repair your switch.

Look in Bjorns corner for the stomp cleaning thread ... There's a video link too

Beautiful. Thanks. I will scour that and see how I do.

Here is the link to the thread mentioned above in case anyone else stumbles winds up here with a similar issue.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3483&view=previous

It's probably the switch. I just cleaned my SBEQ and HBOD switches recently and they both work smoothly now.

Update: Got in touch with Bjorn who helpfully suggested that I tighten the jacks as they loosen over time and can potentially interfere with the wiring. Makes sense. They seemed pretty solid but I torqued them a little to make sure.

Then moved on to cleaning the switch with contact cleaner as explained in the post linked above. Seems to have worked! Had the HBOD back on the board at a rehearsal last night and had none of the noise/interference I was getting. Will bring to a gig this weekend but all signs point to this being the fix.

Thanks everyone. Glad to have the HBOD back on the board.

Glad to hear you were able to sort it out