For all the folks who miss or want the original Bearfoot blueberry BOD here is the new iteration from Barefoot FX:
Bearfoot FX Queen Bee OD PREORDER 2 (Blueberry + Treble) 2020 Gurple
Bearfoot FX Queen Bee OD PREORDER 2 (Blueberry + Treble) 2020 Gurple | BearFoot FX / Donnerbox | Reverb
I saw this in another thread and by the time I clicked the link, the first preorder was gone. I wrote to Donner and he decided to run a second preorder for the TB crowd.
This won’t be posted on any social media until noon tomorrow.
Here is some background:
Birth of a Sound design.
Queen Bee
The Sound of the Honey Bee got its start in my head in the late 1990s.
I was an amp flipper, and a friend of mine gave me an early 60s Kay 720 bass amp. It had a 15" alnico speaker and 2 6l6s and a tube rectifier... and this warm spongy sound and feel, but as a bass amp it also had no top end. I loved the warm grunty breakup and even played my Tele thru it wishing it had more treble. I tried swapping tubes and speakers and got a little more but not enough for a guitar amp. I ran it in parallel with my Deluxe Reverb and it sounded great! ... IF I could just get one amp to sound like that !!!
Fast forward to 2001 ... I met BJ on the Musictoyz forum where we became friends. He sent me one of his new Blueberry Bass ODs as I was playing as much bass as guitar then. I really liked it and even played my guitar thru it. Same thing, great low end grunting and bloating, but the EQ was wrong for guitar. So I suggested if it was re EQd for guitar it could be a unique guitar overdrive.
As BJ was getting ready for the 2002 Swedish Guitar Show, he wanted something eyecatching for his booth table. I suggested the re EQd bass drive ... and to denote its treble fix, to call it the Flametop as I was painting boxes that looked like guitar finishes (I was also refinning and relicing guitars in the 90s) .... he liked the idea but mentioned he actually preffered Honeyburst to Cherryburst flametops... and I came up with Honey B into Bee for the buzz in drive pedals. (I had also come up with the Red Rooster Booster name and another animal name was a new direction from the bjf naming scheme.)
He didnt have a Kay amp in Sweden, but a friend of his had a Supro and both were made by Valco in Chicago. And he used that to model the sound I described.
So the Honey Bee OD was the eyecatcher at that 2002 show and after the show, he sent me HBOD #002. I liked it, but it was the same problem, too dark and not enough treble or gain. So I sent it back to get it modded to my liking, and it was better but still wasn't what I was really wanting to hear and got a little more treble added.
I started passing it around to some of my local guitar friends and one friend wanted one with the same treble/gain increase and he got #003 ... and then I started sending it around to some of my Musictoyz netfriends and I put it into some of my Tourboxes which I also started in 2002 for my pedal company PedalworX.
And it began to grow in popularity as I sent it around and found new uses for the sound. I left PedalworX and began as DonnerboX which led to the 2005 Tsunami and 2006 Katrina relief projects and I ran a customshop of Donnerboxed pedals for BJF, Analogman, Skreddy , Sweet sound and Cusack.
I also started work on a new brand with a friend here in St. Louis. Full Moon Amps and Pedals. And I designed the Fraternity as a drive pedal that could work with the whole range of our amp line. It covered the Dyna Red and Honey Bee sounds and more.
About 2008 Just as we were getting ready to launch Full Moon, my Full Moon partner had to move back to Detroit and it fell apart. Bjorn asked me if I wanted to start a company based on his pedals that I had been promoting for years, but made in the USA as there was always a logistics problem with him being in Sweden. People were starting to degoop his pedals and this could help fend off the cloners. I came up with the BearFoot name and after rebuilding the company 3 times, I finally opened BearFoot in 2011. In us coming up with the BearFoot Honey Bee, I wanted it to be what my original design for that sound was, and so thats why the BJF and BearFoot Honey Bees sound different - I wanted more gain and clarity on top of the bassy bloaty grunt. I came up with the treble control for the Honey Bairs, Beeatch and Uber ...
So the Queen Bee will finally be what I originally wanted, warm, grunty bloating with adjustable treble. It works great for bass AND guitar now........... coming soon.
(Valco was formed in 1940 by three business partners and former owners of the National Dobro Company; Victor Smith, Al Frost, and Louis Dopyera. The company name was a combination of the three partner's first initials (V.A.L.) plus the common abbreviation for company (Co.)
Valco manufactured and sold electric (since the 1950s),[3] resonator,[3] lap steel[3] and classical[4] guitars and vacuum tube amplifiers under a variety of brand names including Supro, Airline, National and Oahu.[1] They also made amplifiers under contract for several other companies such as Gretsch, Harmony, and Kay.
Valco merged with Kay Musical Instrument Company in 1967; however financial difficulties[5] forced the merged company to fold the following year.
Bearfoot FX Queen Bee OD PREORDER 2 (Blueberry + Treble) 2020 Gurple
Bearfoot FX Queen Bee OD PREORDER 2 (Blueberry + Treble) 2020 Gurple | BearFoot FX / Donnerbox | Reverb
I saw this in another thread and by the time I clicked the link, the first preorder was gone. I wrote to Donner and he decided to run a second preorder for the TB crowd.
This won’t be posted on any social media until noon tomorrow.
Here is some background:
Birth of a Sound design.
Queen Bee
The Sound of the Honey Bee got its start in my head in the late 1990s.
I was an amp flipper, and a friend of mine gave me an early 60s Kay 720 bass amp. It had a 15" alnico speaker and 2 6l6s and a tube rectifier... and this warm spongy sound and feel, but as a bass amp it also had no top end. I loved the warm grunty breakup and even played my Tele thru it wishing it had more treble. I tried swapping tubes and speakers and got a little more but not enough for a guitar amp. I ran it in parallel with my Deluxe Reverb and it sounded great! ... IF I could just get one amp to sound like that !!!
Fast forward to 2001 ... I met BJ on the Musictoyz forum where we became friends. He sent me one of his new Blueberry Bass ODs as I was playing as much bass as guitar then. I really liked it and even played my guitar thru it. Same thing, great low end grunting and bloating, but the EQ was wrong for guitar. So I suggested if it was re EQd for guitar it could be a unique guitar overdrive.
As BJ was getting ready for the 2002 Swedish Guitar Show, he wanted something eyecatching for his booth table. I suggested the re EQd bass drive ... and to denote its treble fix, to call it the Flametop as I was painting boxes that looked like guitar finishes (I was also refinning and relicing guitars in the 90s) .... he liked the idea but mentioned he actually preffered Honeyburst to Cherryburst flametops... and I came up with Honey B into Bee for the buzz in drive pedals. (I had also come up with the Red Rooster Booster name and another animal name was a new direction from the bjf naming scheme.)
He didnt have a Kay amp in Sweden, but a friend of his had a Supro and both were made by Valco in Chicago. And he used that to model the sound I described.
So the Honey Bee OD was the eyecatcher at that 2002 show and after the show, he sent me HBOD #002. I liked it, but it was the same problem, too dark and not enough treble or gain. So I sent it back to get it modded to my liking, and it was better but still wasn't what I was really wanting to hear and got a little more treble added.
I started passing it around to some of my local guitar friends and one friend wanted one with the same treble/gain increase and he got #003 ... and then I started sending it around to some of my Musictoyz netfriends and I put it into some of my Tourboxes which I also started in 2002 for my pedal company PedalworX.
And it began to grow in popularity as I sent it around and found new uses for the sound. I left PedalworX and began as DonnerboX which led to the 2005 Tsunami and 2006 Katrina relief projects and I ran a customshop of Donnerboxed pedals for BJF, Analogman, Skreddy , Sweet sound and Cusack.
I also started work on a new brand with a friend here in St. Louis. Full Moon Amps and Pedals. And I designed the Fraternity as a drive pedal that could work with the whole range of our amp line. It covered the Dyna Red and Honey Bee sounds and more.
About 2008 Just as we were getting ready to launch Full Moon, my Full Moon partner had to move back to Detroit and it fell apart. Bjorn asked me if I wanted to start a company based on his pedals that I had been promoting for years, but made in the USA as there was always a logistics problem with him being in Sweden. People were starting to degoop his pedals and this could help fend off the cloners. I came up with the BearFoot name and after rebuilding the company 3 times, I finally opened BearFoot in 2011. In us coming up with the BearFoot Honey Bee, I wanted it to be what my original design for that sound was, and so thats why the BJF and BearFoot Honey Bees sound different - I wanted more gain and clarity on top of the bassy bloaty grunt. I came up with the treble control for the Honey Bairs, Beeatch and Uber ...
So the Queen Bee will finally be what I originally wanted, warm, grunty bloating with adjustable treble. It works great for bass AND guitar now........... coming soon.
(Valco was formed in 1940 by three business partners and former owners of the National Dobro Company; Victor Smith, Al Frost, and Louis Dopyera. The company name was a combination of the three partner's first initials (V.A.L.) plus the common abbreviation for company (Co.)
Valco manufactured and sold electric (since the 1950s),[3] resonator,[3] lap steel[3] and classical[4] guitars and vacuum tube amplifiers under a variety of brand names including Supro, Airline, National and Oahu.[1] They also made amplifiers under contract for several other companies such as Gretsch, Harmony, and Kay.
Valco merged with Kay Musical Instrument Company in 1967; however financial difficulties[5] forced the merged company to fold the following year.
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