The recently resurrected Black Cat Bee Buzz is a brilliant beam of stinging light in the world of brawny, super high-gain fuzzes.
Fuzz, and I mean real fuzz—the nasty, buzzing stuff of “Satisfaction” and Davie Allan biker soundtracks—is a tricky little beast to wrangle. Though it sounds cool as hell on records of the ’60s, dealing with the tangle of high-mid frequencies in loud live settings can leave listeners writhing in agony under a squall of feedback. What’s more, the simple circuits of the ’60s that best copped that sound are chronically unreliable, unpredictable, and at this point, often locked up in the closets of hoarding collectors.
It doesn’t leave a fuzz fiend with many places to turn. But the recently resurrected Black Cat Bee Buzz is a brilliant beam of stinging light in the world of brawny, super high-gain fuzzes. What’s best is that with the flip of a switch it transforms into a meatier Muff-like fuzz that can run with those tigers too.
Born Again Bee Baa
The Bee Buzz was born when Black Cat’s Japanese distributor requested a clone of the rare and coveted Roland Bee Baa, which was introduced in the mid ’70s. Black Cat did another run of 50 for domestic consumption, which disappeared at a rate that suggested they might be onto a winner. There’s about a million reasons to love this thing if you love fuzz. For starters, it packs a ton of functions in a very small enclosure—about a third as big as an original Bee Baa. It’s also crazy-cool looking. Our test version came in what Black Cat calls Candy Red, but you can also order it up in Candy Blue, Denim Blue, Coppertone, and a wonderfully shocking Limonade. The control set consists of four knobs, a small switch for switching between Buzz and the much gnarlier Bee setting, a bypass footswitch, and another that switches between the fuzz and boost sections. The three leftmost knobs are for the fuzz section. Volume controls the effect level, Tone ups the sting quotient, and Sustain enables you to pile on the fuzz.
The Bear and the Bee Hive
The Bee setting on the Bee Buzz’ fuzz circuit is downright wicked. It will transform an otherwise clean and well-groomed Fender Jaguar and Vibroverb into a filthy garage punk thug. But the beauty of the Black Cat’s Bee section is that even the most mosquitolike fuzz has muscle and backbone if you put enough Volume behind it. More surprisingly, it’s resistant to feedback in a way that similarly grimy fuzzes are not, which means you can actually employ the most radical version of the effect in a pretty loud band context.
Flip to the Buzz setting and the Bee Buzz reveals another surprise—a burlier, fatter fuzz that combines the voice of the Bee section with an almost Big Muff/Fuzz Face hybrid tone that you can use for more aggressive Black Sabbath and Stooges chording and Hendrixian leads. It’s not afraid of a big amp either, and will happily punish a higher-wattage amp and a pair of 12" speakers without turning into a screeching feedback machine. It doesn’t have quite as much gain or push as a Muff, Fuzz Face, or Rat, but if your amp has enough headroom, it can sound very mean in very loud settings. If there’s a limitation in the fuzz section, it’s that for clean and powerful amps, you’ll have to keep the effect’s Volume up pretty high to prevent a volume cut. On the other hand, this probably isn’t a pedal for those seeking less aggressive shades.
The boost section isn’t, as the name suggests, a clean boost or a treble boost like that on the original Bee Baa. But it’s a great—if somewhat monochromatic— overdrive that works especially well on small amplifiers.
The Verdict
There aren’t many fuzz boxes quite as versatile as the Bee Buzz. Granted, that assertion assumes an affinity for the scrungy sounds of ’60s fuzz, which is far from every player’s cup of tea. But if that’s a trip you’re psyched to take without leaving your bigger, brawnier fuzz tones behind, this Black Cat is your ride.
Buy if...
a combination of stinging ’60s fuzz and crunchy heft has thus far eluded you.
Skip if...
all but modern, high-gain distortion is useless to you.
Rating...
Street $225 - Black Cat Pedals - blackcatpedals.com |
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The final day is here! Enter Stompboxtober Day 31 for your last chance to win today’s pedal from Keeley and finish the month strong!
Keeley Octa Psi Transfigurating Fuzz Pedal with Polyphonic Pitch Shifting
Meet the OCTA PSI Transfigurating Fuzz – The Ultimate Combination of Pitch-Shifter, Octave Generator, and Tri-Voiced Analog Fuzz! Key features include: Instant Effect Order Switching, Flexible Output Configuration, Momentary or Latching Octave/Pitch, and more! Each pitch shift mode includes an up, down, and dual setting, resulting in 24 different modes.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.
Developed specifically for Tyler Bryant, the Black Magick Reverb TB is the high-power version of Supro's flagship 1x12 combo amplifier.
At the heart of this all-tube amp is a matched pair of military-grade Sovtek 5881 power tubes configured to deliver 35-Watts of pure Class A power. In addition to the upgraded power section, the Black Magick Reverb TB also features a “bright cap” modification on Channel 1, providing extra sparkle and added versatility when blended with the original Black Magick preamp on Channel 2.
The two complementary channels are summed in parallel and fed into a 2-band EQ followed by tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo effects plus a master volume to tame the output as needed. This unique, signature variant of the Black Magick Reverb is dressed in elegant Black Scandia tolex and comes loaded with a custom-built Supro BD12 speaker made by Celestion.
Price: $1,699.
Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is one of the loudest guitarists around. And he puts his volume to work creating mythical tones that have captured so many of our imaginations, including our special shoegaze correspondent, guitarist and pedal-maestro Andy Pitcher, who is our guest today.
My Bloody Valentine has a short discography made up of just a few albums and EPs that span decades. Meticulous as he seems to be, Shields creates texture out of his layers of tracks and loops and fuzz throughout, creating a music that needs to be felt as much as it needs to be heard.
We go to the ultimate source as Billy Corgan leaves us a message about how it felt to hear those sounds in the pre-internet days, when rather than pull up a YouTube clip, your imagination would have to guide you toward a tone.
But not everyone is an MBV fan, so this conversation is part superfan hype and part debate. We can all agree Kevin Shields is a guitarists you should know, but we can’t all agree what to do with that information.