Highlights
- Nick, with limited pedal-building skills, successfully builds a pedal using StewMac's Sun Fuzz Pedal Kit.
- Despite initial doubts and a lack of tools, Nick follows StewMac's instructions and enjoys the process, likening it to building Legos.
- He encounters issues with the first build, but StewMac's exceptional customer service, led by Devin, assists in troubleshooting and replaces the kit.
- Nick's second attempt is a success, and he expresses enthusiasm for making more pedals, praising Stewmac's support.
- Stewmac's Sun Fuzz kit is recommended as a great starting point for novice builders, emphasizing the company's commitment to helping customers succeed.
What’s Hiding in the Box?
Housed in a 1590B enclosure, the BL-82 sports a unique control set, including a diagonally mounted 35 mm slider for clock adjustments and three knobs, including mix, volume, and feedback. The clock slider adjusts delay time, modulation speed, and modulation depth simultaneously, while the feedback knob sets the intensity of the chorus, and, at high clock settings, the number of delay repeats. The utility of a wet/dry mix control is a welcome addition to almost any pedal, in my book—especially modulators where the wet/dry balance can recast the texture of the modulation significantly. Having that capacity pays off in a big way here. The output volume doesn’t generate tons of gain. It maxes out with what amounts to a slight boost—adding another gain staging point in multi-pedal setups and ensuring that there’s a minimum of perceived volume loss when the modulation is intense. While the pedal lacks stereo outputs and an expression input, those omissions are understandable when considering the pedal’s small footprint and affordable price.
Changing Times, Changing Clocks
The BL-82’s dual LFOs create evolving movement in relation to each other that, to my ears, is more immersive than a typical mono chorus. Increasing feedback takes the pedal from classic chorus sounds to heavier flange environments. Here, the LFO motion starts to fold back on itself, adding dimension and stretching the sound image. More than 50 percent feedback introduces hollow, metallic, and ringing flanger tones. At maximum it has the phasing resonance of a Boss BF-2 or Electric Mistress at their most extreme. But regardless of where you situate the pedal in the feedback range, the modulation speed and depth remain conservative, lending the hypnotic oscillation of a subtle phasing sweep to the interwoven flow of a multi-voice micro pitch shift.
Echoes and High Strangeness
Just shy of halfway on the clock slider, the delay time crosses over from creating chorusing effects to generating doubling and slapback sounds. Modulation speed gets faster, but the resulting warble is never overbearing. There are many useful sounds in this range. Low feedback mimics an echo-y rotary speaker, while high feedback transforms the signal to trippy pitch shifting spring reverb.
“When you push the clock slider beyond halfway, the BL-82 crosses into stranger territory.”
When you push the clock slider beyond halfway, the BL-82 crosses into stranger territory. As the delay lines modulate against each other in more peculiar ways, the repeats drift from predictable rhythmic patterns. Echo tails pitch up and down to dissonant notes, while a hint of lo-fi bit-crusher-like noise rides on the signal, adding to the weirdness. At high feedback and paired with a fuzz, the echoing walls of sound resemble the dreamy float of My Bloody Valentine’s stacked guitars.
The Verdict
While the BL-82 possesses brain-twisting modulation and an expansive delay, this pedal really shines when dialed back to milder settings. Despite simple controls, there’s an unexpected versatility thanks to the multi-parameter adjustment capabilities and the clock slider design. And overall, the BL-82 is an exceptional, unique effect, whether you’re looking for rich, traditional chorus or modulations with an experimental edge. It’s tough to be original in this day and age, but Old Blood Noise accomplished that in this fun-to-play modulator
Empress Heavy Menace Distortion Pedal
The Heavy Menace is the most versatile distortion pedal Empress Effects has ever created. It’s an evolution of the original Heavy with new features and a compact enclosure. It features three distortion modes, advanced EQ with a sweepable midrange frequency and Weight control, and an adaptive gate with a key input for external triggering. The pedal features an all-analog signal path and can operate in true bypass or buffered bypass modes.