Beetronics Royal Jelly 4th Limited Edition

The Beetronics Royal Jelly 4th Limited Edition is an overdrive and fuzz blender pedal, part of a run of just 20 units from the California maker Beetronics. Like the rest of the Royal Jelly line, it runs two circuits in parallel, an overdrive and a fuzz, and lets you blend them in any proportion or use either one on its own¹. Beetronics calls it "an overdrive/fuzz blender like no other pedal" and says "The Royal Jelly drips tone and it's a pedal that can change your approach to overdrive and fuzz"¹.

The 4th Limited Edition is sold out at Beetronics' own store, where it carried a regular price of £223.00¹.

Overdrive and fuzz in parallel, blended

Most overdrive and fuzz pedals give you one gain circuit. The Royal Jelly instead puts an overdrive and a fuzz side by side in the same box, running both at once and handing you a blend control between them. Beetronics describes the concept as a pedal that "can cover any ground from overdrive to fuzz, running two circuits in parallel and giving you the possibility of blending it or having them separately"¹.

For a player, that parallel layout is the whole point of the pedal. Instead of choosing between the smooth breakup of an overdrive and the ragged edge of a fuzz, or stacking two pedals and hoping they get along, you dial in each circuit and then set the mix between them. The blend can sit anywhere from full overdrive to full fuzz, with the two gain characters layered at every point in between. The same parallel blend appears across the Royal Jelly family, including the standard Beetronics Royal Jelly and the Beetronics Royal Jelly OD/Fuzz²¹³.

The DRY control adds a third layer: your unprocessed signal. On guitar, Beetronics says the DRY control "is great to create unique clean tones with a fuzzy background"¹. Because the dry signal is blended rather than switched, the pedal also works beyond guitar, which is covered below under using it on bass.

Writing about the Royal Jelly line at Pedal of the Day, the reviewer found the same breadth⁴:

The controls and the Queen and King presets

The Royal Jelly's control set centers on the blend between the two circuits, and on two stored presets of that blend called Queen and King. Beetronics explains: "It also has two presets of the blend, called Queen and King. The presets allow you not only to have two different sounds" on the fly, with a natural transition between them¹. In practice this gives you a footswitchable pair of overdrive/fuzz mixes, so a verse setting and a lead setting can live in the same pedal without rebending down mid-song.

The rest of the control set:

The EQ deserves a note of its own. Beetronics says "The Jelly's powerful EQ gives you 10dB of cut/boost for HI and LO making it possible to shape your tone in many differen[t] ways"¹. Two bands with a full 10dB of travel in both directions is a wide range for a drive pedal, and it matters here because fuzz in particular can be heavily dependent on the amp and guitar it meets.

The BUZZ switch

The BUZZ switch is the fuzz circuit's character toggle. Beetronics describes it in two ways across the Royal Jelly pages: it "adds that nasty high end usually found on the vintage fuzz boxes to its fuzz circuit"¹, and elsewhere in the line it is described as adding "a high-end boost to the fuzz for extra bite and presence"¹⁵⁶. Either way, it is a treble-focused voicing switch for the fuzz side, pushing the circuit toward the spiky, biting top end of vintage fuzz rather than a smoother modern one.

Using it on bass

The DRY control is what makes the pedal bass-friendly. Beetronics says "It's also possible to blend in your dry signal, a great feature for bass, drums and synths or any studio use"¹. Fuzz circuits tend to thin out low end; blending the untouched dry signal back in keeps the fundamental intact underneath the fuzz, which is the same approach bass players use with blend-equipped drives generally. Pedal of the Day's reviewer reached the same conclusion about the line's versatility across instruments⁴.

Power, build and returns

The 4th Limited Edition requires a 9V DC power supply with a center negative plug, and no power supply is included in the box¹. That is the standard polarity for most modern pedal power supplies, so an isolated or daisy-chain 9V supply with center negative barrels will run it.

The pedal is hand made in California, in Beetronics' own words "by a swarm of bees"¹. It measures 6-1/8" x 5-1/16" x 2-3/4" and weighs 2lbs (1kg), with a package size of 7-1/2" x 6-1/4" x 3-1/4" and package weight of 2.5lbs (1.25kg)¹. Beetronics backs it with a 30-Day Hive Happiness Guarantee, shipping not included: you email within 30 business days of receiving the order for an RMA form, and a full refund applies if the pedal comes back in new condition in its original packaging. Wear or missing accessories can mean a 15% restocking fee or store credit instead, return shipping is paid by the customer, the item must be back within 7 days of the RMA, and the refund is processed within 5 business days. Scratch and Dent products are not returnable¹.

Limited editions of the Royal Jelly

The 4th Limited Edition is one run in a long series of limited colorways of the Royal Jelly, most of them small batches sold through Beetronics' own store. The 4th Limited Edition itself was capped at 20 units¹. Other runs in the series include:

• Royal Jelly Limited Edition "Pomegranate"⁷
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition Black Verde⁸
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition Black Pinky⁹
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition "Great Pumpkin"¹⁰
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition "Plumbee"¹¹
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition "Donatello"¹²
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition "Beeliever", color series 04¹³
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition "Wonka"¹⁴
• Royal Jelly Limited Edition Ballerina¹⁵
• Royal Jelly Valentine Limited Edition, Royal Series¹⁶
• Royal Jelly OD/Fuzz Limited Edition All Blue¹⁷
• Royal Jelly OD/Fuzz Limited Edition "Memorial"¹⁸
• Royal Jelly "Blue Squid" Custom¹⁹
• Royal Jelly Custom Fireflower²⁰

Every one of these runs shares the same core circuit: the parallel overdrive and fuzz blend, the Queen and King presets, the BUZZ switch and the DRY control¹²¹²². What changes between them is the finish, and in the case of the 4th Limited Edition, the size of the run: 20 units, where other editions in the line were not stated as numbered runs¹.

Many of these editions are also listed as sold out at Beetronics' store, including the Pomegranate, Black Verde, OD/Fuzz Limited Edition and Valentine editions⁷⁸²³¹⁶. The Royal Jelly line as a whole sits in Beetronics' Royal Series²⁴, alongside the maker's other fuzz pedals covered on this site.

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