Beetronics Royal Jelly Custom Diamond Dust

The Beetronics Royal Jelly Custom Diamond Dust is a Custom Shop edition of the Royal Jelly, an overdrive/fuzz blender pedal made by Beetronics. Like every Royal Jelly, it runs an overdrive circuit and a fuzz circuit in parallel rather than stacking one into the other, and it lets you blend the two, use either on its own, or mix in your clean signal. The Custom Diamond Dust is one of a long line of individually finished Custom Shop and limited edition versions of the same circuit, distinguished by its artwork rather than by a different electronic design¹²³.

The Custom Diamond Dust is listed as sold out on Beetronics' own product page, and its listed price was £270.00⁴.

An overdrive and fuzz run in parallel

Most overdrive and fuzz pedals on a pedalboard sit in series: the guitar passes through the overdrive and then into the fuzz, or the other way round, and each circuit colors what the last one did. The Royal Jelly takes a different approach. Its overdrive and fuzz circuits run in parallel, side by side, and the pedal gives you control over how much of each you hear. Beetronics says this lets it cover any ground from overdrive to fuzz, meaning you can dial in mostly overdrive, mostly fuzz, or a mix of the two⁴.

For a player, the practical difference is that neither circuit is feeding the other. A parallel blend keeps the character of each side intact instead of compounding the gain, and with the dry blend in the mix you can keep the attack and low end of your clean signal under a layer of drive or fuzz. That is the same design across the whole Royal Jelly family, from the standard versions to Custom Shop editions like this one⁵⁶⁷.

The controls: Dry blend and the Queen and King presets

The Royal Jelly's control scheme has two parts that set it apart from a simple two-gain-stage pedal.

The first is the DRY control, which blends your untouched dry signal in with the effected one. Beetronics positions this as useful beyond guitar: blending in the dry signal is described as a great feature for bass, drums and synths or any studio use, since those sources often lose their body when driven hard. On guitar, the maker says the DRY control is great to create unique clean tones with a fuzzy background, a layered sound rather than a straight fuzz⁴. Other Royal Jelly pages sum up the same control as a way to keep your tone tight and articulate with adjustable dry mix⁸.

The second is the preset system. The pedal stores two presets of the blend, called Queen and King, and switches between them. Beetronics describes this as giving you two different sounds on the fly with a natural transition⁹. In use, that means one footswitch recall can take you from, say, a mostly-overdrive rhythm setting to a fuzz-heavy lead setting without bending down to adjust knobs.

A Custom Shop edition of the Royal Jelly

The Custom Diamond Dust belongs to Beetronics' Custom Shop practice, in which the maker builds small runs or one-off versions of its existing circuits with individual paint and finish work. The Royal Jelly has appeared in a large number of these, including Custom Shop units carrying serial-style names such as RJ3533, RJ3528 and RJ3425, and named editions such as Custom Blue Leaf, Custom Fireflower, Custom Seiva and the "Blue Squid" Custom¹¹²¹³. The electronics are those of the Royal Jelly; what changes is the finish.

That matters for a buyer in two ways. First, Custom Shop editions are produced in small numbers, and Beetronics' own pages show them selling out: the Custom Diamond Dust is marked sold out, as are other Custom and limited editions such as the Custom Evolve, the Custom Fireflower and the "Blue Squid" Custom⁴¹⁴¹⁰. Second, because the circuit is shared, a player comparing a Custom Diamond Dust against any other Royal Jelly edition is really comparing finishes and availability, not sound or features. The core page for the circuit is the Royal Jelly, and the broader family of Beetronics fuzzes is covered under fuzz pedals.

Power and build

The Custom Diamond Dust requires a 9VDC power supply with a center negative plug, the standard arrangement for modern pedals, and no power supply is included in the box⁴.

Every Royal Jelly is hand made in California by Beetronics¹⁶¹⁷.

Questions