Beetronics Royal Jelly Fuzz/OD Blender

The Beetronics Royal Jelly Fuzz/OD Blender is a fuzz and overdrive pedal that runs the two gain circuits in parallel and lets you blend them, then blend the result with your clean signal. Beetronics pitches it as "a powerful blend of overdrive and fuzz with endless tonal possibilities," and says it blends the two effects "in a way no pedal had done beefore"¹. Where most gain pedals give you one circuit, the Royal Jelly gives you an overdrive and a fuzz side by side, with a dry mix to keep your low end and attack intact.

The pedal is part of Beetronics' Royal Series, and the maker describes it as "an overdrive/fuzz blender like no other pedal"²³⁴. It was developed by Filipe Pampuri in collaboration with Howard Davis, whom Beetronics calls "the legendary circuit designer behind the iconic Deluxe" Memory Man¹. The editions currently listed on Beetronics' own pages are shown as sold out¹⁵.

An overdrive and fuzz blended with your clean signal

The core idea is parallel gain. Instead of stacking overdrive into fuzz, the Royal Jelly runs both circuits at once and gives you control over how much of each you hear. Beetronics says it "can cover any ground from overdrive to fuzz, running two circuits in parallel and giving you the possibility of blend"³⁷⁸. The maker says the result "delivers everything from silky buzz to gritty sting"¹.

The clean blend is the other half of the design. An adjustable dry mix lets you keep part of your untouched signal in the sound, which Beetronics sums up as a way to "keep your tone tight and articulate with adjustable dry mix"¹. The blend works both ways: mostly clean with fuzz underneath, or mostly fuzz with clean holding the low end together, and the pedal's two od/fuzz blend presets give you distinct starting points for each direction⁶.

For a player, this addresses the classic fuzz problem, where a heavy fuzz face can swallow your amp's clarity and bottom end. With the pedal's adjustable dry mix for blending in a clean signal, fuzz can sit on top of a solid foundation rather than replacing it¹.

The controls: Queen and King, Dry, EQ and Buzz

The control set breaks into the two blend channels, the dry mix, the EQ, and the Buzz switch⁹¹⁰¹.

Queen and King

Queen and King are the pedal's two personalities. Beetronics describes them as "two presets of the blend, called Queen and King"³⁸⁷, and the maker is careful to note there are "no digital presets, but Queen and King channels act as two customizable voicings"³⁸⁷. In practice you set up two different overdrive-to-fuzz balances and switch between them, which is closer to having two related pedals in one box than recalling saved settings.

Each side has its own Overdrive/Fuzz knob. As Pedal of the Day described it, each side features "an Overdrive/Fuzz control knob, with full OD to the left, Fuzz to the right, and a sweet bl"end of the two at points along the way¹⁰. That means Queen and King are not fixed flavors; each can be dialed anywhere on its own continuum from overdrive to fuzz.

Dry and EQ

The DRY control sets how much clean signal sits under the effected sound¹. The EQ is a two-band affair: Beetronics' current pages describe it as a way to "dial in rich lows and sparkling highs with precise 2-band EQ"⁵, while the limited edition page gives the numbers, "10dB of cut/boost for HI and LO"⁶⁸. Since the two descriptions come from different maker pages and are not reconciled, both are given here: a HI and LO pair, each with 10dB of cut or boost.

The Buzz switch

The Buzz switch is a single toggle aimed at the fuzz circuit. Beetronics says it "adds a high-end boost to the fuzz for extra bite and presence"¹. On another page the maker puts it in more colorful terms: "the BUZZ switch adds that nasty high end usually found on the vintage fuzz boxes to its fuzz circuit"¹¹. Either way, it is a brightness control for the fuzz side, useful when a thick fuzz setting needs to cut through a mix.

Designers and limited editions

The Royal Jelly was developed by Filipe Pampuri in collaboration with Howard Davis¹. Beetronics identifies Davis as the circuit designer behind the Deluxe Memory Man, which gives the pedal a direct line to one of the most storied analog delay designs.

Like much of the Beetronics range, the Royal Jelly has appeared in a long string of limited editions and Custom Shop versions, each with its own finish. A few examples from the maker's own pages¹²¹³⁷:

• Custom Shop 420 edition¹
• Custom Shop 420 edition, listed under the Royal Jelly Od/Fuzz name⁵
• A 10-piece limited edition run⁸

The Royal Jelly has appeared in a series of limited editions from Beetronics, including a Custom Shop 420 edition, a Majin Bee edition, an All Blue finish, a Pink/Blue version, and a 10-piece run¹⁵⁶. Two of these, the Custom Shop RJ2857 and the Blackbee Edition, are shown as sold out¹⁴. Players comparing circuits may also want to look at the Beetronics Royal Jelly OD/Fuzz page, which covers the same circuit family.

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