Beetronics Royal Jelly Purple Wave

The Beetronics Royal Jelly Purple Wave is a limited edition finish of the Royal Jelly, an overdrive/fuzz blender pedal made by Beetronics. Instead of stacking one dirt stage into another, it runs an overdrive circuit and a fuzz circuit in parallel and lets you blend between them, which Beetronics says lets it "cover any ground from overdrive to fuzz, running two circuits in parallel and giving you the possibility of blend"¹. The Purple Wave itself is sold out at the maker¹.

The core idea is simple but unusual: rather than choosing overdrive or fuzz, you set the balance of both, and the two presets, called Queen and King, store two different blends you can call up on the fly¹. Beetronics' own pitch for the pedal is direct:

Beetronics product page¹

An overdrive and fuzz blended in parallel

Most dirt pedals chain their gain stages: the signal passes through one stage, then the next. The Royal Jelly splits that approach. Its overdrive and fuzz circuits run side by side, and the blend control sets how much of each reaches the output¹. For a player, that means the full range between a pushed overdrive sound and a full fuzz is available on one knob, with every mix in between, rather than two fixed voices.

The parallel design also undercuts a common problem with stacking fuzz after overdrive, where the second stage simply compresses what the first did. Blending keeps each circuit's character in the combined sound instead of one swallowing the other.

The controls and the Queen and King presets

The control the maker singles out is the DRY control, which blends your untouched signal back in alongside the two dirt circuits. On guitar, Beetronics says "the DRY control is great to create unique clean tones with a fuzzy background"¹: your clean note stays articulate while the fuzz sits underneath it, a layered sound that a single dirt pedal cannot produce on its own.

The pedal also carries two presets of the blend, called Queen and King¹. These are not digital presets. Across the Royal Jelly line, Beetronics describes them as two customizable voicings: you set up each channel's blend yourself, then switch between the two sounds, with what the maker calls a natural transition between them²³⁴. In practice that gives you two dirt sounds, for example a lighter overdrive blend and a heavier fuzz blend, available from one pedal at a gig.

• Blend: sets the balance between the parallel overdrive and fuzz circuits⁵⁶⁷
• DRY: blends the dry signal back in; on guitar, clean tones with a fuzzy background¹
• Queen and King: two presets of the blend, acting as two customizable voicings rather than digital presets¹⁷

Power and size

The Royal Jelly requires a 9V DC power supply with a center negative plug, the standard arrangement for modern pedal power supplies, and no power supply is included in the box⁸⁹¹⁰. There is no battery option in the maker's listing.

It is not a compact pedal. The unit measures 6-1/8" x 5-1/16" x 2-3/4" and weighs 2 lbs (1 kg); shipped, the package is 7-1/2" x 6-1/4" x 3-1/4" and 2.5 lbs (1.25 kg)¹. On a small board it will take a noticeable footprint, and its weight is closer to a chunky vintage style enclosure than a mini pedal.

The Royal Jelly limited editions

The Purple Wave belongs to a long line of Royal Jelly limited editions and custom finishes, each the same overdrive/fuzz blender circuit in a different hand painted or custom enclosure. The runs the maker's own pages document include¹:

The "Wonka" run illustrates how small some of these editions are: five pieces¹⁴. All of them share the same circuit, the Queen and King presets, the 9V DC center negative power requirement, and hand made in California construction³¹⁹⁸.

Where it is made

Beetronics builds the Royal Jelly by hand in California, a claim the maker repeats across the whole line, from the Purple Wave through the limited editions and custom shop versions^17111213. The company also backs the pedal with a 14-day money back guarantee on its product pages²⁰¹⁹².

Questions