Old Blood Noise Endeavors BL-52 Phase Repeater

The Old Blood Noise Endeavors BL-52 Phase Repeater is a phase repeater pedal in the company's BL line, and it does something a plain phaser does not. Old Blood Noise Endeavors describes it as living "between phaser and reverb, sounding almost like a room constantly changing in size and materials, with a clear repeat one moment and a diffuse repeat the next"¹. In practice that means your repeats keep shifting in character: sometimes distinct, sometimes smeared, with the motion controlled by a single Clock slider.

It is a four-knob, one-slider pedal with a soft-touch true bypass footswitch, made in the USA, and it carried a list price of $179.00¹². Note that the maker's product page lists it as Sold Out, and the BL series as a whole has since been discontinued¹³.

The controls

The BL-52 keeps its interface to four knobs and the Clock slider that defines the BL series. Old Blood Noise Endeavors lays out what each one does¹:

MusicRadar's Jonathan Horsley described the same layout in the maker's terms: "Mix adjusts the wet/dry blend while Volume adjusts the output level," and noted that "the Feedback knob can add a little extra length to the decay"⁴.

The Clock slider is the control that sets the pedal's character. The maker says it "allows this sound to move quickly and with fidelity, or slowly and darkly, undulating underneath the player"¹. Set one way you get quick, clear motion; set the other way the repeats stretch out into long, diffuse trails.

Gearnews highlighted what this means day to day: no menu diving, no hidden button-press sequences, and no multi-function encoders. Every parameter sits on its own control⁵.

Power and bypass

The BL-52 runs on a 9V DC center negative supply through a 2.1mm jack and draws 110mA, with the supply not included¹. There is no battery option, and the 110mA draw is worth noting if you run a compact power brick, since some isolated outputs are rated lower than that.

Bypass is true bypass, via a soft-touch footswitch the maker says minimizes switch noise¹. The same soft-touch true bypass arrangement runs through the BL line, including the BL-82 Chorus and the BL-37 Reverb⁶⁷.

History: the fourth Clock Slider pedal

The BL-52 arrived as the fourth pedal in Old Blood Noise Endeavors' Clock Slider series, following the BL-44 Reverse Effect, the BL-82 Chorusing Delay and the BL-37 Ethereal Reverb, and it shares their circuit topology and enclosure format². The earlier BL-44 carried four controls as well: Mix, Volume, Speed and a Clock Slider³.

The BL-52 was also the company's second phase repeater. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson noted it followed the 2018 Dweller pedal, making it a return to a format OBNE had already explored². Alongside the standard finish, a Blacked Out version was offered as part of the Reverb.com Black Friday Blacked Out Editions². The pedal's enclosure is a pedalboard-friendly size, and the artwork is by Brandy M Patterson¹².

How it differs from the Dweller

Both pedals are phase repeaters, so the comparison comes down to lineage and format. The Dweller, from 2018, was the original take on the idea; the BL-52 is the second, built inside the BL series' shared circuit topology and enclosure with the Clock slider as its timing control². Where the Dweller was a standalone design, the BL-52 is recognizably one of a family, with the same control philosophy and power arrangement as its siblings.

What reviewers said

Reactions were positive on the sound and mixed on the series concept. Gearnews' reviewer found the pedal "sounds pretty dreamy" in the official demo, writing: "I really like the way it undulates and moves organically," describing it as very floaty and ethereal, and good for shoegaze fans and ambiances⁵.

Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson liked the Clock Slider concept but raised a concern about the series as a whole, saying he worried "if others are getting repetition fatigue based on a very similar design over and over again," finding the first three BL pedals difficult to tell apart while the new colorway was more identifiable².

JHS Pedals demoed the Black Out version on their channel, walking through the soft touch bypass and the sounds of the pedal in a full demo video⁸.

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