Beetronics FX shrinks its Whoctahell Low Octave Beeast kind of 8-Bit Fuzz down to Babee Format
So we finally see a revival of one of the earliest Beetronics fuzzes - which gets a similar treatment to another of those originals - the Octahive. Only the Overhive of the 3 originals still remains to be shrunk down do Babee format.
It’s certainly a welcome arrival for me - as one of the few Beetronics pedals that I had not acquired yet (I have one of the black and gold ones on the way to me). The others I don’t have being the long since discontinued Buzzter, and the relatively recent Abelha Tropical Filter Fuzz. The last mentioned is a little too large to be fully practical within my setup - I live in hope that we will get the Abelha in a standard format eventually, Or else I will need to see if my friend Zach at Rogue Rehousing can do something to improve that format for me!
Note that the original Whoctahell had 4 controls - with an additional toggle-switch to select -1 or -2 Octaves - while the new Babee Whoctahell makes do with just the three main control knobs.
Controls - Whocta (-1 Octave), Hell (-2 Octaves), Honey (Fuzz Level).
This is a monophonic sub-octave fuzz - which glitches out on Chords and Double-Stops - in various interesting ways. The -2 Oct option can be incredibly randomized - and delivers those kind of 8-Bit Square Wave sounds with wild fluctuations.
The unpredictability of this fuzz in different circumstances is what makes it so much fun. I wasn't a fan of having additional controls on the side of the pedal - so this new Babee version is pretty much perfect for me.
As I have the Babee Octahive in Black and Gold - it made sense to have the Whoctahell also in the limited format (Royal Black) - where only a handful of those were available. I don't normally buy any pedals in December as I'm on Christmas duties by then - but felt this was too essential for me to miss out on - hopefully there won't be any more of these during the run-in to Christmas - as the budgets are already allocated elsewhere!
The Babee Whoctahell Low Octave Beeast goes for $149 and equivalent on the Beetronics Webstore - I believe it flashes up £120 for UK customers, while with all the extras for the UK, I paid exactly £172.58 - which amounts to quite a bit more than $150 - or rather $70 extra @ $220. This is a point I keep trying to impress on American brands that I collaborate with - in efforts to secure a discount to make this GPX project a viable going concern. I've reached out to Beetronics' Filipe Pampuri several times to no avail, where I feel I've been a loyal servant over the years. And have acquired 13 of his pedals to date - all at full whack, and including 6 Custom shops varieties. Being able to get a discount to make up for all those extra import charges is pretty much essential for my operation - while most brands still aren't attuned to my needs. In normal business dealings a loyal customer would expect some sort of discount on multiple repeat acquisitions - I don't understand why it so hard for some brands to acquiesce in a reasonable manner.
It's in most of those brands best interests to see that I get some hands-on time with their pedals - so that I'm in a position to recommend them. I cannot recommend something I haven't lived with personally!
The only one I've missed out of the recent ones is the Abelha Tropical Filter Fuzz - as I don't consider it fully practically usable within my rig - which just means I would only use it once to twice as it's generally too tricky to accommodate because of its over-sized dimensions!
In any case - here are my 13 below - with the Babee Whoctahell due to land within the next few days hopefully.
Demos
