Drunk Beaver's 5th Limited Series Pedal Drop - the Dnipro Jet Flanger is a smart take on the long discontinued Ibanez FL9

So I’m somewhat late to this - because of my Christmas vacation  - and this is somewhat moot in some respects as these are long since sold out. While as the chronicler of record for Drunk Beaver - it’s my duty to report on all of Vitalii Bobrov’s releases.

This is the first one of these I receive before I write up the feature - so I thought that would at least be a pertinent aspect for this coverage.

Vitalii haș essentially recreated the classic Ibanez FL9 Flanger - which was only made for a relatively brief period as part of the Ibanez 9 Series - or from 1981 to 1984. This has long been considered one of the classic Flangers - alongside EHX’s Electric Mistress and Boss’s BF-2 - and of course the original MXR 117 and A/DA Flangers too.

The FL9 is probably the most elegant of those flangers in many ways - it’s slightly more subtle and elegant - while still really flavoursome - and with incredible musicality. It does that Jet Flange Swooshy thing in a really cool way.

Controls - Delay Time, Width, Speed, Regen, Voice : Flanger / Chorus.

The core knobs are the same as on the Ibanez FL9 - just in a different order - while the Dnipro has the additional ’Chorus Mod’ which results in a beautiful Chorus Voicing Switch - in addition to the Gorgeous core Flanger.

On the inside the pedal comprises of mostly NOS and upgraded parts - including the MN3207 BBD Chip. Besides the usual ’LED Brightness’ trimmer next to the footswitch assembly - we have 3 additional trimmers on the pedal - the upper-most one of which is for BBD clock (runs BBD at 40kHz - 500/550kHz), middle one is for BBD Bias, while  the bottom one sets max feedback (Regen). For me the pedal is perfectly calibrated from the lab - so I don’t feel the need to tamper with those core setup elements.

I had been a touch concerned that this pedal had no level control - as you can often suffer volume-drop with analog modulations - while that is not the case here - the output level is pretty decent as is, and you don’t get a noticeable shift in volume.

I’ve kind of settled on the Delay Time knob @ 12 o’c, Width @ 10 o’c, Speed @ 9 o’c, and Regen @ Max. While those settings work perfectly well for the the Chorus voicing too - so you can just liberally flip that switch between Flanger and Chorus voicings. This is somewhat reminiscent of my PastFX PX65 - where you have both Chorus and secondary Flanger voicings - although each takes a somewhat different knob calibration. Such that the Dnipro is more suited for on-the-fly changes - while both can superbly cover both Flanger and Chorus in the same pedal. It’s cool that I have both of those in the chain simultaneously - one more of a Flanger, and the other more of a Chorus - while both are pretty brilliant at both.

This is my 16th Flanger pedal - and for sure one of my favourites - where I have at least 3 more to go - including a forthcoming PastFX Vintage A/DA NOS compact replica, Sitek’s forthcoming Flanger, and one more mystery mini one which I’ve been sworn to secrecy over for now. So my Flanger game is definitely strong - and the Drunk Beaver Dnipro is definitely another strong addition to that capsule collection.

I feel it may eve be the Flanger for those people who don’t really like flangers - as it’s so elegant and musical in its deployment.

Vitalii definitely has a similar knack for these improved compact replica modulations in a similar vein to PastFX’s Verlie. I pretty much love everything those two individuals put out.

The Dnipro’s colourway is so fetching too - that cool sparkly yellow-green enclosure with near coordinating knobs - for sure the coolest way to get into those vintage FL9 tones. I really love mine!

These were priced at $175 and only 15 were made I believe. I received my Drunk Beaver Donetsk Muff at the same time - another really cool improved version of a discontinued Ibanez classic - the JD-01 Jet Driver - which sounds particularly stellar with its slightly thicker and richer Germanium voicing. The Donetsk and Dnipro sound great together and are both straight in on the board for January.

Here is the Reverb.com Reference for the Dnipro Jet Flanger.

As usual for this Limited Pedal Drop Series - no demos are available - so I will reference a suitable demo of the FL9 that the pedal is based on.