oh also Ken
Eero and Harri are probably just getting back f rom NAMM MP has new models and that takes up alot of the focus for the moment.......his box could be full too

quote:

Originally posted by Donner:
any player that would be completely unhinged by a single piece of equipment going down needs to rethink thier equipment

Unhinged? Never. If you have a guitar and an amp you can do the gig. It has nothing to do with that. Its as simple as gooped gear not being road worthy. Its a trade-off builders make with a number of issues in ballance. Should a builder care for a minute whether I personally take his pedal out when there are a hundred people out there willing to add to the hype goop or not? Not as far as I can see, but as players who actually play gigs realize its smarter to pass on gooped pedals, maybe the ballance will shift the other way.

As far as I'm concerned builders who goop aren't building for people who play, they're building for people who covet. YMMV

Both RG and Don have valid points...

Bjorn is a class act and walked me through some very interesting repairs and modifications. He is top shelf.

If you don't like gooped pedz - no problemo. But I think "his" are worth the goop factor.

quote:

Originally posted by Shamus:
Both RG and Don have valid points...

Bjorn is a class act and walked me through some very interesting repairs and modifications. He is top shelf.

If you don't like gooped pedz - no problemo. But I think "his" are worth the goop factor.

Is it? Maybe you should ask Ken

Bjorn is 1st Rate and a very cool guy (I've also been on the phone with him), but IMO no one makes pedals worth buying if they're gooped.

It reminds me of my travels in East Africa. What do they drive? Old Range Rovers. Cheap? No but they're easy to work on in the middle of the bush when you break down and can drive for 500,000 miles. What don't they buy now? New Range Rovers. They're now built for the American housewife-to-the-grocery-store crowd and have more gadgets, electronic components and computerized systems than you could ever fix in the middle of nowhere. So the exotic allure Range Rover built up with images of far away Safari are now just that, images and nothing else. Range Rover doesn't care because they long ago sold out and will canibalize their brand until its just a memory. Anyway, I digress...

Just say no to goop

I'm in e-mail contact with Bj and we both have 'skype'. He's also hooked me up with a builder out here in Ca who'll look at the
Honey Bee.

I have no problem with the 'gooped' thing - it's a fact of life with the "new school of boutique". So, the other fact of life is to just follow the lead of any self-respecting 'fashionable' female; "if you find a pair of shoes or jeans that look great on you ... you gotta buy TWO pair!" I knew I should've bought two HB's. Live and learn. It'll all be worked out.
I'm gigging in Alaska (out side of Anchorage, highland games or something like that?) this weekend and I don't need it.

Ahh Skype! cool..I have it too. I'm trying to hook up with my brother who lives in France and just had a new daughter a month ago...we can't get a schedule together on skype, but I can't wait! Gotta love technology.

Best of luck with your Honey Bee situation, Ken. And have a great gig in Alaska!

quote:

Originally posted by klasaine:
I'm in e-mail contact with Bj and we both have 'skype'. He's also hooked me up with a builder out here in Ca who'll look at the
Honey Bee.

I have no problem with the 'gooped' thing - it's a fact of life with the "new school of boutique". So, the other fact of life is to just follow the lead of any self-respecting 'fashionable' female; "if you find a pair of shoes or jeans that look great on you ... you gotta buy TWO pair!" I knew I should've bought two HB's. Live and learn. It'll all be worked out.
I'm gigging in Alaska (out side of Anchorage, highland games or something like that?) this weekend and I don't need it.

Fair enough if you're not put off by the additional hassle. It is certainly made easier by the fact that Bjorn has great customer service and I agree if there is any component you really feels adds something special to your sound, you should have 2. Especially if you are touring a lot, even locally. I'm sure your story will have a happy ending, but I still wouldn't personally own anything that isn't easily serviceable. Its just a choice we make. I can't help feeling that if more people refused to buy gooped pedals (or at lease squawked about it enough), there would be a lot less builders doing it.

About a year or two ago I spoke to Bjorn a couple times about doing a custom pedal for me. When I found out he gooped the circuits it ended the conversations. I could live with the wait, I could live with the shipping, I could live with the weak dollar against the strong euro, but I can't live with an unserviceable piece of gear or something I have to scramble around to get fixed, or worse, ship back to Sweden. If I'm going to buy a pedal that ends up costing me near the same as an amp, its got to be repairable.

Anyway, I hope Alaska is fun. I'd love to get up there for sure. Get home safe.

Carl Verheyen told me one time, "learn how to make a Fender medium pick and a stock Boss DS-1 work for you ... you can get them ANYWHERE!"

Food for thought.

Hi,

Thank you for your kind words gentlemen.

I would like to say this. I have personally toured, let be in Europe, and I have then brought tubes and fuses and some spare cables and strings. I have also had a string of pedals with me- no pedalboard as pedals changed too often to spend time planning a board. OK so I had at least one BOSS pedal at times- a delay- but most of the stages that I have played were either late at night far from any musicstore or repairguy: especially when you are on a mountain - now I am a trained repairguy and that was even my first work at the age of 16 and yes I had to service one pedal each month: an Arion pedal all in plastic since the jacks would come loose from the weight of the switchcraft plugs I had on my cables, but never once had to service anything on any pcb. Just for fun there's a guy locally that plays on an average one to two gigs a day 365 days a year and he flies and plays at bars with hen's net and have people stagediving and puking all over his pedal board and the nastiest of all spilling coloured drinks over the pedalboard aswell as playing stages you need a ladder to get onto which btw is much easier on the gear...........but anyway the things that have broken down on his pedal board and they guy uses 9 BJF pedals outof 12 are on the BJF pedals nuts coming loose, occasionally a bent potshaft while pot still works and footswitches malfunctioning most often due to some residue having dripped down on the switch terminals..........I have also had customers that have gig in the Austrian Alps at -40Degree's Celsius and another guy who at a boat had all of his gear flooded by 400 Liters of water from a firehooze that accidentially fused..........the only surviving pedal of five was his BJF Blueberry Bassoverdrive while the speakers of his 8x10 ahum not to mention the amphead died too-ofcourse all of this was insured, and yes I have worked with restoring insured musical gear that have been in fires and what not: either it can be fixed or it just can't without excessive cost.

I have tried to take all measures to ensure stable operation under various working conditions and have looked into what breaks and how to aid service-maybe because I am heavily tainted on service from having worked with servicing musical gear for 28 years and I have seen during the years I have manufactured BJF pedals extremely few breakdowns and about 2800 pedals there has only been two occassions when something was fried on the pcb and that has been likely due to excess voltage beyond voltage range as stated in the manual having been applied to the circuit- wrong polarity there is a safety mechanism for and no harm to the circuit.
However there have been a number of footswitches crapping out- those are easily changed and I have deviced a way to fix footswitches without soldering in a manner possible to pull off even at a coffe table in a tourbus; there have also been some while not many maybe ten or so pots crapping out, and then usually when excessive force has been put to the side of the shaft; also there have been two incidents with scratchy pots.
Pots are very easily replaced on a BJF pedal and there has been one breakage of batterysnap cables, so easily the majority of problems arise from mechanical parts failing and I have looked into this as mentioned above to find ways for easy service even on the road.

I make my circuits with current limiting to both input and output and reversepolarity protection and with sufficient overvoltage marginal from what is explained in the manual.

I also recognize the need for swift service and advice, which may be of particurlar importance since there are no BJF dealers in Alaska and I have set up a system for how service should be handled.

In view of this particurlar Honey Bee that works but Nature control appears to have little effect I did feel this could be fixed on site mostly saving time by that -not so much shipping costs, but anyway if so, only by someone who's skills I trust and luckily there was such a guy in California that benevolently lent his skills, and I am looking forward to having this happily resolved

Oh yes I do get questions from people who build pedals, but that have never heard or played a Honey Bee ( just as an example) of what it contains and if they can have the schematic..............I but wonder why.


Up until a few years ago I had no idea what internet was, but I try to learn as I go.

Oh, I have repaired amplifiers and pedals that would have worked the show if the parts had not shaken so and I can from experience tell that gooping saves circuits from a lot of troubles just mechanically

I have also seen hackrepairmen convinced that the broken part must be the one they can't see though the symptoms invariably have pointed elsewhere

At your service
Björn Juhl
BJF Electronics
Sweden

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BJF,

Thanks for the response Bjorn.

Guys, I'm totally down with an argument about gooped v. non-gooped ... only not on this thread.

BJ is in contact with me, he graciously hooked me up with someone in CA to check out my HB. If I have to send it to Sweden, so be it. It's a great pedal, nobody makes anything like it and It's part of "my sound".

I'm going to Alaska until July 2nd. All will be resolved after that.

quote:

Originally posted by klasaine:
Thanks for the response Bjorn.

Guys, I'm totally down with an argument about gooped v. non-gooped ... only not on this thread.

BJ is in contact with me, he graciously hooked me up with someone in CA to check out my HB. If I have to send it to Sweden, so be it. It's a great pedal, nobody makes anything like it and It's part of "my sound".

I'm going to Alaska until July 2nd. All will be resolved after that.

Sounds good to me. As the main perpetrator of the the anti-goop side of the argument I do want to say that I'm not making any argument about the build quality of any pedals in general or (in this case superior) build quality of Bjorn's pedals in particular. There are arguments on both sides and out of respect both to Bjorn and to Ken, I'd rather take it somewhere else.

Anything that gets Bjorn on here to tell a story like that is worth it to me!
He can really spin a yarn
(and build some uber-durable pedals).

Good stuff Bjorn. You are still King.