Vorp FX

The Beta Preamp is inspired by solid state amplifier from the late 1970s of the same name that was rediscovered by several grunge bands in the 1990s. It is loud, sludgy and gritty and perfect for stoner doom tones. A 3-band EQ allows versatile sound shaping, and a voice switch improves the sound for drop tuning or bass guitar. With gain at maximum, this is LOUD. It is best used as a preamp to go directly into your power amp, but it can also be used as an overdrive/distortion pedal. Requires a 9V DC power supply.

PEDALS MADE: 2
CURRENT STATUS: NOT AVAILABLE
FUTURE AVAILABILITY: only if I decide to sell mine

This pedal uses a PCB by PedalPCB Mania that attempts to closely reproduce the sounds of the Sunn Beta Lead and Sunn Beta Bass amps. I used a kit that came with a couple of wrong components, but figured it out in time and got everything working just fine without any problems.

If the pedal is used as a drive pedal and with the Gain below 3 o'clock, the Treble knob behaves a bit funky immediately before it reaches maximum. It behaves normally if the pedal goes directly into a power amp or if the Gain is set above 3 o'clock. I think it may be a design kink or an issue with my amp. This occurs with both pedals that I built, so I'm pretty sure it's not a build mistake on my part.

This is probably the loudest pedal I've ever built. It uses overdriven CMOS gain stages, which results in a fairly unique and powerful sound. I quite like it, but it may be a bit too powerful for the music I'm playing. However, I'm sure some stoner, doomer or grunger can put it to good use.

I had two kits for this, so I built two pedals, and that's it.

The first one, built in February 2023 (pictured below), was undecided whether it wanted to be a preamp or a pedal and ended up in a fairly big box, which also seemed less of a hassle with the big PCB, which fit in very comfortably. Everything worked nicely from the start.

For the second one from May 2024 (pictured above), I decided to use a more compact enclosure that only just accommodated the PCB and all the switches and jacks - it was quite challenging to fit everything in, but thanks to precise measurements and drilling, it worked out. This pedal was initially plagued with a subtle, but unpleasant high-pitched noise that triggered a tinnitus and left me with a ringing left ear for almost two days. After checking the PCB and not finding any obvious problems, I suspected a problem with the LT1054 chip, so I tried a 7660S instead, and with the necessary modification (a bridge between pins 1 and 8) and the new chip in place, the high-pitched noise was gone. As for the design on the enclosure, I hadn't been too fond of the simplistic design of the first one, so I decided to do something akin to the Ampère and the third Astronaut and used an AI-generated image by Banjo Dan.