Yes, it’s that time when guitar journalists start reaching for any and all bee puns at their disposal: Beetronics has a new pedal out. Called the Zzombee, the pedal is a… well, it’s hard to say. Here’s why.

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Beetronics describes the Zombee as a Filtremulator – it combines quite a few discrete effects into one, creating an incredibly unique and dramatic sound. It’s an analogue multi-effect that combines a filter, wah, tremolo, drive, fuzz and sub-octave with a randomisable LFO and expression ramp (via on-board ramping or an external pedal) – in short, think of running your guitar through an old analogue synth that’s falling down a set of stairs.

The pedal’s extensive circuitry makes it quite the versatile effect: it can be used as anything from a standard wah pedal to an octave fuzz pedal, to a stepped-filtered-tremolo-wah-octave-fuzz to super-clean volume swell. It is, essentially, hard to describe in words. Hear it in action bee-low.

The full feature list of the Zzombee is somewhat mind-boggling: it splits your signal to run a monophonic sub-octave in parallel to your main signal with independent blend controls for each. Your main signal can be either clean or fuzzy, with four gain stages of fuzz. The modulated filter can work in either ramp, LFO, or Mad modes – the latter being the random mode. The amplification modulation can work in either cross-tremolo (switching between sub-octave and your main signal), standard tremolo or volume swell mode.

The filter and amplification modulation can either apply to your main signal or your sub-octave signal. The secondary momentary footswitch can ramp controls between two different points. There are five different preset slots. It supports external expression and tap-tempo input. That’s a lot of features packed into one pedal – no one wonder Beetronics says its been working on it for over a year.

Find out more over at beetronicsfx.com.