The Beekeper is the first pedal by Canadian company Tubesteader, a boutique shop that prides itself with building its devices to order – and in embedding real vacuum tubes in them!
The circuit is a dual-channel overdrive inspired by the legendary Dumble Special Overdrive amp, famous for delivering a sparkling clean tone and, at higher gain settings, a smooth, rich, and touch-sensitive overdrive.
Operating at 12VDC to maximize the tubes’ potential, the Beekeper features two cascading channels stacked on top of each other. Therefore when you stomp on the Channel footswitch you are actually alternating between the Clean channel on one side and the Clean + Overdrive channels on the other.
The EQ and the toggle switches are located right after the first gain stage, so they are affecting both Clean and OD channels at the same time.
Check out the videos below. We added the Tubesteader Beekeeper to our article about the Best Dumble Pedals.
The Beekeeper is a hand-built guitar preamp in a pedal, featuring two vacuum tubes running at high voltage.
Its design is inspired by the famous ODS circuit, usually associated with the signature sound of many legendary guitar players. As a result, Beekeeper is having a sparkling clean tone, which is gradually pushed into a smooth, rich, and touch-sensitive overdrive as you crank up the gain.
There are several ways to integrate the Beekeeper into your rig: it can be connected to the other pedals on a pedalboard, into the front end of an amp, or directly into a power amp or FX-return input.
The Beekeeper is a very “amp-like” pedal and responds accordingly. It’s not just a simple “stomp and go” pedal – some exploration is required to reveal its true potential. Spend some time with it and you will be richly rewarded!
The Beekeeper is operating off a standard 12VDC voltage. This voltage is boosted inside the pedal up to 280VDC for the proper operation and the best performance of the vacuum tubes.
The topology of the Beekeeper consists of the two cascading channels, “stacked” on top of each other. So the “CLN” channel is also a part of the “OD” channel. And the amount of the overdrive can be managed not only using the OD control but also through effective use of the CLN_VOL control.
The EQ and the toggle switches are located right after the first gain stage, so they are affecting both Clean and OD channels at the same time.
As the tube preamp consumes much more current comparing to the regular effect pedals, Beekeeper comes with a high-quality wall-mount power supply.
All of our pedals use mechanical bypass switching, keeping your guitar signal unaltered when the preamp is bypassed.
