The Berry Pedals Bad Vibes is a hand-made Uni-Vibe clone featuring a small but noteworthy mod: you can switch from Vibrato to Chorus by stomping on the right footswitch (the original featured a push button).
Other than that, it maintains the light bulb-based circuit and the three controls of the original: Volume, Depth, and Speed, with the latter modified to have a higher rate when at maximum settings. Internal trim pots allow the user to fine-tune the bulb’s brightness and therefore its phase effect.
With an internal 15/18 voltage, this pedal has also higher headroom than your average modulation effect, although it’s still powered at 9v.
Hear this pedal in action in the videos below, we added it to our article about the best Uni-Vibe clones and variants.
Berry Pedals Bad Vibes, Builder’s Notes
The Bad Vibes is slightly modified clone of the classic Univibe circuit. Yep, it uses that glorious little lightbulb (no LED’s here mate) to produce those throbby, classic tones we all know and love.
3 controls as per the original:
Volume- c’mon you know what it does.
Depth- controls the intensity of the vibe.
Speed- controls the rate of the vibe. I have modified the speed control to have a higher rate when at max- very useful for vibrato mode.The Bad Vibes uses an internal charge pump and regulator to power the circuit at 15/18V. All you need is to power it with 9V and the circuit will do the rest. This higher voltage allows better headroom and sound.
I’ve always wanted the chorus/vibrato setting to be on a footswitch, so here we have it.
Other than that it’s a vibe! There are some internal trim pots inside that set the bulb brightness/ phase effect but I have set this up to what I believe sounds best- I wouldn’t recommend fiddling with them.
This effect uses a standard 9V centre negative supply.
Also one other thing- really recommend using this effect with an isolated power supply, you can use it off a one spot/ switch mode power supply but it can be a little more noisier this way.
