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Description
The Blue Boy MI Audio's personal go-to pedal for low/medium gain. They started thinking about doing the Blue Boy as a result of the many requests received about creating something in the vein of the classic TS pedal. They must confess, they was a bit hesitant given the number of boutique builders out there doing TS clones and mods. Cloning has never really been their thing.
So MI Audio started to muck around with designs asked the question, "what things can be improved with in the TS", and they came up with a rather considerable list, which grew with time. As the list grew, the design mutated to accommodate these improvements, to the point where the final Blue Boy looked nothing like a TS. The final list included the following items:
- Wider gain range - less gain at minimum setting, and more gain at maximum setting. - Better match for all pickups. - Better match for a wide range of amps. - Less compression, especially with higher gain sound. - Better tone control. - Better components. - Socket-mounted IC so that people can experiment with different ICs. - True Bypass. - Controllable mid-hump. - More output volume. - Controllable 'character'.
The Blue Boy Deluxe is the king of smooth, singing low/medium gain sounds.
SPECS:
- Less compression than the standard design.
- A total of 6 external controls, for the ultimate flexibility:
o Gain control
o High/Low balancing control tone control
o Volume Control with output up to 25Vpp with correct power supply!
o New dedicated midrange control
o New external character control for adding 'momentum' to guitar notes, or keeping things tight.
o New external brightness control for controlling top end content, and to help match the Blue Boy Deluxe to different amps.
- Clear Lens Yellow/Amber LED.
- Professionally powder-coated and silk-screened enclosure, measuring only 4.3"x 2.2"
IN DEPTH CONTROL DETAILS FROM MI AUDIO:
Gain Control: The gain control of the Blue Boy Deluxe is designed to have a wide sweep of gain sounds. With the gain control at minimum, the sound is pure clean. At about 60%, you have as much gain as a TS. With the gain maxed, you have 3 times the gain of a TS type pedal.
Despite this amount of gain, the delivery is very smooth. I like to think of the Blue Boy Deluxe as being a very 'polite' pedal. At the same time, it is very faithful to your original tone, so if you dig in, the Blue Boy Deluxe will follow very nicely. But of all my pedals, it is definitely the smoothest. It's an amazing pedal for blues and 'fusion' leads. br>
Another aspect of the Blue Boy Deluxe is the fact that the pedal doesn't compress as much as a typical TS type of pedal. This makes it a much better mate than a TS type of pedal for higher output single coils and humbuckers.
Character Control: This is a feature which is not available from any other manufacturer (as far as I know!). This is effectively a pre-overdrive bass control. By controlling the amount of bass in the pre-overdrive signal, you can change the character or feel of the overdriven sound. By turning character all the way down, you can get great, tight, high gain sounds, wonderful for palm-muting. Turning up the character adds more 'momentum' to the tone, and works wonderfully with single note work. Most other pedals will only have one static 'character' for the overdrive.
Tone Control: This is a 'balancing' control. Unlike other designs which progressively roll off the top end of your guitar sound, this tone control affects both the low and high frequencies. It's effectively like having a 2 band low/high EQ. As you turn down the tone control, the lows increase, whilst the highs increase. Visa versa as you turn up the tone control. This, in conjunction with the mid, brightness and internal presence controls means that you can dial in almost any tone you like.
Mid Control: The original Blue Boys had an internal voicing control. After some long consideration, I decided to change this over to a dedicated midrange control. As with the Tube Zone, a dedicated midrange control is very important as the mids dictate how well a pedal sits in a sonic mix. I though that there was a bit too much overlap between the functionality of the original voicing control and the tone control. The mids mow control just the midrange, whilst the tone control adjusts the low/high balance. The mid control featured on the Blue Boy Deluxe is unique in that it is highly interactive with the tone control.
Brightness Control: This was initially an internal control (like the character control), but has been turned into an external control. The brightness control was initially designed to allow users to match the brightness of the pedal for their rig and taste. It was intended as a set-and-forget controls for people with a consistent rig. However, a common request from many professional players who found themselves using different 'house-rigs' every night was to make this control external so that they sound set the brightness from night to night. This is the last tone shaping control in the signal path.
Other Features: Of course, the new Blue Boy Deluxe contains all the standard features of all MI Audio pedals, namely, True Bypass switching, highest quality components, die-cast enclosure, and a power supply which can run up to 25V DC with a suitable external power supply. But the Blue Boy Deluxe also features professionally powder coated and silk screened with a clear lens yellow/amber LED. Also, the IC (a classic JRC4558D), is mounted in a socket so that you can experiment with different ICs.
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