Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
Drunk Beaver Pedal Drop #32 is a really cool Vitalii take on the BJFE Honey Bee - the Okhtyrka Honey Bee Overdrive
Key Points
Drunk Beaver Pedal Drop #32 is Vitalii’s Okhtyrka Honey Bee Overdrive — a take on the BJFE Honey Bee (Björn Juhl; the original was based on a beaten-up 60’s Supro amp).
Vitalii adds a Pete Cornish–style input buffer (KT3201). The gain stage uses a NOS Tesla MAC157 op‑amp (Czech CA3130) with Germanium + LEDs clipping and NOS Telefunken SAY‑12 hard‑clipping diodes; the output FET stage is biased for J113. The Modes switch: upper increases low end, lower acts as a lowpass.
There will be 25 for sale as soon as this article goes live; they go for $150 on the Drunk Beaver Rocks Webstore.
I’m a huge fan of BJFE, and consider Björn Juhl a friend. I have several of his pedals across BJFE, OneControl, Mad Professor, and now disassociated brand Bearfoot FX. And several variants of the Honey Bee / Bee / Sweet Honey in both Compact and Mini enclosures.
So I’m super excited to experience Vitalii’s take on the circuit. Notably the original Honey Bee was based on the sound of a massively beaten up and maltreated 60’s Supro Amp.
For the Okhtyrka Honey Bee Vitalii added a Pete Cornish style input buffer (quite a big part of the circuit with the KT3201 transistor), and where the gain stage uses a NOS Tesla MAC157 op-amp (Czech version of CA3130) and Ge + LEDs combo for clipping, the hard clipping diodes are NOS Telefunken SAY-12, with the output FET gain stage biased for J113. The Modes switch essentially changes EQ behaviour : in the upper position it increases low end, and in the lower position it acts as a lowpass filter.
There will be 25 for sale as soon as this article goes live - where they go for $150 on the Drunk Beaver Rocks Webstore.
As I mentioned I’m super excited to see how this compares with the half dozen honey bee variants I have in the collection already. Vitalii definitely has a knack for extracting maximum flavour out of these classic circuits.
The Honey Bee is still a little under-appreciated nowadays, alongside Mentone’s Red Snapper - those are both top-tier overdrive flavours - the deserve wider support.
Sound Sample Reference
![Drunk Beaver releases Pedal Drop #37 - the Bashtanka Muff on Π Pi Day [3.14] - a cool Big Muff 2 OpAmp Fuzz take](https://d6a2e7ghqts3o.cloudfront.net/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/571/2026-GPX-Drunk-Beaver-Bashtanka-BM2-700.jpg "Drunk Beaver releases Pedal Drop #37 - the Bashtanka Muff on Π Pi Day [3.14] - a cool Big Muff 2 OpAmp Fuzz take")
