Vitalii Bobrov's Drunk Beaver Jellyfish MN3007 Analog BBD Chorus has that elegant sparkly brightness that so many players love

Vitalli Bobrow has been incredibly prolific over this year with a near dozen new varieties of pedals of all genres. I have acquired 4 of his in fairly rapid succession - starting with his evolved DS-1, then the much celebrated dual-opamp Bat Cold War Rat, then Bloom Expandora Clone, and currently his new Analog Chorus - all excellent. I am in line to get his Taras Bulba MKII Fuzz next, and then further evolved DS-1 circuit - which builds on the version I already have - in short plenty happening!

The Jellyfish is a great take on the classic Electro-Harmonix Small Clone Chorus - with significantly extended range and features. There are five external controls - Rate, Depth, Color (Dark>Bright), Range / Mode, and Mix.

The 3 Range Modes get progressively wetter and more accentuated :

• Clone = Classic Small Clone
• Leslie = Rotary Speaker style flutter
• Blur = Detuned and Warbly territory

Internally there are 4 trimpots for BBD Bias, Volume, Status LED Brightness, and Rate LED Brightness. I have not found any need to touch the Volume - mine is perfectly calibrated as it arrived. Only the BBD Bias needs explanation - which is another control which has been perfectly calibrated, but you can adjust it to deliver more or less gain. Note that it is default calibrated to achieve maximum gain without distortion. Increasing the Bias can introduce some slight clipping distortion when turned up.

This is a really elegant sounding aqueous modulator and one of my brighter, if not brightest of choruses. I tend to have it set in Clone Mode, with Rate at 12 o’c, Depth at 2 o’c, and both Color and Mix fully CW for maximum sparkle and full flavour.

I like each of the 3 modes - where initially I spent a lot of time in the slightly detuned and warbly ’Blur’ mode - again with Colour set to max, but the Mix knocked back a little.

Readers will know that I really like secondary footswitches with tap-tempo on these sorts of pedals, and that’s the only significant improvement I would have liked to have seen implemented here. This is every bit the perfect chorus pedal though in most ways and actually sounds pretty amazing.

The one other proviso is possibly the colour-combination applied here - which is very 80’s in style and could be seen to be something of an acquired taste - while it’s very much grown on me over time. I can’t help thinking that the Jellyfish graphic and legends, might be better served in Purple, with matching Purple knobs - but that’s obviously very subjective. In any case this in the chain for a significant rotation - I’m really enjoying deploying it these days.

The Jellyfish is priced at $200, and is available right now from the Drunk Beaver Store on Reverb.com.