One Control BJF Series Pedals

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Bjorn Juhl’s previous work, he’s the man responsible for the Mad Professor designs, Barefoot FX and his own brand, BJFE. The new One Control BJF series brings his vision to your pedalboard, without commanding too much valuable real estate. Let’s take a look at what this awesome line has to offer.

Minimal

Bjorn Juhl certainly has the reputation and knows how to put together a line of pedals, jumping onto the ‘mini’ craze that seems to have swept the pedal world by storm. One Control and Bjorn haven’t just dipped their toes in with this line either, they’ve dived in head rst with 9 models including Reverb, Fuzz, Delay, Overdrive, Distortion, Bass Drive, Booster and Mid Boost. They’re housed in coloured aluminium cases they are around the same size as most mini pedals on the market, with the idea obviously being that you can cram more options and pedals into a small space – great for tight pedalboards or those wanting just to carry a few pedals around in their gig bag.

Tones

A standard go to for pedal manufacturers is Distortion/OD, by many it’s thought of as the proverbial yardstick of pedal design. The Anodized Brown Distortion is dynamic and responsive with a wide range of gain and some slight compression that helps smooth things out. Coming in a green casing, the Persian Green Screamer gets great TS tones with the ability to switch between modern and vintage modes.

Sitting somewhere between the Green and Brown dirt boxes is the Strawberry Red Overdrive, which hits the middle for gainy rhythm sounds and big chords along with sustained solos and licks. It’ll clean up with less aggression or pick attack and the controls are super easy to get your head around. For One Control’s first fuzz pedal, Bjorn has come up with the Baltic Blue Fuzz based around the classic Big Muff for throaty edgy fuzz through to more razor like saturated tones.

For boosts you can delve into the 30dB clean boost circuitry of the Granith Grey Booster, or the Purple Humper which is a mid-range boost along the lines of a Strat mid boost. Great for thickening single coils or pushing humbuckers, the response will vary from guitar to guitar and can add that hint of break to an amp already on the verge.

Venturing into reverb land, the Prussian Blue Reverb keeps it simple with just tone, level and decay controls, but covers a lot of ground from slightly airy through to the big and boomy. In similar fashion the Sea Turquoise Delay is straight ahead, but performs well with delay, feedback and level controls. Not to forget the low end community, One Control have devised the Hooker’s Green BassMachine as a go to for grit, warmth and general tone shaping from 50s round goodness through to thick Lemmy type sounds.

This line is a great offering from One Control, a relatively new pedal manufacturer that prides itself on building products that musicians need, and that are chiefly inspired by customer feedback.