Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture review – the last heavy distortion pedal you’ll ever need?
£219.99, redbeardeffects.com
The story of the Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture has two parts. Part one is Redbeard itself – a joint venture between Mikey Demus, the guitarist with British ragga-metal heroes Skindred, and Adrian Thorpe MBE, the pedal guru behind ThorpyFX. Part two is the Thermionic Culture Vulture, a high-end rack preamp billed as “the only studio unit dedicated to just adding valve-produced harmonic distortion”.
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You know what happens next: Mikey and Adrian decide to create a compact stompbox inspired by the heavily saturated tones of that preamp, and the Bearded Vulture is born. Or should that be hatched?
Image: Richard Purvis
What is the Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture?
The previous four Redbeard pedals have all been variations on the theme of trouser-rippingly high gain, and the fifth is by no means a departure. But what’s new is that this time you’re getting two independent distortion circuits in one box: yes, the octave effect can be added to the standard drive to send it into chaos mode, but it can also be engaged on its own.
The two red knobs control that side of the pedal, while the four black ones take care of the overdrive. And if you’re intrigued by the fact that two of those four are labelled ‘bias’ and ‘timbre’, well so am I. The former promises voltage-starved gating effects, while the latter is a mids-shaping alternative to the usual treble-cutting tone control.
Image: Richard Purvis
What does the Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture sound like?
I left all the controls at halfway in the pictures because it looks nice… but if you switch it on like that, be prepared for the sound of silence. Turns out the bias control is a very effective noise gate, so to actually let any signal through you’ll have to pull it down a bit.
In fact, the best place to start is with bias at minimum. With everything else pointing north, the basic drive tone is rich and super-smooth: crisp in the treble, slightly scooped in the mids, and rounded but tight in the bass. By all means tweak the bias to introduce an element of choppiness, but your real secret weapon here is the timbre control. Turn it down for something softer and more scooped, or up for extra sizzle… until the very last bit, past three o’clock, where it suddenly turns into a surprise mids-booster. We’ve seen this kind of cheeky knob trickery from Redbeard before, but perhaps never as well done as this.
There are some nice low-gain sounds to enjoy with the midrange to the fore, but of course we’re all here for the heavy stuff really – and it’s good. This thing gets properly fuzzy, but the disciplined low end means clarity doesn’t suffer: you can play major sevenths at full blast and not have to worry about mushing out.
The right-hand side of the Bearded Vulture is a simpler affair… although the word ‘octave’ is somewhat misleading, because you don’t get much of that. If you’re familiar with uncompromising vintage fuzzes like the Shin-ei FY-6, it’s that kind of thing: a hailstorm of rasping mid-range viciousness. It’s thankfully not as harsh-edged as some of the type, mind.
This can sound particularly good when it’s shovelled into the front end of the drive circuit: crank both sides and you get a wall of noise so monstrous it’s hard to describe without using the language of the apocalypse… but don’t worry, because as long as the bias is set right, the gating effect means it’s a very quiet apocalypse as soon as you stop playing.
Image: Richard Purvis
Should I buy the Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture?
This is probably the best Redbeard pedal yet… and I mean ‘probably’ in the sense of ‘definitely’. I can’t think of another compact dirt pedal that covers this much ground so convincingly.
Look elsewhere if you like your bottom end loose and gurgly; but for smoothly defined saturation and raucous rage in the same box, this is the one to get.
Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture alternatives
If the gated fuzz thing is the bit of the Bearded Vulture that interests you most, see also its sister pedal, the ThorpyFX Field Marshal (£209.99). Other extra-tweakable noise machines of note include the Noise Engineering Dystorpia ($399/£379) and Great Eastern FX Co. Focus Fuzz Deluxe (£299/$349)… or you could just splash out on a real Thermionic Culture Vulture (£1,980).
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
