BJFE Guitar Effects

BJFE Guitar Effects is a company which manufactures effect pedals for use with instruments such as an electric guitar. These pedals are commonly used by guitarists to modify the sound of their guitar before it passes through the amplifiers speaker system. The company is located in Sweden, and was founded in the year 2000 by Bjorn Juhl. "BJFE" stands for Bjorn Juhl Forstarker Elektronik (which is Swedish for Bjorn Juhl Amplifier Electronics). Pedal types include distortion, overdrive, "vibe" (vibrato), compression, and equalization (EQ). Due to the limited production and handbuilt nature, these pedals are considered "boutique" guitar effects.
BJFE pedals typically follow a "color" naming scheme, and an adjective to describe the sound.
Founder History
Bjorn Juhl began creating models for production sale upon founding the company in the year 2000. However, he began building effects units for guitar as early as 1981. In the year 2000 Bjorn was displaying his repair skills at a guitar trade show, and made three pedals to demonstrate his skills. Here he teamed up with Harri Koski from Custom Sounds in Stockhold, to begin a partnership distributing guitar effects which Bjorn designed to a worldwide customer base.
BJF Electronics initially started in June 1999 as an amp repair business. Bjorn repaired all kinds of things from a Tubon (a kind of early synthesiser used as an electric bass by pop bands who couldn't afford a Fender Bass or a Hagstrom Bass), to a Music Man amp that had been used to test how to take the live and neutral currents out of a three phase connection. Bjorn handled the extreme and difficult cases that other repairmen wouldn't touch because they thought they'd take too much time or were considered hopeless repair opportunities.
Construction Philosophy
BJFE pedals are enclosed in a 110x60x30mm chassis, in an ELFA K-430 enclosure for most pedals. The circuit boards are wrapped in neoprene, which is a kind of rubber used in diving suits and capable of withstanding head, water, and other fluids as well as to provide cushion for the electronic components inside. The circuit board is also sealed to provide protection, and to preserve trade secrets.
The first BJFE pedals were painted in nitrocellulose - beginning in 2002 the pedals are handpainted in oil. Oil is much more durable, and ages well. Bjorn Juhl states that the colors are chosen to provide a pleasant palette.
Models
Current models listed here, along with a description.
Fuzz Pedals
* Candy Apple Fuzz
: A very crude fuzz, with octave function if needed and dying moans of gated fuzz
* Pink Purple Fuzz
: A more tame fuzz. Here, the fuzz knobs acts differently - The first half of rotation will give dynamic fuzz, suitable for overdrive, and second half will give compressed fuzz effects with most guitars.
Distortion & Overdrive Pedals
* Honeybee Overdrive
: The most dynamic, touch sensitive pedal from BJFE and the highest selling model. According to Bjorn, this pedal fits most styles and stacks well with most other pedals. On a clean sounding amp HB can be used to get distortion on forceful notes as controlled by picking force. This can be used on guitars with flatwound strings for a mellow jazz sound or roundwound strings for an old style light distortion. In pedal systems with multiple drive pedals HB can be connected last to soften response and even give a low mid hump to bright amplifiers and provide a ceiling-effect for the upper treble frequencies.
* Dyna Red Distortion
: Distortion range allows very light to heavy, and those that like this one use it mostly for high gain sounds but it also matches particurlarly well for light break up dynamic rhythms with some amps. The "drive" knob on this particular pedal controls the amount of distortion and sustain. Lower settings give uniform distortion patterns which will be input amplitude sensitive (i.e. the unit distorts more the harder you strike the strings). There is no definite clipping point - but rather different shades of distortion as amplitude changes; Higher settings give more compression and less touch sensitive response, and at maximum output will be heavily compressed while still retaining clarity at almost infinite sustain.
* Emerald Green Distortion Machine
: Modeled after a VOX AC-15 Twin 10. EGDM gives a range of distorted sounds that are a bit less aggressive than the Dyna Red Disstortion and also more compressed almost like it had a compressor built in. The distortion depth is a bit less than the Dyna Red Distortion as well. The EGDM was specifically designed to get a distorted tone with a compressed feel to a point where compression feel is more evident than distortion depth. This is done by use of a specific amplifier overload function and a slight ’ducking’ effect which can be noticed with high input levels. A specific eq curve is also used to complement this tone.
Research Models
* Model H (available through the BJFE Custom Shop)
* Sparkling Yellow Overdrive (available through the BJFE Custom Shop)
Compressor Pedals
* Pine Green Compressor
: This was originally designed for a set of Beatles songs Bjorn's band was playing in, to give the kind of clean sound needed from the amp he was using. It works equally well with single coil, P90, and humbucking guitars It was introduced as a model since Andreas of Custom Sounds Stockholm found Bjorn's old unit on one of the shelfs at his store and asked to borrow it.
EQ Pedals
* Sea Blue EQ
: Designed to match the piezo acoustic guitars and work as a booster addressing frequency bands with treble and bass controls that you don't find on your amp. As a result the pedal allows your to further EQ beyond what your amp provides, while not fighting its own EQ.
Modulation Pedals
* Mighty Green Minivibe
: Designed to work primarily before distortion, and gives a traditional vibe sound. This pedal does not have Univibe type sounds, but more vibrato.
Boost Pedals
* Baby Pink Booster
: Volume boost pedal. This is a booster pedal intended to use between a low-level instrument such as electric guitar and an amplifier. It’s intended to place in signal chain after overdrive pedals in order to boost level rather than distortion - hence it’s gain of 18dB( or 8 times). You can of course use it in front of an overdrive to boost the gain for more distortion.
Relationship to Mad Professor Amplification
Bjorn was asked by his BJFE pedal distributor, Harri Koski, to consider designing amplifiers. Bjorn was fairly busy building and designing pedals for the BJFE line, and did not have the time to also build amplifiers. It was suggested a new company be created where Bjorn could design the effects and amplifiers, but they would be constructed and distributed under the name Mad Professor Amplification. These are pedals and amplifiers designed by Bjorn but not hand built by him.

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