Beetronics Swarm

B
eetronics are known for
their impressive-looking
enclosures and cool
designs, so it should come
as no surprise that their
latest and greatest, the Swarm,
should be a looker. Besides being
visually fantastic, it’s also
well-built; it feels heavy enough to
throw clean through a partition
wall, and the PCBs inside are small
works of art, with a custom-cut
honeycomb shape and an
elaborate print on the upper face.
At its core, the Swarm is an
analogue fuzz with a harmoniser.
That said, it isn’t a simple pedal
- there’s six controls on the
upper face and a knob on the
side as well. The side control is
the master volume, while the
fuzz knob is marked ‘worker’.
The ‘fl ight’ and ‘sting’ controls
are highly sensitive pots that
control the modulation applied
to the harmony notes, with the
‘sting’ focused on the tracking.
Meanwhile, there’s two diff erent
harmonies available - the
‘drone’ pot is for the sub-
harmony, and the ‘queen’ pot is
for the regular harmony. Finally,
to select the harmony interval,
there’s a large central rotary
control labelled ‘species’. While
we’ve got to admire Beetronics’
commitment to their theme,
these aren’t the most obvious
names, and we found ourselves
referring back to the manual
card a lot. In terms of sounds,
the core of the pedal is a decent
single-knob fuzz, with the
additional harmony controls
pushing it more towards
noisemaker territory. It’s
exciting when the Swarm glides
up to a note behind the one
you’re playing, for sure, but it’s
not really usable for rhythm
playing. We found a number of
the harmony options exciting for
unusual, squealing lead lines,
though the pitch glide eff ect is
something of a one-trick pony.
The sound we returned to the
most was a sub-harmony heavy
sound that reminded us of the
MXR Blue Box, as used by Jimmy
Page on the solo for Fool in the
Rain. Messing around with the
less high-pitched sounds proved
to be more profi table, even if
there are still only really lead
tones on off er.
The thing that’s closest to the
Swarm, to our mind, would be a
Z-Vex Fuzz Factory, although
compared to the Swarm the Fuzz
Factory is almost conventional.
There are other analogue pedals
with interesting octave behaviour
like the DIY TMK Fuzz, but this
again is somewhat more
pedestrian and you’ll have to build
it yourself. As for the Swarm, it
looks beautiful and it does its one
thing with genuine panache - the
only question is whether you can
justify dedicating precious pedal
real-estate on your board to an
eff ect that’s this niche.
Alex Lynham
BEETRONICS SWARM
I, for one, welcome our new robotic bee overlords
1
QUEEN
The Queen knob
controls the pedal’s
harmony level n
2
DRONE
The drone control
handles the sub
harmony level
3
SPECIES
The species knob
selects the Swarm’s
harmony interval
POWER: 9V DC
centre-negative
BYPASS: True bypass
CONTACT:
Face MI
[phone]
face.be
AT A GLANCE
THE CORE OF THE PEDAL IS A
DECENT SINGLE-KNOB FUZZ
FEATURES
SOUND QUALITY
VALUE FOR MONEY
BUILD QUALITY
USABILITY
OVERALL RATING
SuMMarY
Photography: Olly Cur tis
£270
3
2
1
REVIEW
95
OCTOBER 2019 ToTal GuiTar
TGR324.gear_beetronics.indd 95 12/09/2019 17:18