Bodenhamer Bloody Murder

7 Dying Trees

New member
First off, not a "what does one sound like" thread, but more of a curiousity.

I basically came across a few axe fx patches that had as their selling point in the description that they were using a bodenheimer bloody murder. Now back in the day, I remember the dude making them, and as such, I got a half rack version made, #13, in green instead of red lettering with a green LED that I still have.

Basically, have for some reason people decided that they are boutique or the like? Also, what became of the guy? He really knew how to mod pedals
 
7 Dying Trees":2fldowbn said:
First off, not a "what does one sound like" thread, but more of a curiousity.

I basically came across a few axe fx patches that had as their selling point in the description that they were using a bodenheimer bloody murder. Now back in the day, I remember the dude making them, and as such, I got a half rack version made, #13, in green instead of red lettering with a green LED that I still have.

Basically, have for some reason people decided that they are boutique or the like? Also, what became of the guy? He really knew how to mod pedals
I chat with Joe pretty regularly. He’s on a private FB group I’m on. He’s doing ok. Just got out of the pedal thing altogether.
 
I’ve always wanted to get one of these impossible to find now and the only tubescreamer variant I’ve ever been obsessed with.
 
Still got mine, mainly because I was the one who designed it and he built it for me. One of two of the Bloody Murders with the additional boost feature (other one has blue lettering with a channel switching jack). The Bloody Murder boost is basically a more extreme version of the Keeley baked mod with a different clipping circuit (two silicon diodes and an LED for asymmetrical style clipping) and thickened up a bit to account for the more extreme gain.

The essence of the story is that he used to build awesome boost pedals, but something happened. Either it was too much stress, life stress, or whatever, but he started flaking out on orders and eventually just ghosted people, shutting the business down. I remember pics of his arm all cut up from a window or something on Sevenstring.org, and that's about the last I heard of him.

For the handy people out there: the info posted in here is enough to build your own version of the Bloody Murder pedal. Mine had the RC4558P chip instead of the standard JRC4558, and this is the circuit board he used on mine: https://store.generalguitargadgets.com/ ... s-pcb.html

You can grab a BYOC kit or something, perform the baked mod, do the asymmetrical clipping circuit I mentioned, change the .047 cap for a .100 or .150, and there ya go - Bloody Murder boost. I wouldn't normally post technical stuff like that, but given that he's kinda screwed some people over by ghosting everyone, and considering he doesn't make them anymore, I don't feel too bad about it.
 
I’ve still got mine. Cool pedal but need to open it because I think a wire is loose (kinda cutting in and out sometimes).
 
I guess old + rare + good reviews back in the day, now some people want them. I hadn’t heard anything about them for a long time but in the last year or two there seems to be renewed interest.

I think there were a few versions, or he tweaked the mods as he went. Mine is #15 and came with a TL082 chip, but I swapped it for a 4558, since I think it sounded slightly better.

Mine also looks like a different pcb from above.

http://i.imgs.fyi/img/3e84.jpg (link because the picture is way too big)

For clipping it has 1n4001’s and some germanium didodes from the look of it, and an additional LED on one side to made it asymmetrical (green, if memory serves).

I haven’t used it in a long time, it’s been collecting dust on my shelf of pedals, Maybe I’ll try it again today. From what I remember, it wasn’t as tight as a standard TS9 since it has less mid hump and less bottom end cut, but it was bright with an aggressive clipping, and added some nice saturation.

Mine also had a problem with shorting out sometimes, the PCB had come loose from one of the plastic stand-offs that are stuck to the back of the pots, and one of the caps was shorting on the back of the enclosure. I was too lazy to fix it so I just put some electrical tape on the inside of the enclosure lid. Problem solved.
 
I had him build me one in a half-rack form with a relay so I could switch it in and out via midi. Loved it. Never should have sold it.
 
mnemonic":1vo424ne said:
I guess old + rare + good reviews back in the day, now some people want them. I hadn’t heard anything about them for a long time but in the last year or two there seems to be renewed interest.

I think there were a few versions, or he tweaked the mods as he went. Mine is #15 and came with a TL082 chip, but I swapped it for a 4558, since I think it sounded slightly better.

Mine also looks like a different pcb from above.

http://i.imgs.fyi/img/3e84.jpg (link because the picture is way too big)

For clipping it has 1n4001’s and some germanium didodes from the look of it, and an additional LED on one side to made it asymmetrical (green, if memory serves).

I haven’t used it in a long time, it’s been collecting dust on my shelf of pedals, Maybe I’ll try it again today. From what I remember, it wasn’t as tight as a standard TS9 since it has less mid hump and less bottom end cut, but it was bright with an aggressive clipping, and added some nice saturation.

Mine also had a problem with shorting out sometimes, the PCB had come loose from one of the plastic stand-offs that are stuck to the back of the pots, and one of the caps was shorting on the back of the enclosure. I was too lazy to fix it so I just put some electrical tape on the inside of the enclosure lid. Problem solved.

Here are some pics of mine:

https://imgur.com/a/Clny9qA

That PCB on yours looks just like an old BYOC board, BTW.
 
SandyRavage":3rlnjur3 said:
I’ve always wanted to get one of these impossible to find now and the only tubescreamer variant I’ve ever been obsessed with.

I have a clone. Verified by Joe to be accurate, same parts and layout. Would sell $100 shipped.
 
I have the first bloody murder built, then one with some tweaks i asked for and one of the latter ones with silkscreened graphics. Also have a chaos modded ts7. They all sound slightly different
 
My buddies that play in a local metal band each had a Bloody Murder and lots of modded pedals from the guy. I always thought were OK, but nothing special for my taste.
 
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