Keeley Bubbletron
Keeley exploded in 2016. They put out a huge array of pedals that year, and one of the most popular was the Bubbletron. This incredibly unique pedal was modeled after the sounds that came out of Frank Zappa’s guitar from the late 70’s to the mid 80’s. That alone should be reason enough to pick this pedal up. It has some truly unique takes on flange and phase, and some wonderful LFO filter sounds. This stompbox’s sonic craziness and usefulness is all up to you. As frank Zappa said: “Do you love it? Do you hate it? There it is, the way you made it.”
External Control: None
Cost: $$
HornFX Review
Interface: 3.5/5
The four knobs and one switch are clearly labeled and color coded. The pedal’s controls are intuitive. The main drawback is that only half of the pedal’s sounds can be accessed at once. There is a switch that can only be accessed by opening up the pedal the switch to the second bank of sounds.
Versatility: 3/5
The Bubbletron has a lot of beautiful and musical sounds. The flange/phase/envelope options are all useful and can range from intense to subtle. The real limiting factor is the second bank switch in the pedal’s interior.
Clarity of Effect: 3.5/5
This pedal speaks well. You can change the sensitivity and thus in some cases, the saturation. It does however, have a less dramatic effect that its intended use on guitar. That being said, the effects are unique and beautiful and worth your while.
Complexity: Medium
Live application: 3.5/5
The lack of presets make this pedal slightly less desirable than others. However, the dynamic flanger and phaser serve the horn player well in that there is no oscillation of the effect when the pedal is not in use. This eliminates the washy waves of sound one gets from most phasers and the oscillating sound that many flangers emit when you are not playing.
Product Information
Bubble Tron Dynamic Flanger Phaser
Robert Keeley and his crew are fans of Zappa. Rabid Fans. This pedal explores some of the famous, but very hard to find sounds of the past. Keeley Engineering has created another batch of Neo-Vintage effects that never were. This time Keeley has made the Flanger and Phaser in dynamic with your pick attack and strength. Then add the Random Stepped Filter with the new “M-Style Synth” bandpass shaping feature, and you have a lead guitarist’s dream tool. Shut up and play your effect pedal! Yeah, you play this thing like an extension of your mind and fingers.
The Keeley Bubble Tron Dynamic Flanger Phaser and Random Synth Filter has three modes of operation.
The Flanger section of the pedal draws on inspiration from the MicMix DynaFlanger. This incredible piece of gear was used by FZ to create many of the sounds in the late 70s to mid 80s where a dynamic flanger was used to get envelope based flanging in his solos. A dynamic flanger is one that starts and stops based on your pick attack or envelope. The word envelope is used because if you were to measure the “weight” of your guitar signal and put it in a storage container (the “envelope” is an imaginary capacitor) it can then be used to control another part of the circuit. The Bubble Tron uses your playing to start and stop the flanger. Most flangers just cycle around and around and you can hear that swooshing in the background. Not in this case, it only cycles as you play. Many flangers offer only positive or negative feedback. This one allows you to try either with the FDBK Control. The negative feedback sounds more vocal like and hollow to my ears while the positive feedback is more conventional and has a thicker, smoother sound. The Sensitivity Control allows you to set how delicately you want to play and have the flanger go fully crazy on you. You can set for crazy silverback gorilla flange or easy flangin’ on Sunday morning. The Depth Control is just that, how deep you want the flanging to be.
The DynaMoPhase section of the Bubble Tron is actually two phasers. One has an LFO that you set the speed of with the Rate Control (while it’s depth is dynamically controlled) and the other is a true Dynamic Phaser. It starts and stops based on your pick attack. Again, you can set the Depth and and Sensitivity of this phaser to give you a very watery sound that is all based on your guitar’s signal. You can turn off the standard phaser and just run it DynaPhase by turning the Rate Control off.
The White Zone is for Loading and Unloading Only.
The only effect that isn’t dynamic is the Filter Section of the Bubble Tron Dynamic Flanger Phaser. With the Filter you can control the different ramps or random nature of the pedal with the Shape Control. The very exciting part of this pedal is the Sensitivity Control which is actual like a vintage synth style bandpass filter control. It shapes the bandpass filter on the filter and gives you some incredible keyboard like sounds.
One very nice side effect of dynamic based effects is that they don’t produce the constant, swooshing sound of LFO based effects.
If you’re a lead guitar player that likes to explore and has never had the kind of expression or dynamics from your sound effects that you have in your mind, this is for you. If you are a sound-experimentalist, this is for you! The sounds are nearly endless in that your input shapes what the effect will do.
The Bubble Tron Dynamic Flanger Phaser is made in Edmond, Oklahoma by rabid Zappa fans. It was Designed and Engineered by Aaron Tackett, Craighton Hale and Robert Keeley.
DynaFlange, DynaMoPhase and Random Filter effects
Classic experimental and progressive sounds of the past
Simple, easy-to-use control layout
Rate, Sensitivity, Depth and Level controls
Filter, Phase and Flange toggle switch
Product info from the Keeley website.