Amplug BM Conversion Pedal – Custom guitar pedal – Brian May-Style All-In-One

The history of this project is simple and easily deducible: with the release on the market of the Vox Amplug BM and the related videos shot directly by Brian May, a sort of curiosity mixed with a good dose of skepticism was triggered, the sound of this little device was immediately surprising from the first listen. Surprising also for the fact that in this small unit by Vox there is practically everything needed to have a complete rig dedicated to the sounds of Brian May.

Why convert it into a pedal?
The answer to this question comes directly from Luca Colombo: “Like most of Queen fans and guitarists I bought the Vox Amplug BM straight away, I was ironically sure the presentation video had been somehow artificially improved or in any case manipulated for better audio quality; then came the unit and immediately, on first listen, I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing in the headphones: a basic sound really characterized by great dynamics and the kind of tone that we all love, the effects sound like straight out of Queen records, crazy! Vox had a brilliant idea offering the perfect product for any Brian May fan, however the more I played with this Amplug the more in some ways I got angry because I wanted the possibility to bring all this all-in-one convenience and completeness to live contexts, thus the idea to ​​modify the Amplug BM came about, converting it into a pedal with all the controls and possibilities at your fingertips and feet, like a normal pedal. Here comes the even more bizarre part: after a careful study of the original unit and the practical realization of what I had in mind, the pedal was finally ready. I shot a picture of the completed pedal and post it rather hastily on social networks, at this point I start to receive appreciation from all over the world: ‘Finally someone has thought of doing it!’ and other similar comments, then after a few moments the requests arrived ‘I’m interested!’, ‘I want one too!’… I can swear that my initial intention was simply to play some concerts with this Amplug BM converted into pedal, it was not my intention to make a business out of it, but given the requests and the desire to satisfy as many musicians as possible, always giving my best, I accept the challenge, repaying everyone’s affection in the best possible way with a conversion that I truly find useful, necessary and worth doing.”

Controls
The pedal offers the exact same controls as the original Amplug BM, except for the mini-jack AUX-IN socket which is not included in the conversion, however it remains available as an option.

Volume: sets the overall volume of the virtual amp;

Tone: sets the amount of hi-frequencies;

Gain: sets the amount of distortion in the virtual amp;

Parameter: it’s a lever allowing you to increase or decrease the intensity of the selected effect, it also allows you to raise and lower the volume of the drum machine;

Channel: a normal pressure allows you to choose the Normal channel of the virtual amplifier or to additionally activate the integrated Treble Booster. Holding it down turns the unit on/off (and also to power the unit on);

FX Select: a normal press cycles through the 5 effect modes included in the unit (Dry, Delay, Echo, Phaser, Chorus). Holding it down starts the drum machine, pressing it normally with the drum machine playing changes the available rhythm patterns;

Tap Tempo: allows you to change the speed of the effects by pressing this pedal at least 2 times, by performing this operation while playing the drum machine you change the tempo to the rhythm;

Input: connect here your guitar

Output L / Headphones: output left channel connection jack (for mono operations, use this output jack). It can also be used as a headphone output;

Output R: right channel output connection jack. Use only when connected in stereo (in this mode the unit performs best).