#bloomery

Bloomery Furnace

Months ago now I picked up this Bloomery Active to replace my Ernie Ball Jr because I HATE replacing strings on those things. It’s holding up really well. Still love the size. Great tool. 

I’ve learned recently my Orange’s clean channel likes to be at around 4 or 5 to take dirt nicely. Honestly, for playing in a pretty enclosed space like my current room, that’s too loud. So I’ve been running this in my effects loop to tame the overall volume but still let my dirt and my clean channel get juice. I was just running volume after dirt with my clean channel at like 3. That wasn’t working well because the dirt wasn’t actually pushing the clean channel at those held back levels and my clean channel wasn’t even getting full output. 

Got my Active Bloomery in from Tapestry Audio! It’s Pedaltrain Metro 16 friendly, which is cool as hell to me. 

My initial thoughts are certainly good. The travel is obviously further than the Ernie Ball Jr. so it will take some getting used to, but it’s smooth and I definitely like it. I chose the buffered option because I’m going to be using this a lot on my Terra 42 board, so that buffer will certainly help. 

The weight feels great, it feels at least like 3 times the weight of my Ernie Ball Jr. It's all steel, thin, and shorter than the Ernie Ball. I really like the slide pot and arm too. My string just broke on my VPJr and I really wasn't looking forward to fixing it again.