Poly Effects Beebo Offers ‘Best Eurorack Modules’ In A Hardware Pedal

Poly Effects has announced that Beebo – a modular synth in an effects pedal – is now available.

Beebo is a multi modulation hardware pedal that they say ‘gives you the power of a Eurorack modular synth in an easy to use touch screen pedal’.

Beebo features conventional effects, auto swell, delay, algorithmic reverb, chorus, looping delay, mono & stereo EQ, mono & stereo compressor, pan, phaser, reverse, rotary, saturator, phaser, warmth and through zero flanger. It also features ports of popular open source modules, like Mutable Instrument’s Clouds and Plaits modules.

You can make the foot switches change a value, or connect up parameters to a random source, an LFO or an envelope follower. Modules that generate control signals can be controlled too, which is the power of a modular workflow.

For example, If you don’t get everything you want out of the built in chorus or flanger modules you can build your own by adding a few delay modules and modulating them. You can also send control signals out as MIDI CC to control other pedals.

Features:

  • Modular environment for synthesis & effects processing contained within a single pedal
  • Touch screen interface for easy patching
  • 4 audio inputs and 4 audio outputs
  • 3.5mm TRS MIDI I/O
  • USB port for importing/exporting patches via flash drive
  • Includes ports of Mutable Instruments modules

Pricing and Availability

Beebo is available now for $399 USD.

18 thoughts on “Poly Effects Beebo Offers ‘Best Eurorack Modules’ In A Hardware Pedal”

    1. Keds are cheaper than Nike but no one is dunking on anyone in Keds! By that logic a raspi is a cool idea compared to an iPad. An iPad is cool compared to a Nasa command station. Earth is cool but can’t hold pancakes to the Universe. Come on. A cool idea is hardware and software maybe getting together to do something. This is a product.

      2. How is the raspi not a product? How is puredata not a product? How is puredata running on a raspi not hardware and software getting together to do something? Why are you talking about pancakes, and Belgian or French? What are Keds?

    2. Raspi + buying/building the the hardware to house it in + learning to program puredata to do all the same functionality as this pedal Vs. just buying this and supporting a cool developer like Poly Effects.

      2. I mean learning puredata barely counts as programming. It’s been actively developed for 20+ years vs X number of weeks for proprietary Beebo. But I get it, I mean, with all that patching and configuring, you might actually have to learn something—and who wants to do that??

  2. You get Poly Effects Beebo and Digit in the same pedal. Saw a video of it being switched easily. I had my eye on the Digit fro a while, once I saw that they added an whole other pedal into the mix, 2 for th eprice of 1, I jumped in. I’ll go far with this ipad effects pedal.

  3. I would hate having a touchscreen at my feet …would be better off having a nice rackmountable unit with seperated footswitches. I can see the appeal for an all-in-one solution, no doubt, but I feel something akin to the Helix Rack would probably be the better form factor.

    YMMV of course.

    1. It’s a good point. It would feel funny to be stomping all over a touch screen. Perhaps if one could find an appropriate sized screen protector of some kind and kept that on for the duration, that could extend it’s lifespan and readability.

      1. You see a pedal and instantly think it needs to be on the floor. You have options. I watch pedal vids all the time, somehow they operate them without involving the floor. I think its an easy workaround to lift it up or just not stomp it like a beatdown.

  4. Reminds me a lot of the Organelle, which while cute and fun it’s potential has been hyped way out of proportions.

    1. Not sure I’d say an Organelle is hyped without reason. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many tools other platforms emulating it. And it’s open if you want to learn PD, very easy to use, and sounds great. I also use pisound, which can do a lot of the same but you don’t have the conveniences of the organelle’s buttons and knobs. But of course you could emulate them with any midi controller.

      To me what’s seeming hyped are overpriced effects boxes and synths that are basically just software but only do one thing. I mean, I still respect great software (hey, I write software, kinda shitty software!) but I do get get skeptical when I look at some of the latest fads on people’s racks.

    2. Agreed. I just recently purchased the Organelle to finally see what the hype was. Besides the Juno patch, everything else was a mishmash of WTF. Had to look up each patch online to figure out how it functioned and most of it was just nonsense. There were definitely a few that were interesting but the hype was behind the patch availability which I didnt find too exciting. Now if those patches were in a proper module, then we’d have a different conversation. Proper midi, octaves, an actual record and play button for sequencing and sampling, etc. It was like having a car engine attached to a bicycle.

  5. There are some details that would be useful to know. 3rd party producers of demo vids highlight what they like, but often leave out info that would be useful– like:
    1. For one instance of convolution, what is the max. length in seconds of IR that can run
    2. Can you run more than one convolver (e.g., cab + reverb + tape)?
    3. When editing parameters, how precise are the parameter setting steps?
    4. When assigning MIDI controls is there a range & response curve?
    5. Are the EQ bands all full range? (overlapping) Do they have Q control?

    Everything I’m seeing is screaming quality. Seems like it’s well made and has a crap-ton of features to replace lots of items on a pedal board– and with 4 ins and 4 outs, it could replace items in different locations on the pedal board!! As long as it is doing what it does in high enough quality, that’s hard to pass up!!

    The inclusion of straight up MIDI is essential– as it frees up the two buttons for little quick variations, etc.

    This is such a better deal than the one-at-a-time H9.

    I hope this pushes some competition for more of this highly configurable– multiple firmware– devices!!!

    1. I can’t speak for this device but odds are the answers are the same. On a PiSound running PatchBoxOS, effects can definitely be controlled via midi – every parameter on multiple devices. You can also generate sound via MIDI and pipe it into the effects. And at least on MODEP, you can put a LOT of devices together on one pedal board simultaneously, including multiples of the same pedal. Switching to diff setups is fast and can be streamlined to just a single button push. There’s a resource gauge that you can see on the Modep Web console for memory and CPU usage. You can some more info here: https://blokas.io/modep/ Organelle is also pretty flexible in these ways. I love this stuff – it has my eyes bugging out. And the Beebo also looks similarly cool as you need less external doodads to run it.

    2. They are currently updating the manual to include the beebo but I’d check that out for the information you seek. I grabbed it before making the purchase and some of those questions have answers in the manual.

  6. I think we should all agree to cease taking the piss on gear that we have never used. A piece of gear is either your cup of tea, or it isn’t.

    Unless it’s Behringer. Which will always be crap, or a rip off of something. Unless it’s both. A crap ripoff.

    Hope this helps.

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