Electronic audio experiments THE BARD

The Bard is a pedal offered by Electronic Audio Experiments. The Bard pays homage to one of our most misunderstood amplifiers of the past: the Music Man HD130. Manufactured between 1974 and 1984, these amps combined a transistor preamp with a tube power amp, an unusual choice that made them severely underrated in their day. However, the HD130 and its brothers are among our favorite amps, thanks to their immaculate (but not quite vintage) clean tones, trashy overdrive, and very wide frequency response, ideal for guitar and bass. As fans of passionate and unique projects, we've distilled our favorite elements of this cult classic into a compact overdrive pedal: The Bard. The Bard's circuitry evokes a classic American amplifier from the 1960s, reinvented with operational amps in place of tubes. Clean tones are crisp and sparkling, with a slight midrange attenuation due to the passive tone stack. Increasing the Drive produces medium-gain tones with a glassy edge, especially when the Bright switch is activated. At the highest Drive settings, operational amps distort in a decidedly different way from tubes - a characteristic of the original amps. The tone stack, located before the main gain stage, brings out specific textures within the saturated sound. The Bard is a versatile performer, able to navigate easily between traditional and contemporary styles.