Goodrich baby bloomer

[highrisejesus]

I am interested in the Goodrich baby bloomer pedal. I am using a quilter tone bloc and I hear that this pedal will add warmth and sustain. Does anyone have any experience with this pedal?

[mandosteve]

Hi,

The baby bloomer is a JFET-style preamp which tries to emulate an echoplex preamp. The old echoplex tape echos had a really characterful input stage preamp and electric guitarists have been trying to emulate that sound without carting an echoplex around ever since!

I've not tried the baby bloomer specifically, but I have played through original echoplexes and similar replica JFET pedals. I think they can definitely add something to a sound in terms of buffering your signal, often resulting making it a little brighter, and potentially adding some depth and warmth in lower midrange registers. I would be a more skeptical about added 'sustain' - they do provide some subtle compression but nothing compared to decent volume pedal technique and the guitar itself. Ultimately it is a preamp not a compressor/overdrive.

[highrisejesus]

I didn't realise that it was connected to the echoplex. I have been using an E.P booster pedal that uses the echoplex preamp, but I have heard that the Baby bloomer worked better for pedal steel.

[mandosteve]

Ah yeah - I’d suspect them to be in the same ballpark. It’s possible the baby bloomer is voiced to handle the high end response of steel guitar better? That’s just a speculation. Try your steel with the EP booster and see what you think? It will be a similar vibe.