The Beam Splitter is OBNE doing what OBNE does best: taking a deceptively simple concept and pushing it as far as it’ll go. The idea is a signal splitter that creates three parallel copies of your guitar signal, each processed by its own drive voice with its own delay. One input, three outputs, three entirely different textures, all happening at the same time.
In mono you get a flexible multi-voice distortion you can blend to taste. In stereo or trereo (OBNE’s word for three-channel output, and yes, they’re making it a thing) the Beam Splitter becomes a live double or triple tracking machine. One take, three amp-like voices spread across the stereo field. It’s not a subtle tool, but the results can be enormous.
The panel is organized in three color-coded columns, left to right: Blue, Green, Purple. Each column has its own Volume, Tone, and (on Blue and Green) Time and Decay knobs for delay. Blue also has a two-position Gain toggle switch for its drive amount. Green has a continuous Gain knob. Purple has Gain and Tone but no delay section.
The Deviate knob sits in the center between the Blue and Green columns. It sets random variation in the delay times for both the Blue and Green channels simultaneously. At low settings this produces subtle pitch drift and thickening. Turn it up and you’re in flanger and lo-fi vibrato territory.
In the demo above I’ve set up sweeps for the Blue Gain switch, Green Gain, Purple Gain, Deviate, the Purple and Green volume blend, and Green Time, so you can hear what each control actually does in isolation before diving into the full presets.
The three channels each have their own character. Purple is the highest-gain voice: the Purple Gain sweep goes from clean through medium saturation all the way to a thick, high-gain distortion. Green is a low-to-medium gain drive, chimey and touch-responsive at lower settings and more compressed as the gain increases. Blue is a transistor drive with two gain options via its toggle switch: a lower-gain mode and a higher one.
The presets map out how radically different the routing choices sound. Fat Triple Tracker runs all three channels with Deviate at 10, producing that lush, slightly detuned triple-tracked effect. Spaced Out Slapback pulls both delay sections long (Time at 8, Decay at 8) with Deviate at 5 for shimmer and space. Simple Double Tracker mutes Purple entirely (its Volume at 0) and uses Blue and Green with short delay times for a tighter doubling. Fake Flanger is a mono trick: Blue and Green with Decay at 10 and Deviate at 10, producing a swirling comb-filter sweep without stereo routing.
The Excess V2 is the natural OBNE sibling to compare. The Excess combines a single RAT-style distortion with a modulation section (chorus, delay, or fifth-harmonic) in a serial chain. The Beam Splitter runs three parallel drive voices with independent delay times. The Excess is one voice you color with modulation; the Beam Splitter is three voices you blend and route. The Excess is more focused and faster to dial in. The Beam Splitter is bigger and more complex, and it’s genuinely irreplaceable once you’re working in stereo or trereo.
Ambient and experimental players are the obvious audience, but the Beam Splitter has practical uses for anyone who records. The triple-tracking capability is real: instead of layering three DI takes in your DAW, you can do it in one pass with genuine variation between the channels. Stereo rigs get the most from it, but the mono presets show it holds its own as a blended multi-voice distortion too.
The caveat is complexity. Three separate outputs, thirteen knobs and a gain toggle take time to learn. If you want a simple, single-voice distortion there are faster routes. The Beam Splitter earns its place when you want to build big sounds from one guitar, one take.
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Get detailed specs on Old Blood Noise Endeavors' website
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