SolidGoldFX Beta V

I do have a somewhat limited experience with the Beta MKII and some serious experience with the Beta DLX.

While the Beta MkII had a switchable ‘Preamp mode’ the Beta V has Bass Preamp written on the face side, plain to see for everyone.
Has anyone ever tried to understand their naming conventions? Is the V meant to be the roman 5 ?
As I understood, the Beta was followed by the Beta Mk II and the Beta DLX only was a short run wedged between those.
Any Idea where Beta III and Beta IV are?

The controls are what I am used to when it concerns SolidGold FX:
Pretty straight forward, plus something to scratch your head.
I remember the toggle switches on the DLX where mids and bass had boost/flat/cut, but the switch positions were not the same, which was super weird.
Super weird on the Beta V is the switch in the middle. It’s labeled 1/0/2.
Looking in the manual, you get to know why. It works in tandem with the LPF knob. The LPF knob controls the cutoff frequency of the LPF. The three way toggle switch controls … the cutoff frequency of the LPF. Wait what?
Okay, apparently the knob does more. Position 1 provides a mid bump, position 2 provides a mid scoop and position 0 cuts the hpf bit out of the circuit.
Apart from that bit, there’s Presence and Body, which are fancy names for bass and treble – it’s an active two band EQ that sits post clipping, and of course your gain and volume knobs.

This Beta is the first that is not necessarily dark. You can easily achieve a big sound by boosting the body, but in a mix this can get muddy quickly, so use with caution – a little goes a long way.
The post drive treble control is what all the betas in the past lacked IMO. You can really breathe back some life into your dead flats, and I have the feeling that the LPF thing is located in front of the EQ thing, so that knob also negates the feeling of a wet blanket over your cabinet that the LPF usually does.

I always liked what the Betas did, but I felt it hard to swallow the claim of them emulating vintage tube gear.
They sounded like solid state drive pedals to me, with a darker nature than most.
The Beta V makes a giant leap towards the world of pedals-that-sound-and-feel-like-tube-amps.
It is, to my ear, in the dynasty of Beta pedals, the best iteration because it totally catches the vibe of the earlier pedals, but has less of their limitations.
What I always found to be a great feat is that for all the Beta pedals, there are videos on youtube that show off what the pedals can do, and when you copy those settings to your pedal at home, you essentially get the same sound. You know, when you see an ad for a burger of a certain fast food chain, the one with the clown, and then compare it to the burger you actually get? It’s absolutely not like that. You hear the sound in the ad, you copy the settings and -bam!- your bass sounds the same.

I will have to admit that I got the BJFe Blueberry only a short while after I acquired the SolidGoldFX Beta V and that I sold the Beta shortly after because I was too excited about the Blueberry to continue experimenting with “lesser” pedals – sorry for that!