I know someone out there has been waiting for this one.
This is essentially Bjorn's Honeybee v5, with a switch to emulate the v1 Honeybee. It sounds fantastic. The quality of construction is absolutely superb, and the Gold / Amber Metallic enclosure is really stunning. A total joy to play. When comparing side-by-side to the Aion Electronics Procyon and the Honey Beest, I find the tone to be a little bit more crisp which I like, and the knee into the clipping range to be harder -- it is brighter and clips less smooth, but is more satisfying to play.
A few notes:
-- The 'Vintage' mode simultaneously removes the Treble boost from the JFET Output stage by disconnecting one-side of the 'Nature Control'., and lowers the fixed Capacitance in the Opamp Gain-Loop to 110n. This moves the corner frequency that gets max gain up. The overall result is less Treble and less lower-Mids.
-- The Output / JFET Gain Stage is biased unusually. This version adds a 1M Resistor (R15) to V+ which lifts the Gate Voltage to 0.4V. It then replaces the usual 5.6k Drain Resistor with a 50k Multi-turn Trimmer. I would not recommend using this method, and would absolutely caution against a 50k Trimmer if you don't use a Multi-turn. The range of operation is very narrow and I don't know why they did it this way. My unit was tuned somewhere between 6.5k and 7.2k.
-- The Volume control stage has some interesting things going on. It appears to be trying to balance a 'Treble-Bleed' with a 'Treble-Rolloff'; seeking consistent Treble across the sweep of the Volume control. This is new to the v5 Honeybee as far as I'm aware. Maybe someone else can comment on this.
-- I cannot identify the SMD Diodes or Opamp. There is no reason to assume this anything different than a CA3130ez and 1n400x Diodes.
-- The Opamp Diodes are Red LED's just like the v2 and onwards, just SMD this time around. They lit up bright from whatever small voltage my DMM put out when testing resistance.
-- The Capacitors were all double-checked with a Capacitance Meter. You can rest assured they are correct.