Will misbiasing a BBD damage it?

[perfectlyfineusername]

Hi, I have an Ashton flanger that I've gone messing with. I adjusted a trimpot and now with the manual control on low it gets distorted sounding. I love this sound but I'm wondering if anyone knows if this could damage the pedal. I'm leaning on the side of maybe not because it's still working fine but I worry about these things and Google wasn't helping me out lol

[artofharmony]

What chip is it? And have you tried looking up the datasheet for the chip? It might have something that could help.

[Mark Hammer]

Short answer: no.  But misbiasing will produce a distorted delay sound. As bias is adjusted, it goes from no delay, to distorted delay, clean delay, distorted delay again, and finally no delay.  It's like a dartboard where there are more points in the middle, and fewer at the perimeter, with none outside the perimeter.

I recommend to those adjusting bias by ear to temporarily lift/cancel the dry signal, so that you only hear delay signal.  This makes it easier to hear just how distorted or clean the bias adjusting makes the BBD.

[ElectricDruid]

+1 what Mark said. I've certainly never managed to damage a BBD like that yet.

[perfectlyfineusername]

Short answer: no.  But misbiasing will produce a distorted delay sound. As bias is adjusted, it goes from no delay, to distorted delay, clean delay, distorted delay again, and finally no delay.  It's like a dartboard where there are more points in the middle, and fewer at the perimeter, with none outside the perimeter.

I recommend to those adjusting bias by ear to temporarily lift/cancel the dry signal, so that you only hear delay signal.  This makes it easier to hear just how distorted or clean the bias adjusting makes the BBD.

That's good to know, all I found from Google was stuff like that about adjusting the bias to where it isn't distorted but I was thinking I like the distortion I want to keep the distortion I just don't like the thoughts of breaking the thing regardless of how it sounds lol. Thanks