Gibson product of the day

['Scales]

Never seen the Deluxe in the flesh though!

No, me neither. I've checked out a 2 pup Crestwood just like that in a shop and loved it, but never seen a Deluxe in person. Think I'll dig out my old single mini-HB version this evening and hammer it for a while now!

 

PS: Dinosaur Jr absolutely 'kken ROCKED on Sunday night!!

[Searcy]

 

 

 

 

Enter the 1962 Maestro Fuzz-Tone, godfather of all fuzzboxes. And it, too, was created almost by accident.

 

In the summer of 1960, country troubadour Marty Robbins was in Bradley Film & Recording Studios, in Nashville – the peerless Quonset Hut – recording a ballad for Decca called “Don’t Worry.” Backing him was the A-Team including session ace Grady Martin.

 

Martin, of course, knew a thing or two about guitar distortion. Along with backing Red Foley and leading his own solo career, Martin’s numerous credits included playing on Johnny Horton’s 1956 hit “Honky Tonk Man” and other country and rockabilly tracks. He also picked guitar on the Rock and Roll Trio’s classic 1956 sessions that included “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” where he may have used Burlison’s amp with that loosened tube. For the Robbins session, Martin was playing a muted “tic-tac” bass line on a ’56 six-string Danelectro bass.

 

The Quonset Hut had just received a custom-built console with Langevin 116 tube amplifiers, recalls engineer Glenn Snoddy, now 91. “When the console was built, the Langevin company had moved to California and farmed out 50 sets of output transformers to another company. In the console bought for Bradley, I believe we got 35 of these transformers, and they started to go bad when Grady was playing.

 

“Apparently, the transformer developed an open primary. Since approximately 250 volts DC was going through this winding, one would assume a tiny arc developed that caused this peculiar sound.”

 

Martin’s fuzzed-out bass, including a solo and outro, was kept on the single released in February, 1961. It was about the last thing you expected to hear in a soft, heartfelt, piano-led ballad. But Robbins’ fans loved it, and the song went to No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Country & Western chart and No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

 

Snoddy and Martin must have known they had a hot thing going as soon as they heard that fuzz. Snoddy didn’t junk the “bad” transformer. Instead, he saved it, and Martin quickly cut an odd, noir-tinged single with his Slew Foot Five called “The Fuzz,” which actually beat “Don’t Worry” to market by a month or so.

 

“No one else used [the fuzz-toned transformer] to my knowledge,” Snoddy says; he saved it for Martin. But then, it died. “Nancy Sinatra came to town and wanted to use that sound, and I had to tell her people that we didn’t have it anymore because the amplifier completely quit. So I had to get busy and conjure some other way to make it happen.”

 

Snoddy enlisted the aid of Revis Hobbs, a fellow engineer at WSM radio and TV, where Snoddy worked prior to the Quonset Hut. “I invited him to come by the studio and bring some special transistors that I did not have, and together we worked out the details of the Fuzz-Tone.” While the Langevin amp had been tube-driven, Snoddy and Hobbs tried to re-create that fuzz with transistors.

 

Snoddy and Hobbs’ circuit worked by clipping the signal’s sine wave to a square wave. They added an on/off switch to the top of the pedal so musicians could change the tone from clean to dirty. Snoddy then toted the newborn effect to Gibson, and president Maurice H. Berlin. The man who had earlier turned down Les Paul’s solidbody guitar was by then more open to the brave new world of instruments.

 

“I don’t play guitar, but they had a fellow there who did,” Snoddy remembers. “I took the box, plugged it in, and Mr. Berlin said, ‘Hey, we want that.’”

 

Gibson developed the effect into a prototype. Snoddy says no photos remain of his original. He kept the Gibson prototype and later donated it to guitarist Harold Bradley.

 

Beginning in ’62, Gibson launched the Fuzz-Tone FZ-1 pedal under its Maestro brand name with a retail price of $40. The company also used the circuit in several basses including the EB-0F, EB-SF 1250 and Epiphone Newport EB-SF – the F suffix indicating “fuzz.”

 

It’s even possible Gibson saw this effect as primarily for bass use. Either way, the company soon released a 7″ 33-r.p.m. demonstration record in ’62, promoting the FZ-1 for guitarists. Still, Gibson didn’t quite know what they’d use it for. As noted in the May 3, 1962 patent application, the Fuzz-Tone was designed “to provide a tone modifying attachment and circuit for electrically produced signals which will permit stringed musical instruments such as guitars, banjos and string basses to produce electrically amplified and reproduced tones simulating other instruments such as trumpets, trombones and tubas.”

 

Gibson expected huge sales from guitarists who wanted to sound like sousaphonists, and dealers responded by snapping up all 5,000 units produced in 1962. But players didn’t buy. The story goes that Gibson shipped only three more Fuzz-Tones in ’63 and none in ’64.

 

That all changed come ’65, when Keith Richards used an FZ-1 on the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and the Fuzz-Tone instantly became the “it” pedal. Ironically – or maybe not – Richards says he indeed used the Fuzz-Tone to emulate a horn.

 

As he wrote in his 2010 autobiography, Life, “It was down to one little foot pedal, the Gibson fuzz tone [sic]… I’ve only ever used foot pedals twice [the other being an XR delay on Some Girls]… effects are not my thing. I just go for quality of sound…

 

“I was imagining horns, trying to imitate their sound to put on the track later when we recorded. I’d already heard the riff in my head, the way Otis Redding did it later, thinking this is gonna be the horn line. But we didn’t have any horns, and I was only going to lay down a dub. The fuzz tone came in handy so I could give a shape to what the horns were supposed to do. But the fuzz tone had never been heard before anywhere, and that’s the sound that caught everybody’s imagination.”

 

The first time Richards heard the finished song, played over a radio station in Minnesota, he himself was shocked by the fuzz. “At first I was mortified,” Richards says, “We didn’t even know Andrew [Loog Oldham, the Stones’ manager] had put the f**king thing out! [but it was] the record of the summer of ’65, so I’m not arguing.”

 

Gibson responded in late ’65 by releasing the FZ-1A, and promptly sold some 40,000 pedals. The FZ-1 and FZ-1A used largely the same circuitry with three Germanium transistors, though the FZ-1 was powered by two 1.5-volt batteries whereas the FZ-1A relied on just one. The FZ-1 bore the manufacturing location of Kalamazoo, Michigan; the FZ-1A was built in Kalamazoo, then later in Lincolnwood, Illinois.

 

The Lincolnwood-built/9-volt/two-transistor FZ-1B followed with revised graphics. It’s sound was more trebly, but with less gain. The FZ-1S Super-Fuzz arrived with the ’70s offering more control and an even harsher attack. FZ-1A reissues bear the “Nashville, Tennessee” legend.

 

As a reprise to “Satisfaction,” most every instrument maker – legit and otherwise – offered their own fuzz pedals. The effect was cloned, copied, or imitated by Macaris’ 1965 Tone Bender, Burns’ Buzz-Around, the Italian Fuzzy, Roger Mayer’s custom Fuzz-Tones built for Jimi Hendrix and others, Mosrite’s ’66 FUZZrite, WEM’s Rush, and many more.

 

http://www.vintageguitar.com/17397/maestro-fuzz-tone/

 

[pippy]

...the 1962 Maestro Fuzz-Tone, godfather of all fuzzboxes. And it, too, was created almost by accident...

Fascinating read! Thanks, Searcy!

 

 

Pip.

[Searcy]

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp3YHnDPRv0

 

Here are the two tracks mentioned in the post above.

[Searcy]

Yeah! or some Radio Birdman for that matter!!

 

Its actually an Epiphone Crestwood Deluxe - a pretty rare beast among 60's Epis

 

 

Thanks for the correction. I dont know these guitars very well and sometimes the pictures are mislabeled on the internet.

[daveinspain]

This is my Gibson Corus... The most unique guitar in my collection

 

 

 

[Dub-T-123]

 

 

 

 

Enter the 1962 Maestro Fuzz-Tone, godfather of all fuzzboxes. And it, too, was created almost by accident.

 

In the summer of 1960, country troubadour Marty Robbins was in Bradley Film & Recording Studios, in Nashville – the peerless Quonset Hut – recording a ballad for Decca called “Don’t Worry.” Backing him was the A-Team including session ace Grady Martin.

 

Martin, of course, knew a thing or two about guitar distortion. Along with backing Red Foley and leading his own solo career, Martin’s numerous credits included playing on Johnny Horton’s 1956 hit “Honky Tonk Man” and other country and rockabilly tracks. He also picked guitar on the Rock and Roll Trio’s classic 1956 sessions that included “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” where he may have used Burlison’s amp with that loosened tube. For the Robbins session, Martin was playing a muted “tic-tac” bass line on a ’56 six-string Danelectro bass.

 

The Quonset Hut had just received a custom-built console with Langevin 116 tube amplifiers, recalls engineer Glenn Snoddy, now 91. “When the console was built, the Langevin company had moved to California and farmed out 50 sets of output transformers to another company. In the console bought for Bradley, I believe we got 35 of these transformers, and they started to go bad when Grady was playing.

 

“Apparently, the transformer developed an open primary. Since approximately 250 volts DC was going through this winding, one would assume a tiny arc developed that caused this peculiar sound.”

 

Martin’s fuzzed-out bass, including a solo and outro, was kept on the single released in February, 1961. It was about the last thing you expected to hear in a soft, heartfelt, piano-led ballad. But Robbins’ fans loved it, and the song went to No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Country & Western chart and No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

 

Snoddy and Martin must have known they had a hot thing going as soon as they heard that fuzz. Snoddy didn’t junk the “bad” transformer. Instead, he saved it, and Martin quickly cut an odd, noir-tinged single with his Slew Foot Five called “The Fuzz,” which actually beat “Don’t Worry” to market by a month or so.

 

“No one else used [the fuzz-toned transformer] to my knowledge,” Snoddy says; he saved it for Martin. But then, it died. “Nancy Sinatra came to town and wanted to use that sound, and I had to tell her people that we didn’t have it anymore because the amplifier completely quit. So I had to get busy and conjure some other way to make it happen.”

 

Snoddy enlisted the aid of Revis Hobbs, a fellow engineer at WSM radio and TV, where Snoddy worked prior to the Quonset Hut. “I invited him to come by the studio and bring some special transistors that I did not have, and together we worked out the details of the Fuzz-Tone.” While the Langevin amp had been tube-driven, Snoddy and Hobbs tried to re-create that fuzz with transistors.

 

Snoddy and Hobbs’ circuit worked by clipping the signal’s sine wave to a square wave. They added an on/off switch to the top of the pedal so musicians could change the tone from clean to dirty. Snoddy then toted the newborn effect to Gibson, and president Maurice H. Berlin. The man who had earlier turned down Les Paul’s solidbody guitar was by then more open to the brave new world of instruments.

 

“I don’t play guitar, but they had a fellow there who did,” Snoddy remembers. “I took the box, plugged it in, and Mr. Berlin said, ‘Hey, we want that.’”

 

Gibson developed the effect into a prototype. Snoddy says no photos remain of his original. He kept the Gibson prototype and later donated it to guitarist Harold Bradley.

 

Beginning in ’62, Gibson launched the Fuzz-Tone FZ-1 pedal under its Maestro brand name with a retail price of $40. The company also used the circuit in several basses including the EB-0F, EB-SF 1250 and Epiphone Newport EB-SF – the F suffix indicating “fuzz.”

 

It’s even possible Gibson saw this effect as primarily for bass use. Either way, the company soon released a 7″ 33-r.p.m. demonstration record in ’62, promoting the FZ-1 for guitarists. Still, Gibson didn’t quite know what they’d use it for. As noted in the May 3, 1962 patent application, the Fuzz-Tone was designed “to provide a tone modifying attachment and circuit for electrically produced signals which will permit stringed musical instruments such as guitars, banjos and string basses to produce electrically amplified and reproduced tones simulating other instruments such as trumpets, trombones and tubas.”

 

Gibson expected huge sales from guitarists who wanted to sound like sousaphonists, and dealers responded by snapping up all 5,000 units produced in 1962. But players didn’t buy. The story goes that Gibson shipped only three more Fuzz-Tones in ’63 and none in ’64.

 

That all changed come ’65, when Keith Richards used an FZ-1 on the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and the Fuzz-Tone instantly became the “it” pedal. Ironically – or maybe not – Richards says he indeed used the Fuzz-Tone to emulate a horn.

 

As he wrote in his 2010 autobiography, Life, “It was down to one little foot pedal, the Gibson fuzz tone [sic]… I’ve only ever used foot pedals twice [the other being an XR delay on Some Girls]… effects are not my thing. I just go for quality of sound…

 

“I was imagining horns, trying to imitate their sound to put on the track later when we recorded. I’d already heard the riff in my head, the way Otis Redding did it later, thinking this is gonna be the horn line. But we didn’t have any horns, and I was only going to lay down a dub. The fuzz tone came in handy so I could give a shape to what the horns were supposed to do. But the fuzz tone had never been heard before anywhere, and that’s the sound that caught everybody’s imagination.”

 

The first time Richards heard the finished song, played over a radio station in Minnesota, he himself was shocked by the fuzz. “At first I was mortified,” Richards says, “We didn’t even know Andrew [Loog Oldham, the Stones’ manager] had put the f**king thing out! [but it was] the record of the summer of ’65, so I’m not arguing.”

 

Gibson responded in late ’65 by releasing the FZ-1A, and promptly sold some 40,000 pedals. The FZ-1 and FZ-1A used largely the same circuitry with three Germanium transistors, though the FZ-1 was powered by two 1.5-volt batteries whereas the FZ-1A relied on just one. The FZ-1 bore the manufacturing location of Kalamazoo, Michigan; the FZ-1A was built in Kalamazoo, then later in Lincolnwood, Illinois.

 

The Lincolnwood-built/9-volt/two-transistor FZ-1B followed with revised graphics. It’s sound was more trebly, but with less gain. The FZ-1S Super-Fuzz arrived with the ’70s offering more control and an even harsher attack. FZ-1A reissues bear the “Nashville, Tennessee” legend.

 

As a reprise to “Satisfaction,” most every instrument maker – legit and otherwise – offered their own fuzz pedals. The effect was cloned, copied, or imitated by Macaris’ 1965 Tone Bender, Burns’ Buzz-Around, the Italian Fuzzy, Roger Mayer’s custom Fuzz-Tones built for Jimi Hendrix and others, Mosrite’s ’66 FUZZrite, WEM’s Rush, and many more.

 

http://www.vintageguitar.com/17397/maestro-fuzz-tone/

 

Nice! In the photos here there is one FZ-1, one FZ-1A, and the one with the guts is an FZ-1A with some replaced components

 

Here's my FZ-1A. I had to replace the switch but all components are original (someone replaced the cable with a jack before as well)

 

[cody78]

This is my Gibson Corus... The most unique guitar in my collection

 

Certainly a unique and somewhat rare guitar. My most unique one is probably my Gibson ES 5 Switchmaster seen on the right hand side in my avatar/ profile pic.

[cody78]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp3YHnDPRv0

 

Here are the two tracks mentioned in the post above.

 

Sounds very cool. Most interesting.

[Twang Gang]

 

 

 

 

Enter the 1962 Maestro Fuzz-Tone, godfather of all fuzzboxes. And it, too, was created almost by accident.

 

In the summer of 1960, country troubadour Marty Robbins was in Bradley Film & Recording Studios, in Nashville – the peerless Quonset Hut – recording a ballad for Decca called “Don’t Worry.” Backing him was the A-Team including session ace Grady Martin.

 

Martin, of course, knew a thing or two about guitar distortion. Along with backing Red Foley and leading his own solo career, Martin’s numerous credits included playing on Johnny Horton’s 1956 hit “Honky Tonk Man” and other country and rockabilly tracks. He also picked guitar on the Rock and Roll Trio’s classic 1956 sessions that included “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” where he may have used Burlison’s amp with that loosened tube. For the Robbins session, Martin was playing a muted “tic-tac” bass line on a ’56 six-string Danelectro bass.

 

The Quonset Hut had just received a custom-built console with Langevin 116 tube amplifiers, recalls engineer Glenn Snoddy, now 91. “When the console was built, the Langevin company had moved to California and farmed out 50 sets of output transformers to another company. In the console bought for Bradley, I believe we got 35 of these transformers, and they started to go bad when Grady was playing.

 

“Apparently, the transformer developed an open primary. Since approximately 250 volts DC was going through this winding, one would assume a tiny arc developed that caused this peculiar sound.”

 

Martin’s fuzzed-out bass, including a solo and outro, was kept on the single released in February, 1961. It was about the last thing you expected to hear in a soft, heartfelt, piano-led ballad. But Robbins’ fans loved it, and the song went to No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Country & Western chart and No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

 

Snoddy and Martin must have known they had a hot thing going as soon as they heard that fuzz. Snoddy didn’t junk the “bad” transformer. Instead, he saved it, and Martin quickly cut an odd, noir-tinged single with his Slew Foot Five called “The Fuzz,” which actually beat “Don’t Worry” to market by a month or so.

 

“No one else used [the fuzz-toned transformer] to my knowledge,” Snoddy says; he saved it for Martin. But then, it died. “Nancy Sinatra came to town and wanted to use that sound, and I had to tell her people that we didn’t have it anymore because the amplifier completely quit. So I had to get busy and conjure some other way to make it happen.”

 

Snoddy enlisted the aid of Revis Hobbs, a fellow engineer at WSM radio and TV, where Snoddy worked prior to the Quonset Hut. “I invited him to come by the studio and bring some special transistors that I did not have, and together we worked out the details of the Fuzz-Tone.” While the Langevin amp had been tube-driven, Snoddy and Hobbs tried to re-create that fuzz with transistors.

 

Snoddy and Hobbs’ circuit worked by clipping the signal’s sine wave to a square wave. They added an on/off switch to the top of the pedal so musicians could change the tone from clean to dirty. Snoddy then toted the newborn effect to Gibson, and president Maurice H. Berlin. The man who had earlier turned down Les Paul’s solidbody guitar was by then more open to the brave new world of instruments.

 

“I don’t play guitar, but they had a fellow there who did,” Snoddy remembers. “I took the box, plugged it in, and Mr. Berlin said, ‘Hey, we want that.’”

 

Gibson developed the effect into a prototype. Snoddy says no photos remain of his original. He kept the Gibson prototype and later donated it to guitarist Harold Bradley.

 

Beginning in ’62, Gibson launched the Fuzz-Tone FZ-1 pedal under its Maestro brand name with a retail price of $40. The company also used the circuit in several basses including the EB-0F, EB-SF 1250 and Epiphone Newport EB-SF – the F suffix indicating “fuzz.”

 

It’s even possible Gibson saw this effect as primarily for bass use. Either way, the company soon released a 7″ 33-r.p.m. demonstration record in ’62, promoting the FZ-1 for guitarists. Still, Gibson didn’t quite know what they’d use it for. As noted in the May 3, 1962 patent application, the Fuzz-Tone was designed “to provide a tone modifying attachment and circuit for electrically produced signals which will permit stringed musical instruments such as guitars, banjos and string basses to produce electrically amplified and reproduced tones simulating other instruments such as trumpets, trombones and tubas.”

 

Gibson expected huge sales from guitarists who wanted to sound like sousaphonists, and dealers responded by snapping up all 5,000 units produced in 1962. But players didn’t buy. The story goes that Gibson shipped only three more Fuzz-Tones in ’63 and none in ’64.

 

That all changed come ’65, when Keith Richards used an FZ-1 on the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and the Fuzz-Tone instantly became the “it” pedal. Ironically – or maybe not – Richards says he indeed used the Fuzz-Tone to emulate a horn.

 

As he wrote in his 2010 autobiography, Life, “It was down to one little foot pedal, the Gibson fuzz tone [sic]… I’ve only ever used foot pedals twice [the other being an XR delay on Some Girls]… effects are not my thing. I just go for quality of sound…

 

“I was imagining horns, trying to imitate their sound to put on the track later when we recorded. I’d already heard the riff in my head, the way Otis Redding did it later, thinking this is gonna be the horn line. But we didn’t have any horns, and I was only going to lay down a dub. The fuzz tone came in handy so I could give a shape to what the horns were supposed to do. But the fuzz tone had never been heard before anywhere, and that’s the sound that caught everybody’s imagination.”

 

The first time Richards heard the finished song, played over a radio station in Minnesota, he himself was shocked by the fuzz. “At first I was mortified,” Richards says, “We didn’t even know Andrew [Loog Oldham, the Stones’ manager] had put the f**king thing out! [but it was] the record of the summer of ’65, so I’m not arguing.”

 

Gibson responded in late ’65 by releasing the FZ-1A, and promptly sold some 40,000 pedals. The FZ-1 and FZ-1A used largely the same circuitry with three Germanium transistors, though the FZ-1 was powered by two 1.5-volt batteries whereas the FZ-1A relied on just one. The FZ-1 bore the manufacturing location of Kalamazoo, Michigan; the FZ-1A was built in Kalamazoo, then later in Lincolnwood, Illinois.

 

The Lincolnwood-built/9-volt/two-transistor FZ-1B followed with revised graphics. It’s sound was more trebly, but with less gain. The FZ-1S Super-Fuzz arrived with the ’70s offering more control and an even harsher attack. FZ-1A reissues bear the “Nashville, Tennessee” legend.

 

As a reprise to “Satisfaction,” most every instrument maker – legit and otherwise – offered their own fuzz pedals. The effect was cloned, copied, or imitated by Macaris’ 1965 Tone Bender, Burns’ Buzz-Around, the Italian Fuzzy, Roger Mayer’s custom Fuzz-Tones built for Jimi Hendrix and others, Mosrite’s ’66 FUZZrite, WEM’s Rush, and many more.

 

http://www.vintageguitar.com/17397/maestro-fuzz-tone/

 

About '67 or '68 I remember getting a Fender Fuzz-Wah pedal new for about $20-$30. Footswitch on either side, one for the Wah-wah, the other for the fuzz tone (you could use them both at the same time)and also a volume control that you moved by sliding your foot sideways on it. Pretty versatile pedal for the time, but is crapped out a couple years later and so ended my fuzz phase.

[Twang Gang]

 

 

 

 

Enter the 1962 Maestro Fuzz-Tone, godfather of all fuzzboxes. And it, too, was created almost by accident.

 

In the summer of 1960, country troubadour Marty Robbins was in Bradley Film & Recording Studios, in Nashville – the peerless Quonset Hut – recording a ballad for Decca called “Don’t Worry.” Backing him was the A-Team including session ace Grady Martin.

 

Martin, of course, knew a thing or two about guitar distortion. Along with backing Red Foley and leading his own solo career, Martin’s numerous credits included playing on Johnny Horton’s 1956 hit “Honky Tonk Man” and other country and rockabilly tracks. He also picked guitar on the Rock and Roll Trio’s classic 1956 sessions that included “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” where he may have used Burlison’s amp with that loosened tube. For the Robbins session, Martin was playing a muted “tic-tac” bass line on a ’56 six-string Danelectro bass.

 

The Quonset Hut had just received a custom-built console with Langevin 116 tube amplifiers, recalls engineer Glenn Snoddy, now 91. “When the console was built, the Langevin company had moved to California and farmed out 50 sets of output transformers to another company. In the console bought for Bradley, I believe we got 35 of these transformers, and they started to go bad when Grady was playing.

 

“Apparently, the transformer developed an open primary. Since approximately 250 volts DC was going through this winding, one would assume a tiny arc developed that caused this peculiar sound.”

 

Martin’s fuzzed-out bass, including a solo and outro, was kept on the single released in February, 1961. It was about the last thing you expected to hear in a soft, heartfelt, piano-led ballad. But Robbins’ fans loved it, and the song went to No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Country & Western chart and No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

 

Snoddy and Martin must have known they had a hot thing going as soon as they heard that fuzz. Snoddy didn’t junk the “bad” transformer. Instead, he saved it, and Martin quickly cut an odd, noir-tinged single with his Slew Foot Five called “The Fuzz,” which actually beat “Don’t Worry” to market by a month or so.

 

“No one else used [the fuzz-toned transformer] to my knowledge,” Snoddy says; he saved it for Martin. But then, it died. “Nancy Sinatra came to town and wanted to use that sound, and I had to tell her people that we didn’t have it anymore because the amplifier completely quit. So I had to get busy and conjure some other way to make it happen.”

 

Snoddy enlisted the aid of Revis Hobbs, a fellow engineer at WSM radio and TV, where Snoddy worked prior to the Quonset Hut. “I invited him to come by the studio and bring some special transistors that I did not have, and together we worked out the details of the Fuzz-Tone.” While the Langevin amp had been tube-driven, Snoddy and Hobbs tried to re-create that fuzz with transistors.

 

Snoddy and Hobbs’ circuit worked by clipping the signal’s sine wave to a square wave. They added an on/off switch to the top of the pedal so musicians could change the tone from clean to dirty. Snoddy then toted the newborn effect to Gibson, and president Maurice H. Berlin. The man who had earlier turned down Les Paul’s solidbody guitar was by then more open to the brave new world of instruments.

 

“I don’t play guitar, but they had a fellow there who did,” Snoddy remembers. “I took the box, plugged it in, and Mr. Berlin said, ‘Hey, we want that.’”

 

Gibson developed the effect into a prototype. Snoddy says no photos remain of his original. He kept the Gibson prototype and later donated it to guitarist Harold Bradley.

 

Beginning in ’62, Gibson launched the Fuzz-Tone FZ-1 pedal under its Maestro brand name with a retail price of $40. The company also used the circuit in several basses including the EB-0F, EB-SF 1250 and Epiphone Newport EB-SF – the F suffix indicating “fuzz.”

 

It’s even possible Gibson saw this effect as primarily for bass use. Either way, the company soon released a 7″ 33-r.p.m. demonstration record in ’62, promoting the FZ-1 for guitarists. Still, Gibson didn’t quite know what they’d use it for. As noted in the May 3, 1962 patent application, the Fuzz-Tone was designed “to provide a tone modifying attachment and circuit for electrically produced signals which will permit stringed musical instruments such as guitars, banjos and string basses to produce electrically amplified and reproduced tones simulating other instruments such as trumpets, trombones and tubas.”

 

Gibson expected huge sales from guitarists who wanted to sound like sousaphonists, and dealers responded by snapping up all 5,000 units produced in 1962. But players didn’t buy. The story goes that Gibson shipped only three more Fuzz-Tones in ’63 and none in ’64.

 

That all changed come ’65, when Keith Richards used an FZ-1 on the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and the Fuzz-Tone instantly became the “it” pedal. Ironically – or maybe not – Richards says he indeed used the Fuzz-Tone to emulate a horn.

 

As he wrote in his 2010 autobiography, Life, “It was down to one little foot pedal, the Gibson fuzz tone [sic]… I’ve only ever used foot pedals twice [the other being an XR delay on Some Girls]… effects are not my thing. I just go for quality of sound…

 

“I was imagining horns, trying to imitate their sound to put on the track later when we recorded. I’d already heard the riff in my head, the way Otis Redding did it later, thinking this is gonna be the horn line. But we didn’t have any horns, and I was only going to lay down a dub. The fuzz tone came in handy so I could give a shape to what the horns were supposed to do. But the fuzz tone had never been heard before anywhere, and that’s the sound that caught everybody’s imagination.”

 

The first time Richards heard the finished song, played over a radio station in Minnesota, he himself was shocked by the fuzz. “At first I was mortified,” Richards says, “We didn’t even know Andrew [Loog Oldham, the Stones’ manager] had put the f**king thing out! [but it was] the record of the summer of ’65, so I’m not arguing.”

 

Gibson responded in late ’65 by releasing the FZ-1A, and promptly sold some 40,000 pedals. The FZ-1 and FZ-1A used largely the same circuitry with three Germanium transistors, though the FZ-1 was powered by two 1.5-volt batteries whereas the FZ-1A relied on just one. The FZ-1 bore the manufacturing location of Kalamazoo, Michigan; the FZ-1A was built in Kalamazoo, then later in Lincolnwood, Illinois.

 

The Lincolnwood-built/9-volt/two-transistor FZ-1B followed with revised graphics. It’s sound was more trebly, but with less gain. The FZ-1S Super-Fuzz arrived with the ’70s offering more control and an even harsher attack. FZ-1A reissues bear the “Nashville, Tennessee” legend.

 

As a reprise to “Satisfaction,” most every instrument maker – legit and otherwise – offered their own fuzz pedals. The effect was cloned, copied, or imitated by Macaris’ 1965 Tone Bender, Burns’ Buzz-Around, the Italian Fuzzy, Roger Mayer’s custom Fuzz-Tones built for Jimi Hendrix and others, Mosrite’s ’66 FUZZrite, WEM’s Rush, and many more.

 

http://www.vintageguitar.com/17397/maestro-fuzz-tone/

 

About '67 or '68 I remember getting a Fender Fuzz-Wah pedal new for about $20-$30. Footswitch on either side, one for the Wah-wah, the other for the fuzz tone (you could use them both at the same time)and also a volume control that you moved by sliding your foot sideways on it. Pretty versatile pedal for the time, but is crapped out a couple years later and so ended my fuzz phase.

[Searcy]

The 1950s Gibson GA-40 Les Paul Amp

 

 

 

 

A tweed 1959 GA-40 on top of two mid-’60s examples

 

In the early days of the electric guitar, manufacturers who made both guitars and amps very often attempted to sell them as matched sets—and players very often bought them that way, until they figured out there was nothing wrong with mixing and matching to suit your varying tastes in each. Throughout the mid to late1950s, Gibson’s flagship solidbody electric, the Les Paul, was partnered with an amp that has become a classic in its own right: the GA-40 Les Paul Amp. While, of course, this combo hasn’t attained values anywhere near those of the guitar it was designed to sell with, this sleeper of a tone machine has recently become far more appreciated by players and collectors alike, and recognized for the unique and inspiring piece of amp design that it is.

 

Surprisingly, the GA-40 wasn’t Gibson’s most powerful amp of the time, contrary to the kind of firepower that you might think the powerful Les Paul Standard demanded. But remember, the Les Paul wasn’t designed to be the blues-rock and heavy-rock monster that it would prove itself to be in the mid ’60s and beyond. It was originally designed as a solidbody alternative for jazz and pop players, guitarists much like its namesake, and for this market, Gibson deemed a pair of lower-powered 6V6 output tubes and a conservative 14 to 16-watt rating absolutely adequate. Don’t believe for one second, however, that this diminutive rating means a GA-40 can’t roar when you want it to: these are real fire breathers, truly scorching when you crank them up, and a lot louder, too, than that output rating might imply.

 

GA-40s with two-tone covering made between 1956 and ’59 are generally the most desirable, because they also house the preferred circuit and tube configuration for this model. Part of what’s so groovy about this amp is that it is nothing like any of the Fender designs from the same era that have become such classics. The Gibson brand has been relegated to the darker corners of amp collecting, but throughout the ’50s and early ’60s the company really was trying to cut its own path, offering bold designs and impressive workmanship, and unwilling to follow the lead of any other maker, no matter how popular those “youngsters’” amps might be proving! As such, the GA-40’s circuit is very different from any of the classic tube-amp templates that are more familiar today in so many repro, reissue, and “boutique” amplifiers (other than one… mentioned below).

 

 

Much of the GA-40’s excitement revolves around the unusual preamp tubes used in each of its two channels. This is a rather unusual “pentode” preamp tube—meaning it has five functional elements other than the three of the standard 12AX7 dual-triode—called a 5879. Something of a cousin of the EF86 pentode preamp tube familiar from early Vox AC30 and AC15 amps, and sometimes used by newer makers such as Matchless, Dr Z, 65 Amps and others, the 5879 sounds nothing like the familiar 12AX7, and has a higher gain and a fatter, thicker overall tone. This higher gain doesn’t necessarily mean that this tube itself distorts more easily, but rather that it pushes a firm, bold signal onto the next stage, where you can definitely kick the whole shooting match into distortion if you want to.

 

The fun factor is multiplied by the fact that each of the GA-40’s two channels was voiced differently, Channel 1 (designated Instrument/Microphone) being noticeably hotter than Channel Two (designated Instrument). Using an A/B/Y pedal to switch between them (or to use both together) offers a useful instant lead-boost from Ch1, or you can patch them together (by plugging into Input 1 of Ch1 and running a jumper cable from Input 2 to Input 1 of Ch2, or vice versa) to blend the two voices together all the time. Channel 2, the Instrument channel, has its own little treat in store in the form of one of the most delectable tremolo circuits available. Powered by a single 6SQ7 preamp tube, the GA-40’s tremolo is deep, thick and lush, and provides anything from a throbbing, swampy wobble to a machine-gun staccato.

 

 

Both channels share a single Tone control, but even that is very different than the simple, single-knob Tone controls in so many amps of the era. The GA-40’s Tone control is located in the output stage of the amp, between the phase inverter and the output tubes, rather than immediately following the volume controls like most. It serves to subtly tweak the high-end content of the sound, following a “less is more” philosophy that leaves the GA-40 sounding rich and full-throated at just about any setting. All of this tonal goodness was pumped through a single Jensen P12Q 12-inch speaker. It’s a classic in its own right, but some contemporary owners of these amps prefer to replace it with a modern, more efficient speaker—especially if they are going to be gigging the amp on a regular basis—in order to protect the Jensen for posterity, while also getting a little more oomph out of the amp. That said, the original P12Qs, when in good condition, break up beautifully for blues and vintage rock and roll. Now that this model is definitely in the spotlight, good original GA-40s are becoming hard to find, and expensive when you do find them. Gibson has never offered a precise reproduction of the model, but the Victoria Amp Company does manufacture an amp called the Electro King, which is very faithful to the original circuit, complete with dual 5879 preamp tubes and 6SQ7-powered tremolo circuit.

 

Amps courtesy of Nate Riverhorse Nakadate

Photo Credit: Kerry Beyer

 

http://www.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Features/en-us/classic-amps-806.aspx

[EVOL!]

Epiphone Coronet

1958 to 1970

 

 

The Gibson-made Epiphone Coronet guitar started out as an alternative to the Gibson Les Paul Junior. Something slightly different, but still a good basic single pickup solidbody guitar (for a very economical price). Initially, the 1958/1959 models had a rather thick 1 3/4" mahogany body, like it's sister Les Paul Junior, and a bit similar to a Telecaster body. But when the Les Paul Junior converted to the thinner SG LP Junior body style by late 1960, the Coronet also thinned down to 1 3/8" thick, and the edges got rounded. Fortunately the new thinner Coronet body is not as thin as a SG LP Junior (making the Coronet a better guitar in my opinion, and a heck of a lot cheaper in price than a SG LP Junior). With the thinner Coronet body, the pickup also changed to a Gibson P90, which dramatically improved the sound over the Epi New York pickup. Then in 1963 the Epiphone Coronet body changed again slightly, making the treble side cutaway "horn" shorter, and changing the peghead tuners to 6-on-a-side (a la Fender). These weren't bad things, but most people seem to like generaion 1 and 2 of the Coronet body better than the asymetrical gen3 body style. To me the big deal is the neck size, since in 1964 Epiphone neck thinned from the standard 1 11/16" nut width to a thinner 1 5/8" (I personally perfer the thicker 1 11/16" nut width). Note the Coronet is a less cousin to the fancier Epiphone Wilshire and Epiphone Crestwood.

 

In the 90s I had a Coronet reissue with the 3 on a side headstock, split coil humbucker in the bridge, and a single coil in the neck. The body shape was very comfortable, but the guitar ended up having a bad neck so I sold it on consignment at Elderly Instruments.

[SteveFord]

Thanks for putting this thread up, I look forward to reading this every day to see what weird stuff Gibson put out over the years.

[Dub-T-123]

Anyone here know what this is? :)

 

[Rabs]

Anyone here know what this is? :)

 

A tape delay box??

[C-RAM]

A tape delay box??

 

Yeah - looks like some version of a Maestro Echoplex.

[merciful-evans]

Thats what I keep my insurance & investment deeds in.

 

Help! I've been burgled

[Searcy]

1964 Gibson Mercury I

 

 

The Mercury series were Gibson's thinly veiled concept to compete with the Fender "piggyback" amps of the early 1960s, and the Mercury I is a very cool alternative to the Fender sound, while closely copying many of Fender's features. Manufactured in Kalamazoo and boasting point-to-point tag board wiring, the Mercury I has a very pure circuit driven by a pair of 6L6 power tubes (like your favorite Bassman). The EQ has incredible range and the amp delivers both crystalline cleans and smooth overdrive through the matching closed back 2x12 speaker cabinet. The left channel also features a very deep tremolo that has excellent chop and a wide range of speeds!

 

 

The head features a polished aluminum faceplate that retains virtually all of the original text and all of the rare Gibson pointer knobs are intact as well. The original transformers are intact and the original CentraLab pots date the amp to 1964. -

 

 

[Dub-T-123]

A tape delay box??

Yep

 

Yeah - looks like some version of a Maestro Echoplex.

That's it. It's a Sireko. I hadn't heard of them but found one for pretty cheap a while back and gave it a shot. The way the tape is fed to the heads results in more wow and flutter than the normal Echoplex, which sounds pretty cool. Unfortunately a replacement tape cartridge is impossible to find and when they do come up they cost a lot more than I paid for the whole unit

 

1964 Gibson Mercury I

 

 

The Mercury series were Gibson's thinly veiled concept to compete with the Fender "piggyback" amps of the early 1960s, and the Mercury I is a very cool alternative to the Fender sound, while closely copying many of Fender's features. Manufactured in Kalamazoo and boasting point-to-point tag board wiring, the Mercury I has a very pure circuit driven by a pair of 6L6 power tubes (like your favorite Bassman). The EQ has incredible range and the amp delivers both crystalline cleans and smooth overdrive through the matching closed back 2x12 speaker cabinet. The left channel also features a very deep tremolo that has excellent chop and a wide range of speeds!

 

 

The head features a polished aluminum faceplate that retains virtually all of the original text and all of the rare Gibson pointer knobs are intact as well. The original transformers are intact and the original CentraLab pots date the amp to 1964. -

 

 

 

Sweet! Check out the little kickstand in the back!

[rct]

Anyone here know what this is? :)

 

 

You go Ritchie Blackmore.

 

rct

[Searcy]

1966 Kalamazoon KG1

 

 

 

The Kalamazoo KG1 was Gibson's attempt to compete with the likes of Fender for the mid 1960s student guitar market. Previously Gibson had only offered students 3/4 size versions of relatively expensive hollow bodies, under the Gibson brand. But now, under the name Kalamazoo it was producing very simple guitars, but well-made, and with above average components.

 

There were no labour intensive nitrocellulose finishes, no expensive hardwood bodies, no glued-in neck joints requiring skilled woodworkers, and easily assembled electronics pre-wired on a scratchplate. Assembly was just a matter of screwing it all together; but the result was a cheap, popular and highly playable guitar.

 

 

 

The solid body Kalamazoo KG guitar range consisted of four models: the KG1 and KG2; equipped respectively with one or two pickups, and the KG1a / KG2a which had an added Maestro vibrola. This guitar, with one pickup and no vibrola is the KG1.

 

The Kalamazoo KG1 came in three finishes; the guitar pictured here is in Flame Red. (See also a Las Vegas blue KG2a and a Glacier White KB1) Unpainted maple necks were bolted onto pressed board bodies In order to reduce production costs, the unassembled guitar bodies were identical, irrespective of pickup configuration and tailpiece

 

White plastic control knobs were fitted to all Kalamazoo electrics. The KG1 has just one volume and one tone control Hardware included two very widely used Gibson parts; the single-coil Gibson PU380 Melody Maker pickup and Gibson TPBR 8513 combined bridge/wraparound tailpiece, both of which appeared on many lower end Gibson instruments throughout the 1960s This guitar comes with simple cream plastic strap buttons

 

 

 

 

 

[SteveFord]

Let's not forget the optional faux alligator skin cardboard case.

[Searcy]

[merciful-evans]

There's enough stuff here to make vol II of 'The History of American Guitars' (book)

 

The Kalamazoo KG1 is very similar to the Fender Duo Sonic I played last week (24" scale).