COLORSOUND SUPA & JUMBO WIDE BODIED TONE BENDERS

[edkoppel]

not that it helps any, but here's my black and gold 1980 Jumbo TB just for reference:

IMG_0560.JPG (596.29 KiB) Viewed 3007 times

IMG_0563.JPG (627.44 KiB) Viewed 3007 times

[jerms]

damn ed! that thing's soooooo clean!!! gotta love the blue ITT diodes too...... they used them in the first issue rat (all capital letter, hairy logo) and a few late V3, 3003 board big muffs......

[Kitrae]

I had not realised that this old thread had come to life again and will happily dig into the wide bodied chaps to add some further info & appropriate pics - I know from extensive chats with dear Gary (much of it filmed for the record) that he said it had reached the point by the early 70's where he doubted whether Mike Matthews or Larry Macari actually knew for sure themselves which of their companies or staff members had originated a specific circuit

Makes complete sense. Running a small company is literally like you are "running" constantly trying to keep up and stay on top, and, unless the guy running it is a micro manager who works at the speed of light, you can't be aware and control every facet of what is being made in your company. Mike does remember some of his early stuff, and who designed them, but back then he only had a few designers. It is interesting how Sola Sound and EHX did kind of mirror each other in what they did and how they operated back then.

Anyway - back on the merry go round!! - chicken and egg - backwards and forwards the game went!

I will get some better wide bodied gut pics together anyway

And just when I was making a little ground on component dates on the earlier peds too - oh well that will have to wait for a bit!!

Cheers - G

Thanks G. It's a killer collection. For that matter, all the pix everyone has posted are great. I didn't mean to stir up so much shit opening this thread again, but this is all very cool stuff and great info!

[Laundromat]

Even the mk1/"1.5"/2 - all of which had a 1k pot and a 100k pot with 2 or 3 trannies - so you can choose to say that they all owe their DNA to the tweaked FZ-1 Gary modded

Not trying to stir up anything, but MKI's never used those pot values (that I know of at least) and had little in common with the two other revisions. Marshall Supa MKI makes an exception by using two 100k's.

[pagan]

So, I got these two Jumbos recently and thought I'd post about them here. Graham's info on his collection is fantastic, and one of the things that struck me is the variety of transistors used in these and in the Supas. It got me wondering if it makes any difference to the way they sound.
Anyway, I ended up with these two that are kind of an odd pair (in a good way). The first one I got was a silver one with the orange/brown/white label, date stamped with the 15th of October 1977 inside the case. It's been loved, as is evident from the battle scars and replacement knobs, and it sounds great. The second one is a later silver one, maybe 1980 (it's not got a date stamp), with the black and gold label. It's really clean, with just a few small marks here and there. I think it's spent most of the last 37 years in its box. It also sounds great, but is slightly different from the first. Here are the photos:

ScreenHunter_121 Nov. 21 14.12.jpg (110.62 KiB) Viewed 2658 times

The '77 has three BC209C transistors and Omeg pots with no visible date codes:

ScreenHunter_122 Nov. 21 14.12.jpg (53.92 KiB) Viewed 2658 times

ScreenHunter_123 Nov. 21 14.13.jpg (66.77 KiB) Viewed 2658 times

ScreenHunter_124 Nov. 21 14.14.jpg (107.85 KiB) Viewed 2658 times

The '80 has three Motorola BC184C transistors, and its board and components appear to be identical to those of the black Jumbos from around the same time. The Radiohm pots have 5-0 (x2) and D-7 codes. What's odd about this one is that it's been built in an enclosure that was intended for the Colorsound Flanger. There's one extra hole drilled in the face of the enclosure (covered by the label) and another in the left side (covered with a black rubber plug) that would have been for the expression input of the flanger. There's a photo of an identical pedal elsewhere on the web that was also built into a flanger box, so this one isn't a one-off.

ScreenHunter_126 Nov. 21 14.15.jpg (103.66 KiB) Viewed 2658 times

ScreenHunter_125 Nov. 21 14.15.jpg (71.89 KiB) Viewed 2658 times

The two sound similar, but there's a difference in the amount of fuzz. The '77 has a bit more fuzz on tap. Side by side, the Fuzz pot on the '77 only needs to be set around 12 o'clock to match the fuzz of the '80. That's not to say that the '80 is lacking. It isn't. The '77 just has some extra gain in the circuit, and when the fuzz is turned up, it compresses more. I assume that's down to the BC209Cs having more gain than BC184Cs. They're both really controllable with the guitar volume, and the overall volume doesn't seem to drop much as the guitar volume is rolled down (at least until you get way down on the volume pot).

Has anyone else has found these (or the Supa version) to sound different with different transistors?