OKAY HERE ARE THREE OF THE SOLS SILVER "FUZZES" THEY ARE AMONGST THE MORE COMMONLY FOUND VERSIONS AND ARE COMMONLY CALLED MK5'S (OOPS CAPLOCK AGAIN!)
They are basically Tonebender MkIV designs as far as I'm concerned -
These three show a wide age range - the first is date stamped 18 Oct 1973 with all 3 pots date coded 6 3 (June 1973) so alongside the ink stamp you can see evidence that Sola bought components little and often - i.e there is no more than a 4 month gap between pot date and pedal date - I have found 4 - 8 month a useable range when dating these (and most Colorsound and other Sola pedals) The first one has the normal unmarked metal can Germanium transistors and sounds pretty nice!!
The second one is slightly later with pot codes of 7 6 (one) and 6 6 (two) so presumably June and july 1976 - using the similar formula for pot and pedal dating that would make this one late 1976 - the black silicon transistors are unmarked - the board appears unmodded but the pedal itself has a lot more volume than the Ge example - they both sound wonderful though!!
The final (3rd) one is a nineties Macaris reissue using BC549C trannies and pots dated '95- Noticeably noisier (background noise) but otherwise 8 or 9/10 for tonal similarity to the second example shown. Pretty unusual these days anyway as they are now thirteen years old too!
The Pics - in 2 lots - please be patient with load times.
I stuck up a bunch of seemingly similar shots wanting to let you see there are few but very subtle differences in the lettering for example!
Silicon Reissue from the mid nineties from the Macaris - A pretty good sounding copy (mine is a bit noisy in the background - probably a crapped out catalytic!) though using smaller more available parts.. BC549C trannies pots are dated '95 Here is a close up of the board:
Hope these fill a gap and are of use to someone or other - generally their price range is between £120 - £300 - as always perhaps another fifty quid if a particularly clean one or one with its original box - I never saw a "reverse" board one of these but I guess they would be a bit more desirable and therefore command slightly higher money!
I just posted something on a thread concerning OC44's and their desirable range for building Rangemasters etc - got me thinking about a strange 90's Sola reissue mk2 - which took me to these batman logo pedals
I was posing the question as to whether or not the availability of the last versions of these pressed steel style fuzzes (see the 1995 version above) had an impact on the 90's sales of the cast bodied mk2 pro reissues..
I thought I'd add it here where it won't get lost or buried - maybe ought to take some pics of the reissue mk2 Pros and put up another thread. unless there is a suitable one already started ... I'll think about that - could be interesting as there seemed to be a lot of inconsistency on the build between those Mk2 pro reissues and now David is doing some really good cloned originals could be timely to place them within the context of earlier (and very much less "genuine") reissue attempts.
But I'll start out here (and try to picture my more recent acquisitions (since I started this thread I picked up a few more :)
Graham
here is that other posting
I still have a couple of the 90's reissue Mk2 Pros - one (which I appear to have mislaid for the moment) only had two trannies - i.e the earlier "mk1.5" build. Believe I had a few of that type over time... Not all sounding that good (why I don't still have them!)..
Imagine quite a few of them ended up being rebuilt as a few years ago they could be found relatively cheaply on eBay
As an example, I have another of those also in a reissue cast case, but that one was rebuilt as a one-off by David and auctioned in April '08 - it used a pair of Mullard OC75's - that one is a really cool pedal and holds its own really well against the originals I have.. I'm looking forward to trying one of the most recent versions in the very near future ! !
BUT prompted by the mention of an OC44 I also dug out a weirdo I've had for a few years now - this is another of the 90's Macari reissues but has an OC42 and a pair of OC76's - VERY strange looking build but actually sounds very good - I will try to get a picture of it up but have just bought a Macbook air - (my first mac since the IIE back in the 80's - and I'm still learning my way through using it compared to Windows 7)
Those reissues seem to come in various flavours - it would be good to find out who actually put them together and the thinking that went behind them - obviously fuzz had gone out of fashion in the late 70's / early 80's as for that matter had stand alone pedals to a certain extent (it was the time of rack mounted multis and fancy modulation) as punk & pop pushed old school "guitar based" rock music out of the way. I always saw those 90's pedals as a brave attempt to re-launch fuzz as demand for the earlier music (and its tools) grew back again... thank goodness.
But those earliest cast body Ge reissues didn't seem to "catch on" that well (here's where Anthony will say the opposite!! Like I said I would appreciate any feedback on the 90's models so would welcome correction.
It is just the way that each one I have had over time has always seemed to be different inside.. Bringing me back to the thinking behind them - maybe they were just using up bin ends of parts or had more than one third party firm building the boards for them?
I don't remember those days as well as I'd like - 70's and 80's took their toll on me - but I think that the silver "batman" Colorsound tonebenders in the pressed steel bodies were available at roughly the same time and maybe it was a price thing as well as the different "more modern" style of fuzz of those silicon CS styled pedals.
I also have one of those late "Reissue" versions with the orange FUZZ logo in the CS style bodies (not that they were ever marked as CS - only ever as Sola Sound like the originals though using the same pressed steel bodies also used by most of the narrow bodied Colorsound pedals) - pots on that one are dated '95 and fuelled by 3 black BC649C trannies (compared to the BC183 or BC184L's that the earlier Silicon fuelled versions used (I've a couple of those dating to '76 & '77 - as well as Ge versions from '71,'72 & '73.. (yes that's six of them excluding the "true" silver MkIV's!) who was it that said it wasn't an addiction!!
Think I'll copy this into the data dump section too under MkIV's as it poses questions that might find half decent answers sometime.
Sorry to wander off topic a bit - was the mention of OC44 and then OC42 prompting me to dig out some pedals I didn't use or even see for a year or two!!
