Original MkI Tone Bender

[Graham]

Do I understand correctly that out of 4 maybe 5 known MK1s there are four owned by people posting in this thread??

Well we friendly (and fortunate) few might disagree just a little (though we four all share the exact same degree of interest in such esoteric subjects!) actually getting hold of "hard" facts is a tricky thing as it is not uncommon for particularly well known players to have superb (if somewhat secretive) collections - I believe I may have heard of another couple - a full handful maybe - though I would say there are probably no more Mk 1's left than the number of remaining Burns Buzzarounds - these are almost certainly amongst the very rarest pedals in the world and there are almost certainly only "single" figures actually known of - so with allowing for the usual "attic survivals" I'd say it is very probable that less than a dozen or so (of both pedals) have survived intact to this point... of course I'd love to be proven wrong - but with their high values these days it's unikely too many NOS Mk1's are kicking about in the storerooms of old shops or players!

Graham the grateful guesser.

[psycho*daisies]

I wouldn't be surprised if people like Jimmy Page & Brian May had one.

Hell, McCartney may have one...but are WE ever gonna hear about it?

nay.

Who knows, I'll bet there are more out there than expected.

[1bottlerocket]

I didn't realize covering up circuits with spray or goop was happening back then. I thought that was a relatively new phenomenon around the late 70's with D*mble. On my old echoplex, they even include a schematic with it.

[Graham]

I didn't realize covering up circuits with spray or goop was happening back then. I thought that was a relatively new phenomenon around the late 70's with D*mble. On my old echoplex, they even include a schematic with it.

Hi Tim - heres a few pics of the Vox Wah I mentioned (a few pics cos Stu wanted to see it) but a scarcity in "glooped" form - made by the man himself in his garden shed!!







I didnt take these pics theyre the ones that came with it - I have some far better ones somewhere but if anybody wanted to see those theyd need to let me have an email adress and be able to take 5-10 m of data

You get the message though that in the mid sixties there was sufficient paranoia over having your designs ripped off that some kind of precautions were advisable!

Graham

[sir h c]

For true gooping insanity, look at the original Ampeg scrambler:



or the Maestro susstainer (no guts shots here) or the Rosac pedals:

[The Captain]

Mmmmm nice pics guys Kinda miss having one of those weighty door stops around the place

And mine (ex Captains via Carl)

Before that Ex-Groundhogs. I believe Leon's is Carl's older one. That one belonged to Harris Hire originally I think Its the same one featured in a certain stompbox book but listed as an Arbiter Tone Bender?

[Stu]

Hey Stu, I found it interesting that your model uses the perf board too. Could this have been more of a project type board before settling on a layout? From my experience of working with perf board in design school that was what we did until we got the design finalized.

Do you think the black spray was put on at a later time or came that way out of the factory? Cool stuff, guys!

It's difficult to draw definite conclusions from such a small sample of pedals. The black paint is brushed on and seems to me a deliberate attempt by the maker to prevent the circuit being copied.

The change in board design might have come about for the reason suggested by API: they added a battery door and had to move the circuit. I don't know why they couldn't have continued using stripboard, but maybe they were trying to minimise the cost of producing them.

How does it sound compared to the original and how do the boards differ?

As Graham said, the reissue has the MkII circuit. That said, it is very spitty and might fool someone who'd never seen or heard a real MkI first hand. I can see why he did it - the MkI circuit is a pain to build from the POV of transistor selection and biasing, you really have to hand tune each one. Perhaps he also wanted to hush up its Maestro Fuzz Tone origins.

Here's the board in my pre-production (no serial number) unit. Even the mounting screws are gooped:

[1bottlerocket]

Wow, Stu. Thanks for the information. It looks as though you have some good experience with the MK I unit. I love my '65 Dave built and I am trying to get another to go along with it.

[Philip]

Damn, a man in a van just delivered this to my house!

[Laundromat]

I better keep an eye on ebay then.