The Dallas Arbiter Company first issued the Fuzz Face in 1966, although the first fuzz faces were simply made by “Arbiter”, the second batch then introduced the “Dallas” arbiter addition. There is also a rather large and serious debate amongst Fuzz Face geeks as to which were the first transistors to be used in the unit. Most people generally agree that the AC128 transistor was the first, a few say that the NKT275 was the first and still others claim that the “Arbiter” Fuzz Face , (the first run of the unit) had SF363 transistors in it.

However, although this rather interesting debate rages, there is generally unanimous agreement as to which transistor sounds the best (the NKT275), made by the British company Newmarket. However to be fair, it seems that this is primarily because of the high quality consistency of this particular transistor, whereas other types had larger flucuations in consistency. The electronics are contained in a round, red, landmine-shaped metal housing. The pedal uses two knobs, one for volume, and one for the amount of “fuzz” the pedal produces. The distinctive sound of the Dallas Arbiter version of the Fuzz Face is said to come from the germanium transistors used in its manufacture.

The Fuzz Face is also notable among modern effects pedals for its lack of an input for a 9 volt power adapter; some have modified their Fuzz Face to accept adapters, or use adaptors that connect to the leads for the 9v battery. Many copies and reissues have been introduced and had little success due to different materials used in their electronic components. Jim Dunlop Manufacturing currently makes the pedal, but schematics and DIY plans to build your own Fuzz Face clone are abundant on the Internet; its simplicity lends itself to experimentation with different compenents to alter the sound.

Such guitarists as Jimi Hendrix (one of the best known Fuzz Face users), Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and others have used the pedal to make their legendary sounds. The Fuzz Face is sometimes confused with the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi fuzzbox due to the resemblance of their sounds on recordings; Jack White and Mudhoney (who named an album Superfuzz Bigmuff) have erroneously been said to use the Fuzz Face instead of the Big Muff Pi.

Another effect that Jimi used and has since become synonomous with his name was the Vox wah-wah pedal. Jimi employed this effect on many of his studio recordings such as “Voodoo Chile (slight return),” and “Burning of the Midnight Lamp.”

A third type of effect that Jimi used in the studio was a Leslie Speaker cabinet. This effect created the swirling sounds heard on studio tracks such as “Little Wing” and “House Burning Down.”

The Uni-Vibe was yet another effect used by Jimi predominantly in live performance. This created a swirling effect quite similiar to the Leslie Speaker cabinet, although it differed in that it had a speed control, unlike the Leslie cabinet. This meant that the swirling effect could be sped up or slowed down. This effect was employed on tracks such as “Hey Baby (The Land of the New Rising Sun)”, “Earth Blues”, and “Machine Gun.”

A fourth effect Jimi used was the Octavia. This device, as noted by “Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy,” “gives the effect of a multiple mirror image of the actual sound,” but phased inverted. So really it produces a sound that absolutely multiplies all the harmonics up, almost to infinity, so you get an extremely high tone out of it.” The Octavia made it first appearance on “Purple Haze.”

Finally, there is undoubtedly a plethora of other effects that Jimi used in the studio other than just the ones that were mentioned above but to name and detail all of them would take far too much time. The only thing left to be said is that Jimi Hendrix was enormously gifted and was one of the most brilliant musicians that has ever lived.

Stevie Ray Vaughan used both the early TS-808 and the later TS-9 Ibanez Tube Screamer stomp boxes in his career. The TS-808 is easily distinguished from the TS-9 by its small black knobs, smaller stomp button, white script on the housing, and darker green color. They have become a particularly coveted distortion unit and command high prices these days, due in great part to Stevie’s association. The Tube Screamer was his primary distortion device. He employed it to overdrive the front end of his tube amps and to add a natural tube-like saturation and sustain to his lead voice.

Throughout his career Stevie Ray Vaughan alternated between the Crybaby wah-wah pedals and the vintage Vox wah-wah pedal. A superb example of his wah-wah playing can be found on the track “Say What” from Soul to Soul. Other notable SRV wah-wah pedal examples include “Voodoo Chile” and “Come On”. While the use of the wah-wah pedal is fairly rare in the blues genre, Stevie made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

Growing up in the seventies, one of the classic guitar albums I loved was Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs” released in 1974. In the apartment complex I lived in growing up, I met a professional guitar player shortly after I started playing around 1975. He was a huge Trower fan and introduced me to this classic album cranked up on his little Sears 8-track player. The big, lush tones on that album were unlike anything I had heard before - I just couldn’ believe a guitar could sound like that. Marty was a complete gear head and he was happy to explain more about the “Leslie-speaker” effect than ever I wanted to know. To this day, everytime I hear a Hendrix, Trower or SRV tunes with a Uni-Vibe, I think about Marty with his white Fender Stratocaster weaving those swirly tones in his living room. I’m so glad I didn’t miss the 70s.

Since then, the Uni-Vibe sound has stuck in my head as one of my favorites. It’s a really unusual sound - not really a chorus, not really a phaser, not really a flanger, but something truly organic that defies a simple explanation. The original effect, derived from a purely mechanical process where a speaker simply rotates inside a cabinet, owes itself to the phenomom of the “Doppler Effect”. The best example of this phenomon is the sound of a car horn in a passing car - as the car moves further away, the pitch of the horn will drop accordingly. The best recorded example of this has to be the intro to Van Halen’s “Runnin’ With The Devil”.

The inventor of the swirly “Leslie effect” was Donald Leslie in the early 1960s. He came up with the idea as an effect for the Hammond organ and despite it’s wild popularity, it was never embraced by the Hammond Organ company themselves. The sound of the Leslie organ was popularized on numerous recording throughout the 1960s and it soon found it’s way into the guitarist’s arsenal. Fender licensed the technlogy from Donald Leslie in 1966 and released a similar mechanical device in 1967 called the Fender Vibratone. Soon after, the magical tone of Leslie was showing up on the records of Hendrix, Clapton, Pink Floyd, Beach Boys and The Beatles - there was no turning back now.

Even though the Fender Vibratone sounded incredibly cool, it had some major drawbacks. Since the sound was physically moving around in a circle, it was difficult to mic for the studio and live performances, and because it was mechanical, it was bulky and prone to breakdowns. This problem was solved in 1969 with introduction of a rotating speaker simulator known as the Uni-Vibe developed by Roger Mayer. After Hendrix used an early Uni-Vibe at Woodstock, this type of effect has been seared into the conscienousness of millions guitarists ever since.

So what makes the Voodoo Labs Micro Vibe a good choice? Of all the Uni-Vibe type pedals I’ve tried, the Micro Vibe has three big advantages: price, size and tone. If you’ve shopped Uni-Vibe units, you know no one’s giving these away for cheap. Roger Mayer’s latest pedal is almost $500 and Fulltone’s Mini-Deja Vibe can run you close to $300. At about $149 new, the Voodoo Labs Micro Vibe is an amazing deal in an otherwise pricey field of competitors. Even with at this lower price point, the Micro Vibe still incorporates the same basic technology in the more expensive units to emulate the Leslie faithfully - a real incandesanct lamp and genuine photocells - just like the big boys.

Speaking of the big boys, the small size of the Micro Vibe is also unique. Unlike many of it’s clunky competitors, the Micro Vibe is true to it’s name at only about 3″ X 4″ - just a standard stompbox. The case is built like a tank with a tough finish and requires only a single 9 volt battery for power. I don’t know how they pack all that tone into such a small case, but they absolutely pulled it off.

Tone. It’s all about tone in the end and the Micro Vibe delivers big time. Regardless of price, the Micro Vibe stands on par with any Uni-Vibe pedal out there for emulating all the classic tones you would expect. And there’s a reason is sounds like a Uni-Vibe; it uses the same sinewave oscillator, incandescant lamp and photocells that creates the Uni-Vibe’s unique sound and feel. For Hendrix, Trower or SRV tones, the Micro Vibe has got all the bases covered - and with true-bypass switching too!

You can check out some great sound clips of the Micro Vibe recorded by the legendary Blues Saraceno - click here and look for the tab labelled “Sound Samples”

It’s so transparent no one will be able to tell you’re using a pedal. Perfect for making the most of a classic amp and guitar, because it simply makes your guitar bigger and pushes the amp harder, causing natural overload. This sound can be the solution to the ‘disappearing guitar’ effect you get sometimes on stage when you stomp on your distortion and sound weaker. When cranked, it sounds much louder than a fuzz or distortion under stage conditions.

Like all Z. Vex designs, current flow is low in this circuit (less than 2mA), enhancing battery life. The circuit board is hand-cut and soldered with the critical component, a BS-170 mosfet transistor, placed in a socket for easy user replacement should it be necessary. Your dealer can provide you with a free replacement transistor upon request.

The box is hand-drilled using no petro lubricants, and hand painted so that every box is unique. Knobs are Harry Davies, made with the same molds they’ve used since the fifties. Each effect is hand dated and signed by Zachary Vex.

WARNING: The very high input impedance of this pedal can cause strange reactions (sometimes mildly pleasant and/or arousing) when used with a vintage ‘junk’ (read ‘cool’) guitar. The solution is to simply lower the ‘crackle okay’ gain knob a little or leave the guitar volume wide open. Each Super Hard-On is unique in it’s reaction… you may have to try a few till you find one that perfectly matches a really strange guitar. They are optimised for the major brands. Any problems will only occur at the highest gain settings with an unusual guitar.

The Super Hard-On units made since June of 1999 have had spare transistors taped inside the unit in case the original fails due to high-voltage static electricity or other shock. Newer SHO units have a diode protection circuit to keep the transistor from blowing. To protect your SHO’s transistor on older units, please turn the unit off before unplugging the cords. On SHO units produced during 2000 and beyond, the battery switching jack has been moved to the output jack closest to the front of the unit (closest to the J. Myrold signature). Please unplug from this jack to preserve battery life.

Other Sparkle Drive features include gain, tone and volume controls, true-bypass switching, a status LED, sturdy metal enclosure, and a 9-volt DC input jack. It also comes with the amazing Voodoo Labs 5-year warranty even covers the switch if it should short out.

I’ve owned a load of overdrive pedals including some really nice Fulltone FullDrives, but the Sparkle Drive is the one I keep coming back to. I recently A/B’d it to a reissue Ibanez TS-808 and it was neck-in-neck in terms of tone and had just a touch more bottom end. My favorite feature is the Clean control - I’m have no idea why other manufactures haven’t jumped on this great idea.

My current rig is ultra simple. Just my Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster, a Fender Deluxe Reissue and the Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive - occasionally I bring out the Voodoo Labs Analog Chorus if I want a Fender Vibrophone effect. This is my simplest rig ever, but the tone is so sweet it’s hard not to think about…

The Dr. Z AirBrake is a dream for using tube amps in project recording studios or smaller live venues where pushing the volume to “11″ may not be an option. This unit gives you virtually all the sonic characteristics of the power tubes pushed to the brink, but at any volume you want.

Although the Air Brake is great for typical rock amps like Marshalls and Mesas, I’ve gotten some fantastic tones out of Fender amps like the Deluxe Reverb and the Super Reverb with this unit. Most of the recording I did with this unit was with a THD UniValve and a Dr. Z Mazerati head (see my other auction) with great results. Surprisingly, even though the UniValve is a low-wattage amp, running it full out with an EL34 power tube is REALLY loud into 4×12 cab - the Air Brake worked just like a master volume to get that amazing tone at any volume. Note: Yes, the UniValve does have a built-in attenuator, but it really colors the tone, IMHO. The Dr.Z Air Brake is clearly superior.

For amps under 100 watts, you can attenuate the output all the way down to 1 watt. It’s very simple to use too - just use a speaker cable from the amp and another to the speaker cab. The main Attenuator dial does the major volume reduction and the Bedroom Level dial lets you fine tune the output. In summary, easy to use - sounds great! What more could you ask!

The pedal was produced with many variants. The early incarnations of the TS-808 and TS-9 are the most sought after by collectors, due in part to the fact that Stevie Ray Vaughan is known to have used them as part of his signature sound. Other variants, including the TS-10, TS-7, and TS-5 are less collectible, but contain a nearly identical underlying circuit.

The TS-9 and TS-808 pedals have been reissued, but not all of these reissues are using the same parts (chips) that helped to shape the famous tubescreamer sound. Some musicians are having a technician perform modifications to the circuit to improve the sound. In addition, a number of other effects manufacturers make versions of the Tube Screamer circuit, including Maxon (who produced the original Tubescreamer pedals for the Ibanez brand in the seventies and early eighties). In addition, many of the most highly-regarded overdrive pedals, both mass-manufactured and boutique, owe their heritage to the Tube Screamer circuit.

The Tube Screamer has a drive knob, a tone knob, and a level knob. The drive knob controls distortion, the tone knob adjusts the amount of treble in the sound, and the level knob controls the output volume of the pedal.