The Rolling Stones were about to embark on a world tour in that same year and arranged for their Fender amps to be shipped to the States for practice. Forgetting their amps were configured to run on the UK’s 240V grid, switching them on led to catastrophic failure and suddenly one of the biggest bands in the world was halfway across the world with no amps.
One of the last great tonal mysteries of the electric guitar was that of Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, and more specifically his fuzz sound in the band’s early days. With so much documentation of who played what on which album, Farner’s tone largely eluded players that couldn’t quite put a finger on his gristly fuzz tone, especially since he appeared to use no pedals that would give him such a starkly contrasting guitar tone on demand.
While tens of thousands of guitar amps have been produced in the pantheon of music equipment, the true lifeblood of rock ‘n’ roll is formed with the tributaries of just a handful of amps. Because much of the entire recording industry owes gratitude for this small grouping of amps, the price of them shot through the roof—each at their own pace, of course, with different inflection points that sent interest and price surging. One such amplifier is the Marshall Plexi.
It wasn’t until years later that I got into sound design, and a huge inspiration for that came from playing video games both in the arcade and at home on a console, and not just Mortal Kombat. But one particular facet of that game’s soundtrack really stuck with me: FM synthesis. Back then, I couldn’t really put a finger on what made the Sega Genesis sound palette so unique, but both the Genesis and the first two MK cabinets used the same sound chip, the Yamaha YM2612. Yamaha’s own DX7 used the same chip, which was a hallmark of ‘80s synth in general. It is primarily this synthesis method that earned digital synth tech the reputation of sounding “cold” compared to analog devices, and though the sound quality between arcade games and console games varied wildly, the Genesis chip was FM synth at its most primitive. Long after its implementation came and went, many people went chasing this sound, myself included.
If you’re anything like me (and let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you are), you love a good fuzz pedal. And lord knows I’ve written about some fine ones, from the strange (Zoom Ultra Fuzz, Uni-Fuzz) and the traditional (Fuzz Face, Tone Bender). There are some very distinct flavors that I have yet to cover, and one of those is the almighty Mosrite Fuzzrite. But this isn’t just any Fuzzrite, this is the one with germanium transistors inside.
It’s no secret that wah is one of my favorite effects types, and the Cabinet is not short on them. I’ve regaled you all about the Cry Baby, but what I haven’t talked much about is the technology behind it, what more you can do with it besides play the “Shaft” theme, and what modifications can be done to them to more tailor them to your rig.
Now that we live in an era where overdrive pedals have 12 knobs, the idea that someone can skirt by without so much as a tone knob is rather droll. But when you’re first at bat, you can either hit or strike out, and MXR hit. Much like the company’s other products, the simplicity and actual tones were a revelation in the mid ‘70s. Manufacturers both domestic and foreign descended on MXR’s designs and used them as a foundation to launch their own lines. Ross Electronics of Chanute, Kansas was one such company, as was Japan’s Coron among many—almost innumerable—others. But it was MXR that coined the term “distortion pedal” and made monstrous cranked amp tones accessible to apartment dwellers and beginners.
I don’t care how full the cabinet gets, there will always—and I mean always—be room for more fuzz. Like many pedal folks, fuzz is my favorite effect. There’s something beautiful about it in an interconnected Eulerian way, in that such great variance, such seemingly countless varietals can all be derived from such a meager, concise bill of materials. It makes sense; after all, the first fuzz effect contained just one part; a faulty console tube, or a razor-altered speaker. The first commercially-produced fuzz circuit contained 18 components, but some enterprising gentleman soon decided that the number was perhaps better at 11. Rarely do parts counts hover higher than 20. They definitely do in this one—this is the Univox Uni-Fuzz.
Throughout the history of effects, there have been several genre constants. In the ‘60s, every manufacturer had a fuzz pedal. Some companies that were barely guitar-adjacent even bought the scraps from OEMs and released them under a shell name—such was the nature of the great pedal gold rush. Overdrive and distortion pedals followed, as did—curiously—octave pedals. One thing that sat on the sidelines, quietly accumulating numbers, was the humble compressor.
Everything in one’s collection can essentially be classified into one of three categories. There are pieces that one must have due to sheer rarity, there are things one must have due to historical provenance and there are things one must have due to them sounding utterly and completely badass. A very select few fit all three categories, and this is one of them. This is the Binson Echorec.
It started in 1989 with the DigiTech Whammy (WH-1). While it was revolutionary and all that jazz, the tracking wasn’t all the way there (though it was very good) and you were confined to whichever interval was selected. However, the seeds were planted; players desired a pedal that did clean octaving and could handle multiple simultaneous notes; chords, or more technically, “polyphony.” Though DigiTech went through five whole iterations of the Whammy before they got it right, Electro-Harmonix stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park much earlier. The Polyphonic Octave Generator, or POG, was the result.
It may come as some surprise, but the Small Clone’s lineage is just about as complicated as any other EHX pedal. While the varietals of the Big Muff have been tracked to the ends of the Earth, the Small Clone’s history is still shrouded in secrecy. And what good would a vintage effect nameplate be without several agonizingly small details?
