Two Mk1.5 Sola Tonebenders - Guts
Two Mk2 Sola made Vox Mk2 Professionals - first one "overprinted" cosmetics - if not a prototype then a trial batch - running a triplet of Ge metal can Imprex transistors (unmarked). The second is the later more commonly found (most were made like this!) yet still enormously scarce Vox mk 2 Professional Tonebender - again Sola made but now running OC75's:
Cant resist some bigger groupings!
Apart from a wooden bodied mk1 proto (which I havent yet found) and my 2 knob Park Mk 3's (and a Roto mk3) this is pretty much the full evolution of the Sola Tonebender in chronological order from mk1 through mk3 - well this and the subsequent pics taking in the Mk 4's and Mk V's !! (Please dont kick me for putting these next few on what is ostensibly a mk2 historical thread.....
You ought to find most of theMacaris fuzzes in these next shots
OK so it's been a new pedal day (Blue small board OC75 mk2) and that got me to hauling out all my others - man it has been simply far too long - I play EVERY day but since I am spending at least half my time over on Guernsey taking care of family stuff most all my pedals have to stay behind - two small islands but still over 20 miles in between - I have a nice Brook parlour guitar and "might" have a lead on a pignose - Props to Steve W !! - (might even find a nice pigdog portable one day -- do/can those come with integral fuzz??? Then I can take an electric or two over with me and take a few different pedalos every time I go!!!
Anyway it looks like things just might be getting somewhere on the "away time" jazz so I'm getting home at least one week in two with possibly just a one day trip inbetween (I never dreamed that six whole days in your own place/bed could be so attractive -- and this is the guy who 30 or 40 years ago prided himself he "could go a night" more than anyone else - certainly six nights wasnt that out of the ordinary back in the early 70's (AS IM SURE PLENTY KNOW - least those who have a clue what I'm saying anyway!!!! (no smilie for split lips????)
Anyhow - some new pics - gone pretty potty tonight - added stuff all over, probably shouldnt use "Grahams" in the thread title but as a lot of what follows discussion - wise will eventually go on to form some of the basics for the Fuzz History - it is meant as a "help" in letting me find my stuff - It's not a vanity!!!!! NOT AT ALLthe pics do enough of that
So a few more - already in the TRIBUTE thread but two sets to add on here:
1/ The original mk2's 1} Sola Branded mk2 Pro OC75 - 2} Vox (overprinted) prototype mk2 Imprex trannies - 3&4} A couple of Standard Vox mk2 pros using OC75's but giving between them a good cross section of what can be gotten out of a mk2 tonewise (I have a pair of mk1.5's for the exact same reason) - 5} then a Gold Rotosound "Prototype" only one other example ever surfaced (a silver one through Scotty's hands at Proanalog at one point) along with a picture of Joe Macari (or is it Larry - it's very late and I'm working from memory - if need be I will correct soon as!!!) on the office wall at Macaris to this day with him handing two "Black" examples over to a band - part of the Dave Clarke Five I think - Gary Hurst (designer of the Tonebender) who himself built this small batch of potential Roto sellers, told me that there could very well have been a chance that the two in that (clearly promotional) picture were empty and unfnished - just thrown together "mock-ups" for a publicity shot - he told me that in this very room last September and its possible that one of them ended up in the Gold Hammerite of the mk1 (that I have) and the other in the (by then) more normal silver hammerite - hinting enticingly at the possibility that only those two prototypes were built... I will finish naming the pedals before carrying on in that vein - 6} So then we have a 90's reissue (3 tranny) and the first TRUE collaboration between David and SOLA -7} their OC84 fuelled long board Mk2 Pro and finally 8} the current BLUE short board OC75 mk2 Pro
Todays - excluding the 2 tranny models but including a 3 tranny 90's reissue (have mislaid my 2 tranny 90's one) - as I saw things most that first lot of reissued mk2's were 2 tranny specials and not exactly stunning at that - so these include one 90's reissue and a couple of Davids jointly sold mk2's - up to date and all under the SOLA Banner:
I have seen pictures of that other silver one on and off over the years (it has haunted me!!!) some showing it with Mullard OC81D's inside (not really used by Sola at that time - not until much later on really - approaching if not into the 70's whereas the mk2 Roto is clearly mid sixties - maybe mid '66 - '67 where the use of the OC81D's seems to come from the end of the sixties or even early seventies as old surplus parts were used up to make a few small batches of various pedals like the Mk2 pro albeit several years after it had been superceded or removed from the Sola/Macaris catalogue - maybe to meet the residual demand for the earlier pedal type...... These small batch prototypess were all about getting orders from leading players in the music gear field in order that they might offer "their own" house fuzz in their catalogues (before the web - most sales were either from word of mouth or from advertisementss in magazines or trade catalogues [available in most music shops] - So they made up small batches of pedals either on invitation or sometimes purely speculatively to attempt to increase capacity for sales.. The latest generation of Macaris are good businessmen - as we'd have once said in London (I was born there!) - "they know how many pennies make a quid" BUT I HAVE IT ON FIRST HAND AUTHORITY (go on guess who?) that Joe and Larry were absolute masters when it came to building up sales -- times were hard back in the sixties - all around central London were bombed out suburbs even fifteen to twenty years after WW2 times were still hard and so when an opportunity like the boom in beat and then rock music came along, some of the sharper businessmen were in their element - having honed their skills in the immediate postwar period - suddenly there were rich pickings to be had for some guys in the musical trade - whether you built ams or pedals or if maybe you drove a van on the ferry over to Holland weekly [selling whatever was needed] returning with stacked up Hofners (never mind the quality - only 5 quid down.....!!!) There was BIG money to be made in the 15 years between 1962 and 1977 AND by all accounts the Macaris Snr were absolute masters at seizing an opportunity when one presented itself - hard working and entrepreneurial, they might have even paid their taxes :)all of them(
Well I was only a kid in those days even though I used to "bus it" up west on Saturday mornings to hang around Denmark Street on the off chance I'd get to see somebody famous (I saw my share of white Rolls Royces but the shops got cleared of us kids if anyone "BIG" came in!!) or EVEN scam my way into a shop and try out a guitar or two (though normally Hofners or Burns - the American imports were kept for paying customers!!! Specially at the weekend.... but back to Prototypes again - Some like the Supafuzzes for Marshall (not shown here in this pic) or the Voxes went ballistic - albeit with some initial alterations as shown in pictures in this posting and examined & discussed in far greater detail elsewhere. Some like these Rotosounds and the cast Zonk 2 with the mk1.5 circuit "bombed" until being taken up again later with the cheaper mk3 pressed steel type body (as in Rotosound - though even those are exceedingly rare) or silicon fuelled JHS pedals reintroduced even later still in the 70's with modest success. (although the reintroduced JHS pedals were NOT built by Macaris - only the small batch of cast bodied Zonk 2's came from them ) - the lightweight and often pretty dreadful sounding 2nd series of JHS pedals were built by their earlier builders up around Doncaster or Leeds...
So NOW we have: 2/ The newer mk2's
nb.I use the term mk2 loosely in that it's perfectly fair to say that the 2 transistor tonebenders were considered the NEXT version on from the metal mk1's and as such I WILL view them as Mk2s - just the very first of them.. (their builders and those selling them did!) I have done all the work I need to be certain I know of what I speak - not sure who named the mk2 - Larry M or Gary H - But I understand that it was likely Dennis J our very own "Api" who coined the term mk1.5.. at least twenty years after they were first built.
I tried to get them small to look good on the page but BIG IS BETTER -- Well, just ask anyone who themselves is poorly endowed what they think (if they'll admit it )
And this page is already maxi-sized...
DAVIDS PEDALS IN DATE OF MANUFACTURE ORDER: Left to Right - 1/ Early custom 1of1 Mk1.5 in 90's reissue case 2/ First Sola collaboration - long board OC84 Mk2 Pro ser no 007 3/ Early (ser no 10) mk1.5 Goldie - Sola collaboration 4/ This past weeks no 41 Goldie mk1.5 Sola Collaboration 5/ Todays beautiful (in every way!!!) Blue mk2 Pro short board OC75's MACARI BUILT PEDALS:
: RARE Sola branded metal mk1- pair of Mk1.5's (representing the breadth that you can get from two good but different sounding examples - take it from me - on these earliest pedals there was always a huge amount of variation on their performance, almost everybody will have heard of " Big Name" players sorting through boxes of fuzzfaces or whatever to find the one or two that sounded just right for their needs!WISH I HAD A CHANCE LIKE THAT!! (remember my personal mantra these years now often refuted I have to say but not by any of the oldtimers I have spoken with) - regardless of what is needed now days with forty to fifty year old components, the guys building them DID NOT MEASURE OR SOMETIMES EVEN BOTHER ROUGHLY GRADING THEIR TRANSISTORS..(though sometimes the semiconductor factories did a rough sort putting dabs of paint or differing ink stamps onto units with stronger output.. So even allowing for small component value drifting (Highly unlikely!!) even one nice sounding example will not necessarily cover the entire spectrum of tones available to a well set up pedal - I am happy to have two each of the earliest ones - Mk1/ JHS Zonk Machine/ Mk1.5/ M2) - then a rare Sola branded mk2 Pro - A Vox "overprinted - as in they printed Vox and that ugly black bar over an already screenprintd Sola mk2 pro - the second print obscured some of the brand info - in the detailed area for that particulsr pedal I show/explain the procedure and the pedal much more clearly - Then a pair of regular Vox Mk2 Pros (this is the cosmetic design that Vox settled for though the innards were essentially the same as all the others - again a pair to demonstrate/cover the tones available from two nice examples!! - And Last of all -HERE- the Rotosound prototype mk2.
anyway!!!! 
(no smilie for split lips????)
the pics do enough of that 
(if they'll admit it 
)
