Eddie Kramer thinks this photo was taken in August 1968. Apparently there were at least two sessions at Record Plant during that month, but 'Come on' was recorded there on the 27th, and that track features some pretty terrible fuzz-guitar, so I can't help but wonder whether one of these early pre-EHX pedals were used on it.
Since I like Jimi Hendrix and I also like Fuzzrites, naturally, I had to find one of these for myself:
Obviously it's not the ex-Hendrix/Mitch Mitchell from the infamous auction some time ago, but because it's not got any 'foxey' graphics, and because the battery clasp is mounted under the top cover, it was probably built around the same time. I grabbed this from a well-known former EHX collector. He's had his collection cherry-picked by serious collectors for the better part of a decade now, as far as I know, but it seems like nobody wanted this one
Transistors are sadly replaced because the pedal apparently sounded terrible with the original ones. It's still a really nasty sounding pedal. It sounds very distinctly 'Fuzzrite', and it's very noisy & high gain, to the point of self-oscillation (possibly because of the replacement transistors?), but it's quite splatty too. I guess I'd describe the sound as somewhere between a Fuzzrite and a FY-2.
Kitrae wrote: ↑Fri Oct 03, 2014 10:02 pm
1967 Guild Foxey Lady, the very rare version Mike Matthews had made for Guild by Aul Instruments. As I recall, it was basically just a modified Fuzz Rite. When Mosrite went under Mike jumped in there and took over supplying the Foxey Lady's to Guild, well into the 1970's.
It's a bit tangential, but these Auls definitely pre-date the Mosrite/Guild connection. All the Mosrite-built Foxey Lady pedals that I've seen have Sprague modules, which date to mid/late-1968. It doesn't really make complete sense to me yet, but it seems like Mike might have set up this deal with Guild & Aul in late-67/early-68, and that (based on how rare these grey Auls are) this might have only been a short-lived venture until Mosrite took over. Mosrite was toast by early-1969, and this coincides with when the first
EHX-built Foxey Lady pedals appear. EHX did take over production of the Guild Foxey Lady after Mosrite went bankrupt, but that might not have been the first such dealings between Matthews & Guild.
The Auls are definitely connected to Mike Matthews though, because I think he himself was the source of the name of that obscure electronics company, and the remains of another butchered Aul were recently discovered in Bob Myer's trash (
).
Mike Matthews has maintained over the years that at some point he got a phone call from someone at Manny's (son of the owner?) about how they had sold a fuzzbox to Jimi Hendrix, and Effectsdatabase-Bart has logged a photo of another of these early pedals that
has a Manny's sticker on. My pedal looks like it has a faint outline below the switch where a similar sticker might have once stuck. Because this all happened in NYC, I'd agree with you that it's very likely that these were being sold out of Manny's.
