Rotosound Fuzz no. 1

[DiscoFreq]

The Jennings Cyclone I have has the same sticker - I ought to do a pic or two - its very crowded inside!! G

The Jennings pedals often have multiple PCB's: my Hi-Lo has 2, my Repeater (with treble booster) has 2, so probably your Cyclone has 4 boards?

[Philip]

Going by the stickers Jennings and JHS/Rotosound were both Kent based. Connection...

[Stu]

Rotosound strings were around in '66-'67, The Who even had an ad for them on The Who Sell Out.

The current Rotosound company (Rotosound Manufacturing Ltd.) was only incorporated in 1994. I looked up James How, and found James How Industries (listed as a musical instrument manufacturer), incorporated in 1964 and dissolved in 1994. Strangely, the last address was in Leicester.

Incidentally, I also looked up Sola Sound, which was incorporated on 03/11/1964.

[API]

Ok Stu, thanks for the info on the strings.

I found the leaflet from the NOS Jennings pedals I have, see below, they clearly introduce the pedals as Rotosound with "patented rotary action".
Somehowe this would make you think that they should have all been marked Rotosound on the front like yours, but maybe they liked Jennings better (Tom that is!).

Also found the family shot of the other Jennings pedals I have (with some other friends!).
The gold Growler is the only one I have ever seen or heard of, originally sold in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!!

Actually when I think about all this I just remembered that I have another Jennings fuzz in the same case that has a different circuit!
Need to dig that out and get pics.
From memory that one also has a 2 piece back panel, probably to access the battery compartment only.

Enjoy!

Dennis

[Electric Warrior]

now that ipod rotary control looks not so innovative anymore, eh?
great idea for a stompbox, but for a portable audio player? it's so much more comfortable to just push a button to scroll long lists instead of constantly turning the thumb

[Nick]

bumping this ancient/obscure thread...

So, we've known for quite a while now that there were other models that Jennings rebranded for Rotosound in 1969, besides Stu's 'one-knob fuzz' posted earlier, because details about the business arrangement were reported in BI at the time.



A few weeks/months ago, some old geezer actually posted this photo on a social media group somewhere. I've no idea where it comes from, but it supposedly shows James How, Pete Wilshire and Alan Marcuson 'businessing' it up over what appears to be a Rotosound Growler.



As far as I'm aware, the pedal that Stu used to own is/was the only extant Rotosound/Jennings crossover pedal. But just the other day, I was working on the great repair & restoration project of my 'Framus' Growler pedal, and I spotted something that I really should have seen earlier. There's an oval-shaped layer of residue around the Framus logo on the front of my pedal, which looks like it could have been left behind after a sticker was ripped off. I bet my 'Framus' pedal might have originally been sold as a Rotosound Growler?!

[HorseyBoy]

There's an oval-shaped layer of residue around the Framus logo on the front of my pedal, which looks like it could have been left behind after a sticker was ripped off. I bet my 'Framus' pedal might have originally been sold as a Rotosound Growler?!

Can't fault your logic, Nick. That sticker residue certainly matches up with the sticker in the picture above.

Hooray for old geezers!

[Doc Holliday]

Yep same oval residue

[DiscoFreq]

Wow nice!!! So you better don't make it too clean now

I have a Framus as well, so I looked for the pictures, but no traces of a sticker...

It reminds me of the Vox Power Boost where you can only see parts of the paint of "Vox" (which was removed), but by tilting it in the light you can still see the entire word.

[fernieite]

Great info, as always Nick!

It was also cool to revisit this thread and seeing a bunch of great old geasers from the earlier days of this forum.