By Tom Mulhern
Have you ever been in an antique store and picked up something that didn’t instantly reveal to you what it was–or what it was designed to do? I used to run across patents for these kinds of "inexplicable" things every time I went digging through the files at the local U.S. Patent Library years ago. I printed out some of the patents and showed them to a few older people who almost instantly identified what they were and what they did. Seems that these things were actually as common to them, years ago, as a TV’s remote control is to us. Point number one: Reconstructing history is sometimes no more difficult than asking the right people.
Okay, so Gramps could identify the thingamabob that went on a horse’s harness. Now show a 1967-vintage wah-wah pedal to most people who lived during the ’60s, and ask them what it is. (I’m not talking about musicians here–ask non-musicians.) "Motor control?" "Sewing machine part?" Chances are, you won’t get even a close answer, like a volume pedal. Show them even the weirdest guitar, though, and they’ll still be able to identify it as a guitar. Point number two: The further you get from the mainstream of everyday objects, the harder it is to get details about things from the past.
We’ve been exceptionally lucky to have the likes of Tom Wheeler, Richard Smith, Tony Bacon, Teisco Del Rey, Walter Carter, and others to sniff out the obscure details, sift through the musty debris of history, filter out the B.S. from people with bad memories or sharp axes to grind, and put together fascinating accounts of the genesis, evolution, and maturing of many makes and models of guitars. But only in the last few years has there been serious discussion about the history of effects as a species, probably (at least in part) because the histories of guitars and amps have been mined so extensively. Compared to piecing together a history of guitars, however, digging out the truth and the lineage of effects is intrinsically far more difficult. The first books about effects are hitting the market, and the brave souls writing them are bound to be "the ones with lots of arrows in their backs," as the old saying goes, because no matter how well-researched they are, the tomes will be damned by some as incomplete or misleading. It’ ain’t gonna be pretty.
I don’t have solutions to the multitude of problems facing the would-be historian of effects (or amps or guitars, too, for that matter), but I know there are loads of obstacles, some that you should bear in mind if you want to join the hunt. Let’s look at some of the main ones:
There’s precious little documentation. Ads and promotional fliers make up the bulk of what you’ll find from manufacturers of effects. And, if you can find a schematic diagram, you may have as much info as you’re likely to find. And, even then, some of the parts may be indicated with the company’s part number, rather than a generic type. I ran into this years ago when trying to replace a transformer in a fuzz box. No number was included on the transformer itself, and the part number was worthless, since the company that made the device had been out of business for well over a decade. You’ll find few service bulletins or service books for effects, since they were largely viewed by manufacturers as unfixable/disposable. Effects were once "niche" products, or "accessories." Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, and other guitar makers got into the amp biz because it made sense. Effects were added to their lines for pretty much the same reason, but in many cases the "big boys" were reluctant to add them, seeing them mostly as a fad.
Companies came and went faster than a Hendrix lick. Remember SeaMoon? How about S. Hawk? Or, ColorSound? They weren’t very big, but they came and went in a comparative blink of an eye. Companies like Maestro and MXR lasted longer. They’re gone, too, although Jim Dunlop recently reintroduced MXR and many other great devices of yesteryear (thanks, Jim!).
Effects are virtually without serial numbers. Unlike guitars and amps, serial numbers are practically nonexistent on effects (rack-mount effects, especially at the high end, often do have serial numbers). Therefore, how many of each effect was made is often anybody’s guess. Contributing to the difficulty of tracking down dates of effects is the generic nature of many parts. A typical old fuzz box may have a few transistors, a handful of resistors and capacitors, a couple of pots, a 9-volt battery clip, and an input and output jack. That’s it. The pots may be a clue to the age, and the type of transistor (germanium vs. silicon) may also be a clue, but unless someone scrawled a date inside the box, you can only guess its age.
Perspective is often skewed by fashion. It’s easy to think that an effect was invented at about the same time as it hit the mainstream consciousness. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it isn’t. The Talk Box is a good example. Everyone thought it was born along with Frampton Comes Alive! or Joe Walsh. However, earlier incarnations were around almost a decade earlier.
Some people may not tell you the truth. This doesn’t necessarily mean that some people will outright lie to you, but it does mean that their version of the truth may be different from what really happened. I ran into this once, and only by checking with several other people was I able to ascertain that the great recollections of the person I interviewed were, let’s say, highly subjective. Memory fades, too, so as we get farther from the genesis of effects, expect those who were involved to become progressively fuzzier about exact details.
Apparent chronology is skewed by many factors. Some effects come from big companies, some come from small ones. Guess who has a budget to create a buzz via advertising, getting pedals to endorsers, etc.? Good guess. You may know about a new stomp box from Boss months before it ever hits the stores, but Garage Bob (who solders his amazing fuzzboxes one at a time on weekends) may be toiling away for a couple of years before you hear about his product. Nevertheless, both may have been conceived and formally introduced simultaneously. However, most people will assume the better-known box came first simply because they heard of it first. In addition, our understanding of modern technology tends to color our view of older technology; hence, we read such things as "the silicon sound" of the old effects, when in actuality the transistors of yore were almost exclusively a different type of semiconductor material, germanium.
Effects evolution doesn’t always parallel technological evolution. An awful lot of effects were born in people’s garages, studio backrooms, and other places outside of the corporate mainstream. A lot of them were prototyped from Radio Shack parts, spare amp and radio parts, and other odds and ends. Engineers at the cutting edge mostly worked for companies like Rockwell or IBM. They weren’t the typical designers of effects, particularly in the early days (1950s to 1970s). Musicians, recording engineers, amp builders, and other assorted tinkerers drove development. And if a prototype worked, then that was generally as much development as was necessary.
There’s no rhyme or reason to revisions. Something like a fuzz box often had no need to evolve; it sounded fine, sold okay, and that was that. In some cases, only when the supply of a certain part dried up was there a change in the circuitry. And some changes occurred because someone figured out a way to reduce the number of parts. In a few cases, parts changed when the manufacturer added an AC adapter jack.
What Americans know is a small part of the picture. Effects boxes have come from abroad ever since there was a market for them. Many were marketed under "U.S.-only" names, or were sold by American manufacturers of guitars and amps, using the American product line’s name. But tons of effects never reached the states. Small, no-name fuzzes and wahs, phasers, and what-not evolved in just about every country where a soldering iron could be plugged in. Some were innovative, and others were knock-offs of American and Japanese models.
Retro pollution has set in. Counterfeiters have always made authentication of guitars a touchy business, best left to experts. Nowadays, we have something akin to counterfeiting, but it’s legitimate: Exact reissues. Some are so close to the originals that it would require an assay of the paint and the solder flux to tell the difference between an original and a reissue. Whereas vintage guitars were mostly made by hand, and each has a personality of its own, effects have been assembled just as often by hand as by machine, but rarely have a personality of their own. Grab the necks of any three Stratocasters from the early 1960s, and you can feel the difference. Plug into any three Uni-Vibes or Vox wah-wahs from the 1960s, and try to tell them apart.
There is good news, though. When it comes down to it, does it matter what an effect’s vintage and pedigree are? Only if you’re a collector, or you feel that your heart will stop beating unless you get the exact retro tone you crave. Stuff comes and goes, and like black-and-white TVs, crankable phonographs, 8-track tapes, and LED watches, there’s a natural progression toward better products–either better from the consumer’s standpoint, or from the manufacturer’s standpoint. Some things simply go out of fashion. Some don’t make sense to manufacture because the market is just too small to sustain a profitable enterprise. We’re currently at a point where, if a manufacturer wants to reissue a "retro" item, there are enough guitarists interested in buying it. And many of these retro items have been updated so that they’re less trouble-prone, quieter, and still able to deliver the sound that made them famous in the first place. As Groucho Marx once quipped, "Outside the improvement, you’ll never notice the difference."