Toneslut Custom Amplification

I can’t believe I haven’t posted this yet!

Last Autumn, I was asked if I could make a Buzzaround. I’d heard of them, and even heard a clone once, but it didn’t click what a special pedal it was at first. Then I remembered, this was the box used by Robert Fripp of King Crimson and a few others.

Alas, it was made by Baldwin-Burns for only a very short time in the mid-’60s, and is extremely rare on the open market.  Luckily, schematics and photos of originals are available, and some good friends of mine even sent me some of the hard-to-find transistors used in the originals.

One last challenge was the artwork. I asked the new owner if he had a preferred theme and he shot me some artwork by the same artist who did the cover of their vinyl-only EP.  I dug the critter so much I did the box in white powdercoat and matched the font and border to the colors, then gave it maximum area on the box.

See the results for yourself:

It now wears blue knobs to match the font, but I unfortunately took pictures before I had them on hand.

The sound? I love it. It’s everything a fuzzface wants to be, running from gently pushed distortion to full on grind.

The response I got was:

Hey Chris. Your pedal is kicking my fuzzface's butt, and I really dig my
fuzzface. The buzz is a lot creamier and smoother, but again much more
dynamic then i thought it would be with the volume knob. getting really
nice harmonics out of it also. have regulated my fuzzface as more of a
hairy rangemaster and using the buzz as my full on fuzz.
cheers!
T

Good to hear that it has found a spot on that pedalboard. I feel good when I know I’m making something that works for the musician above all else.

If you enjoy vintage tones like this, definitely check out Tony’s band, The Mag 7 and keep an eye out for their shows in the Chicago area. They’re evolutionary, improvisational, emotional,  and powerful — the type of Rock and/or Roll that’s best heard live. The way Rock and/or Roll should be.

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I couldn’t post this when it was done because it was sent as a gift to my good friend Conrad in Belgium. He’s a certified Whiskey taster, as well as a certified good person, and probably certifiable in general.

I can’t remember when I’ve ever hit it off so well with another person in regards of shared interests and musical tastes. One night we found ourselves listening to his music collection and raiding his stash of single-malts, so I used the occasion as inspiration for a Conrad Special version of this wonderful clean-boost pedal.

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I’ve been putting together some pedals with custom graphics for folks before Exmas.

This one’s for Don Kohinga in Melbourne, Australia. His company is Southern Cross amplification, so I chose a stellar theme and imposed the southern cross over it.

The pedal is a two stage clean boost based on the Performance Enhancer. The problem was that Don wanted to run his performance enhancer all the time, but he still wanted to have two volume levels — a boost for leads and a lower volume for rhythm sections. The performance enhancer can add something really nice to an acoustic guitar tone, so this is a common conundrum.

This configuration allows the user to run the pedal all the time, dialing in the higher level of boost with the Volume control, and a lower level of boost with the gain control. A kick of the High/Low switch turns the gain control on and off — switching between the higher and lower volumes.

Click on the images for a closeup of the artwork. The graphics are applied over a hand-painted box, so bad masking and rattlecan errors are obvious, but I’m pretty happy with how this one came out.

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