Cool new Fender loot!
We now have Fender Zippo lighters, Fender bottle openers, Fender vintage catalog cover magnets, and Fender shirts.
Rock. Roll.
Elektronika FL-01 flanger.
Picture 1. The circuit board.
Picture 2. The weird giant integrated circuit. No clue; probably a multiple opamp or something.
Picture 3. The transformer. This effect runs on 220V wall power, so I had to use a step-up transformer, which turns local USA wall power, 110 volts alternating current (VAC), into Euro-style 220 VAC. The pictured transformer (inside the pedal) almost certainly lowers the voltage into the neighborhood of 9 (?) volts and feeds that into a rectifier and then filter caps to give the pedal the usual direct current power supply.
До свидания, suckers.
Picture 1. USSR flangers, sent by bag.
Picture 2. PE-11 PCB. Notice the Roman script printing on the circuit board, the 5DIN sockets, and the flat head screws. Reminds me of Electroharmonix stuff circa 1970.
Picture 3. Close-up of components. Note the Cyrillic on the chips.
Picture 4. Close-up of Soviet-style wiring harness. Done with string. Who needs ribbon cable?
My Soviet flangers have arrived! I just got an Электроника ФЛ-01, and an Электроника ПЭ-11 (Elektronika FL-01 and Elektronika PE-11, for those not versed in Cyrillic.).
They’re pretty weird, and for a variety of reasons. The most obvious thing about them is that they’re huge compared to Western pedals, and they have chintzy (though nicely retro) plastic housings.
Second, they have strange Soviet components. The integrated circuits looks basically the same, but everything else looks like Western stuff, but from 20 years prior, except the resistors, which are little pink and grey cylinders with numerical resistance values printed directly on them.
Third, the language barrier: the PE-11 has English language controls, but the FL-01 doesn’t. Instead, it has wacky Russian all over it:
Main controls
фильтр - filter?
глубина - depth
скорость - rate
яркость - tone (literally, “brightness”)
эффект - effect
Inputs and outputs
вход - in
оригинал - original
выход - out
эффект - effect
сеть - network ??? No clue.
Fourth, and most importantly, they use 5-DIN cables. Imagine a regular old five pin MIDI cable. Then imagine that’s what you use to plug your guitar into your amp and effects. I opened them up, and the FL-01 is a straight-up mono input, mono output affair. Pins 1 and 5 of the 5-DIN connector are hot, pin 3 is ground, and pins 2 and 4 are not used. Luckily for me, a standard MIDI cable can be altered to work with these jacks. Sometimes you see cables wired up for this setup with three just pins, aka 3-DIN.
I have no clue what pins 2 and 4 are for on the PE-11, since they’re wired up inside the pedal, but the pedal works when you just use the same 3-DIN cables. I suspect that this is a stereo flanger, and that the extra pins carry the other channel’s output. Both channels would share a ground.
Incidentally the PE-11 sounds pretty much like a modern Western flanger, but the FL-01 sounds like crazy, washy reverb mixed with flanging. It’s, uh… like a flanger.
More pics soon!
Another Blues DeVille came in! This one’s a 60th Anniversary (2006) edition, and it’s got the footswitch, manual, and dust cover with it. It’s also the 4x10 combo version (these were also made in a 2x version with the same head).
Loud as hell, and great for country and blues in particular, but sweet for rock, too.
All-tube, of course.
This is what’s inside a phaser. The circuit basically splits the signal in two: one signal it basically leaves alone, while the other one goes through a series of identical opamp-driven phase shift networks. On this side of the circuit, the phase is shifted in proportion to the incoming signal frequency, and when the two signals are blended back together, that swirling trippy Hendrixy sound is the slight mismatch of the phasing of the two signals.
Long story short, we have not one but TWO vintage Ross (aka Kustom) Phasers, with original box and box candy. You buy now!
Turkish jazz, anybody? We have a FRETLESS Agile Les Paul. It’s got Grover tuners and definite Les Paul heft. Incidentally, Agiles were made in the Samick plants after Gibson yanked its Epiphone line out of Korea, which was dumb in terms of quality because the Korean stuff was excellently made. Every Agile I’ve ever tried was a good guitar.
Anyway, these fretless beauties are pretty rare; they were imported for a couple of years and that was that. You can do very interesting stuff with them, though, and they work well for slide and Middle Eastern music.
Blast from the past: Boss ME-6 multi-effects unit. Made in the mid-’80s, so it’s about as old as I am… Anyhow, it works perfectly and has the original adapter. $60! Cheap!
An Acoustic 370 head! Sweet.
This was a weapon of choice for bands like Led Zeppelin and Mahavishnu Orchestra.
300 watts solid state, with a parametric EQ.
…so I’ve been a bit lazy about updates lately. Watch this space though, since I have some interesting new goodies in the pipeline, including and certainly not limited to a Roland HS-10 (aka Alpha Juno) formerly owned by the St. Louis Cardinal’s organist, a KORG MS2000R digital analog synth module, a Roland Juno G, a nice little used Mackie mixer, a Heineken-branded Telecaster, a Joe Strummer Telecaster, a vintage Dukoff alto sax mouthpiece, and way more.
Rock out.
Happy new year, everyone! Party safely, and musically where possible.
Dean VX Flying V guitar! Rock out with your organ of choice out… with Grover tuners, by the way.
Take it home for a cool $150.
This just in: Jay Turser 335 copy. Semi-hollow construction, blond finish, double humbuckers.
Come and get it! Just $250, and if you pick it up before Christmas, we’ll throw in a gig bag.
Booyah, grandma.
Come in and check out this hand-made Ison 417! It’s like a Gibson Super 400, but handmade right here in Show-Me State. Comes with case, hand-wired pickups, cool Merle Travis-style whammy bar, and all the class you can handle.
I’m going to try to doing product demos. Excepting the MXR Carbon Copy, here’s the first one. Demoing the Fernandes Vertigo with upgrades.
