Gasalcoholics anonymous? whoever said this was a help group?

[Gone Fission]

My Cooper FX Gen Loss v2 gives me tons of BoC vibes. With the additional “Models” functionality I would hope the CB one should be able to finally lock that sound down for you.

[univalve]

EarthQuaker Devices Time Shadows II DBA MultiDelay incoming. Curious about that one.

It rules. There's no blend control but it just sounds right on any setting. Great filter and saturated sound, one of my favorite scores this year.

Thanks for the info! Will arrive today. Stoked

Okay, and outgoing.
Sounds okaish but i have better delays and filters and the always on filter annoys me. Too gimmicky for me.

Walrus SILT and Kernom Fuzz in.
The later one is fantastic. The fuzz factory that would deserve that name.

[dubkitty]

i tested the EHX Attack Decay running solely without presets, expression pedal, or running things through its effects loop as an ancillary piece in front of the FEB and it's quiet now. i don't know if it didn't like the effects loop or what, but i'm not inclined to put it back on the board. rather, i think i'll run it after the FEB or the big board. i need to look up whether i can assign the expression pedal to attack time without using presets, which i found would screw up every couple or three weeks. so the Gloamer is going back to Sweetwater where i should leave a review noting its abrupt cutoff of decay. the AD is so much better at volume envelopes.

the Gen Loss isn't going to get here till Friday, so i packed up the FEB for awhile and am working on my Strat; see my project guitars thread. i keep saying that soon i'll be able to stop, but i genuinely am running out of pedalboard "needs." the only thing i can think of is fine-tuning the dirt section of the Normie Board, which is a bit OTT. perhaps it'll work better through a dirty-ish amp which is my general oeuvre...even the Fender cleans i like aren't exactly pristine.

[Pepe]

Well, if this doesn't have ILF written all over it, then I'm stumped!

A few years ago a good friend demonstrated me his Schaller Tonverzerrer (engl: tone distorter), a German fuzz pedal that has already been in the Schaller product catalogue in 1969. Ever since then I wanted to have one, too. Last Thursday I immediately bought this beauty when it popped up for sale, listed as defective. Today it was delivered, much to my joy, because due to the sparsely and delayed communication with the seller I had no information that it has been sent off already.

Unlike the two units that my friend has owned, this one does not have a mere plastic chassis sprayed with hammer finish paint. It has a solid metal housing.

Everything seems to be absolutely original. The electrolytic capacitors are from the big German corporation Siemens. The input jack has the nut on the inside, the output jack on the outside. That looked strange at first, but after seeing a Höfner branded unit with the same jacks I was certain that this is normal in the early units.

Even the battery (with the date "72" on it) has oviously never been changed. Thanks God, it is a non-leaking 9V battery. But: there is no battery snap! The battery poles are soldered to the circuit! Has someone ever seen something like this? So crazy! It really seems to be stock this way.

So far I only heard some crackling bypass sound. The battery has no power anymore. I have to install a clip and overhaul all the connections. I'm sure that it will work perfectly again in a few days.

[alexsga]

wow, badass! soldered battery lugs...something ive never seen before!

[Chankgeez]

[Pepe]

wow, badass! soldered battery lugs...something ive never seen before!

I was completely surprised by that view! I wonder if "72" was the production date or the expiration date. I tend to believe it's the latter, so this might be a very early unit. The circuit and the components are also different in comparison to later units.

[dubkitty]

i really want one of those.

[Warpsmasher]

https://www.fredric.co.uk/verzerrer

[Pepe]

https://www.fredric.co.uk/verzerrer

That's a tribute to another breed, a distortion pedal made in the GDR, the Eastern part of Germany behind the Iron Curtain until 1989. Schaller is from West Germany.

But it's very interesting! I haven't heard of that certain distortion unit before.

EDIT: And this Fredric Effects pedal is a tribute to the Schaller TR-68 Tremolo:
https://www.fredric.co.uk/west-germany-vintage-tremolo

[crochambeau]

Holy smokes that Schaller is a beauty. May a flat battery be the only thing wrong.

I bought some PCBs today, or more specifically the manufacturing of.

[Pepe]

Instant success! The Schaller Fuzz is alive again, and it sounds great. I have yet to compare it with other fuzzes in the next days. It sounds quite rough at low Intensität settings with a quickly decaying distortion sound, but fully cranked it really sings with lots of sustain and a light octave-up fuzz. It has a lot of headroom, apparently because of the pickups with low volume back then. Power chords result in very hard and thick distortion, suitable for heavy rock. The Schaller Tonverzerrer is definitely a keeper!

I hope that I can shoot a few good pictures of it tomorrow. It has cleaned up nicely. I managed to get the engraved text a bit brighter again with the help of a fine screwdriver and a dirt eraser. And all the bare metal parts are looking a bit more shiny again thanks to fine steel wool. It's not perfect, but for an at least 55 year-old pedal the result is really cool.

Yesterday night a read a bit more about the pedal. In the instruction manual it is called "Tonverzerrer TV 1966/67" and "TV 66/67". So apparently the fuzz pedal was introduced in 1966/67 and therefore the tremolo model "Tr 68" in 1968.

My model seems to be a very, very early unit. I really doubt that the people at Schaller used the user-unfriendly 9V battery with soldered lugs for a long time. Every other old unit that I spotted has a vintage looking battery clip. Someone claims to have a genuine Schaller fuzz from 1967 in this shootout video with a clone that he made. It looks exactly like my model, with the PEGEL (Level) knob right in the middle, aligned with the bypass switch. All the other units have the two knobs more on the right, even in the instruction manual and the old catalogues.



Later models have a different circuit with modern looking transistors (at around 1972), at some point BC237B silicon transistors. This circuit has two Germanium transistors! They are Italian AC192 from TES (Tecnica Elettronica System, still existing today).

[alexsga]

came with manual too! you found it on ebay or something?

[Pepe]

No, the scan of the manual is from a German website about tape echo machines. The Schaller fuzz popped up in a local ad.

[Gone Fission]

That is so fricking cool. It gives me silly thoughts about trying to recreate the circuit and layout.