analogguru wrote:The seller added internal shots - sadly only with very poor quality.
Based on my newly acquired knowledge & the recommendation of serious collectors I am now willing to listen to offers over £1500 for this rare, hand-made item.
So is there someone ready to invest $ 3.000,--
into a shitty fuzzbox ? This would be necessary to get better pictures:
I will take detailed pics as required once a firm price has been agreed.
Personally I would never deal with such a greedy guy:
I am prepared to listen to offers & will re-list the item with an agreed 'buy-it-now' price
But at least we know the pot-values for free:
The stamp on the 100K POTS APPEARS TO READ 277 203008 but i can't really make it out that well.
Hey..: The Colorsound Tonebender´s had the same value
Datas of the NKT 213: 32V/250mA/200mW ß>50/1mA fg>900kHz
a really shitty transistor.....
Maybe the Macaris-Brothers will invest the required $3.000,-- to hide the real roots of the 3knob-Tonebender ?
The questions which remain:
Who was the engineer/inventor of this unit and was it really built in Britain ? The case looks more US-like.... components are european...
cables look like in the Marshall Superfuzz....
analogguru
The same guy who invented the MKI and II Gary Hurst (not Dick Denney) did the Burns Buzz Around as well. It's basically a Supa Fuzz/MKII with a high pass filter and an extra ac coupled feedback. Q1 has a bias on emitter to ground and base to rail.
NKT213's are good, i have several hundred, they were used cuz you could get them off the shelf in the 60's (just like NKT275's) in hundreds at a time. Plentiful and cheap! They were sold as direct replacements for utility in old radios for networks and amplifiers. Not a whole lotta difference tween them and 275's in terms of tone, most are very low gain.
The reason the BBA is so expensive is cuz they were out sourced in England, handwired by a house and very few were produced from competition (rarity mostly). Then throw on the folklore/urban legend, historic players who rave on about their fave fuzz from when they were kids before their brains got fried on drugs/booze n women and wahlah! Super high prices.... You just don't see them for sale, when they broke back then, most people just chucked em in the trash and went and bought a new $20.00 fuzz. Remember, Arbiter Fuzz Faces were less than $25.00 in 1968...
That one for auction is actually a very early model, hand wired on tag board and bent wedge housing... Later they went to the cheap/ultra shitty British PC board and sand cast aluminum housing (like Marshall Supa Fuzz). Competition was so high with Sola, Arbiter, Rotosound, EKO, Maestro and so on building fuzzes, I doubt Burns could make any money and prolly stopped making them... Just an educated guess, but I bet I'm close.
I've had three buzz arounds... I think they are so shitty n cool, really a piece of guitar history much like Sola Sound IMHO.
The three knob Tone Bender is a mess, whoever invented that needs to be slapped cuz he doesn't know bias and audio wave forms sonically. the bias is messed up on first and third stages, it drives both inverted and non-inverted outs of Q1 into Q2 causing the current to shut off Q2 (makes the shitty spitty fizzy fuzztone sound) if it has too much gain, stupid fuzz control too and Q3 has one Ge diode clipping one side with a shitty tone stack and no output stage...
I have my own version of that circuit called the MKIV coming out. I fixed all the problems with bias, each stages turns the next on perfectly making it sing muscially, fixed the tone stack and added a Ge output buffer. Very smooth, clips even order harmonics very well, tons of smooth musical fuzz and cleans up like a good ole Fuzz Face does.
Enuff of my blather, sorry for being a fuzz nerd and rambling on...
Toodles
Scotty