Check it out in all its gnarly and unhinged glory//
Thanks for watching!
-ed
Check it out in all its gnarly and unhinged glory//
Thanks for watching!
-ed
And because of this, most people are not aware that in addition to the now legendary Perfboard Big Muff, both the v1 Low Frequency Compressor and the v1 Pulse Modulator also featured circuits built on perfboard!
So what is it?
Well in a simple explanation, it's a pedal with 3 separate tremolos that allow you to control the speed and volume of each individually. It also features a boost circuit, that I assume is somewhat similar to the LPB-1(?).
When it comes to the tremolo, it's considered a pulsewave, which is essentially a non-linear squarewave (on/off) style. And if you engage all three at different speeds, you can imagine how chaotic this would get; with cascading pulses creating mind-melting patterns and wild polyrhythms!
So the design itself was a bit ahead of its time (or maybe it was perfectly OF its psychedelic time), because in just two short years the Pulse Mod was no longer being sold by ehx.Even though it didn't do well, the Pulse Mod surprisingly saw two brief spin-offs with the Stereo Pulse Modulator and wildly misnamed Hare Lip Microphone Echo.
All three of these effects were super weird, and would essentially set the stage for the type of experimentation that Electro Harmonix and Mike Matthews would become known for.
In addition to this monumental contribution, Seidman was also one of the first, if not THE first person from the US to go over to Japan and set up a musical instrument business relationship between the two countries; which would eventually lead to the 60s Japanese import boom!
There is a great interview with Bob Seidman over at the NAMM "Oral Histories" page, and I would highly recommend checking out the full video:
Additionally, there is an unfortunate lack of information about LIMMCO currently online. And since I believe Seidman to be a pivotal player in the early effects world, I would love to find out more about him and his company!
So if you happen to have anything at all related to LIMMCO; a catalog, old advertisements, a personal story, etc. please reach out to me via Email or Instagram. I would love to help put together the story of this mysteriously important part of rock history.
So today I think it would be helpful to go through the history of Shin-ei date stamps, and how to decipher what they actually mean...
But as you begin to dig deeper, you realize that by the mid-70s, rock n' roll had become (almost) completely worldwide, and that every country seemed to have their own version of the most popular effects of the day.
That brings us to, I'm totally guessing here, late-70s Mexico, where we get our first in a series of Shin-ei FY-2 clones; The Peak Bell-2 Fuzz Tone Box was an almost exact replica of the Shin-ei in looks and build, with just minor part value adjustments.