Jujiya FB-1 Fuzz Box (New Grail Unlocked)

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Last month, friend of the blog Marcelo (of Guitar Restos) reached out to let me know he had purchased a handful of old Japanese music magazines, and in the stack was an issue of Music Life from June of 1968. He very graciously pulled a group of scans from it, sending me anything even remotely pedal-related. In those scans was a mysterious fuzz I had never seen or heard of before, from a Kyoto based instrument shop...

The FB-1 Jujiya Fuzz Box (as Google Translate calls it) was a two-knob fuzz pedal with controls for volume and gain, and housed in what appears to be an enclosure heavily influence by/is a complete ripoff of the Mosrite Fuzzrite. And basically, that's all we know (other than it was "used by top players" of course)! So we'll have to look a bit deeper and see if anything else from this single image can give us clues as to what it could be, or at the very least, what it is not.

This is a super specific observation, but the first detail that stood out was that footswitch. And while 99% of even the nerdiest of nerds would have overlooked this, it doesn't seem to be the same type of switch you usually see on almost ALL pedals built in Japan during the 1960s (or 70s for that matter). Funny enough, it does look like a handful of replacement footswitches I have seen🤔. Additionally, those knobs are quite interesting! They're like the inverse of the classic Sato knobs, but more importantly I can't think of any other vintage Japanese pedals that use anything like them. Lastly, the graphics seem to be from one of those old label-maker guns you used as a kid to make sure everyone knew exactly which Trapper Keeper was yours.

So what does this all mean?

*here comes the complete speculation part of the article - What I think this means is that we can, most likely, rule out the option that the Jujiya Fuzz Box was built by any of the usual suspects (Shin-ei, Maxon, Royal, etc.). It's possible that they were actually built right there inside of the Jujiya Musical Instrument store (now known as "Jeugia", and is still very much around today). It's also possible that it was a local builder hired for such things. Unfortunately that part may stay a mystery. 

As of now, I have never seen an FB-1 Jujiya Fuzz Box outside of the advertisement above. I'm left wondering tons of things like; How many were made? What circuit was it based on? Were there any other Jujiya effects or gear? And the biggest question; How can I find one?! 

So if you have any additional information at all, even fading memories of different advertisements, please feel free to reach out to me via Email or Instagram. Any info helps, as I now have a new mission, and it's finding a Jujiya Fuzz Box. 

thanks for reading,

-ed