Super Fuzz Guts: The First Year (and a half)

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Continuing on with our bigger mission here of uncovering the true history of the Super Fuzz, I wanted to throw together a post highlighting the (oddly) many variations the early gray units went through in a relatively short period of time. From all available physical records, the Univox Super Fuzz model 108-5 was introduced in the Spring of 1968 and was gone by the end of 1969. Honey, the Japanese brand who sold their version roughly six months-to a year prior, the Baby Crying Fuzz, was bankrupt by Spring of 1969. (Which is just one of many factors that make me think Honey was not the original manufacturer, but we can get into that later...)

Today our main focus is on the Univox-branded Super Fuzzes, seemingly made by the thousands in at most, a year and a half time period. Alright! Let's go:

We'll start with the most common, by a huge margin, version you see above. The mixture of components; grey or blue capacitors, 2SC828 transistors, green or brown caps, etc. are all pretty consistent between these units. Not pictured here is another very notable but hidden part, which is a small film capacitor that's typically soldered to the trace side of the board.

And from examining a lot of Honey units as well, it's my belief that this is most likely the original version of the circuit. But with how common it is there's also a great possibility that they were being made concurrently with the variations to below.

The circuit above almost certainly came next. The combination of parts matches perfectly, and other than a single new addition, it IS the same. But that one little update would go on to alter the Super Fuzz circuit for the next decade...

Removing the hidden capacitor from the backside of the board and adding a trimpot to the front, this V2 Super Fuzz PCB would have a short life, and as of now,has only been found in Honey and Univox branded units. There is a good chance that this alteration was made some time after the release of the Honey Psychedelic Machine in 1968, as it too features essentially the same fuzz circuit with the added trimpot (albeit, in a different layout).

The next iteration is essentially the same, but for some reason the trimpot has been removed completely. Now I haven't seen the trace side of this board so I don't know if the hidden cap is there, nor do I know if all of the part values are the same. But we can probably assume that the manufacturer felt like this particular unit didn't need any additional tuning.

Is it possible that this is essentially the same as the V1 but using a V2 PCB? Until we see more of these I can't say for certain.

Our next two examples, "V3", ends up being the PCB that will be used to the end of the run. Shin-ei will even go on to copy this exact layout for their "FY-6 Fuzz Master" in 1970, until a final revision (V4) is introduced in 1975.

This version features the same missing trimpot and holes where it should be. You may also notice at the bottom (left of the blue wire) is a green or tan capacitor that was not present in previous versions. From what I understand this was done to reduce noise coming from the battery (but I could definitely be wrong here). And they seemed to really like the idea because this is the next most common board you'll find after the V1.

Now that we've gone through each version I wanted to show a couple oddities that you may come across. The first is this V1 Super Fuzz that uses a combination of 2SC828 transistors and metal can 2SC539's. This is another combination I have only found in Univox and Honey branded units.

There are two other places where you will find this though; the Honey Psychedelic Machines and Univox Uni-Fuzz. Honey appears to have started using the 2SC539 transistors with the creation of the Vibra Chorus / Psychedelic Machine. And as a result, some of them also found their way into Baby Crying Fuzzes, Super Fuzzes, and Uni-Fuzzes.

For our final example we have a V3 board but with a unique combination of parts not often seen in Super Fuzzes. The resistors were commonly used in mid-late 60s Japanese amplifiers and also found in a few early fuzz pedals, like the Guyatone FS-1 and the Voice Differential Box. Another place you can find them is in some Uni-Fuzzes, which helps confirm that this pedal wasn't just repaired at some point.

This was most likely built in 1969, as it matches the parts and layout of both the early Crown Super Fuzzes and the earliest Apollo Super Fuzzes. This was really an interesting and mysterious time period in the pedal's history because by all accounts Honey had gone out of business and Shin-ei had yet to take over...

So the question remains; who was making these pedals? All the examples above, while appearing to be sequential, I believe at least, were made simultaneously. Yes, the V1 was almost certainly first, and the V3 was last, but for the amount of V1's out there it really would stand to reason that all three were being made at the same time. There were also two different enclosures and paint colors used! (two different manufacturers???)

To make things even more maddening, I just looked back at this original factory schematic drawn out by Univox in June of 1968. This would have been roughly one month after receiving the pedals from Japan, and it not only shows the use of two different transistors, but also a TRIMPOT! 

So now I don't know what to think. 😂

My current conclusion hasn't really changed though, because I still believe that within the history of the circuit (1967-1969) it was originally designed without a trimpot, and then in early 1968 (probably with the creation of the Psychedelic Machine and addition of different components) they redesigned the PCB to have space for a trimpot in order to bias the transistors regardless of the components being used? What we do know for sure is that A. the Psychedelic Machine utilizes the 2SC828 and 2SC539 transistor combo, and the board has a trimpot to bias the transistors. And B. that the Honey Baby Crying Fuzz pre-dates the Psychedelic Machine, with the two effects being invented by different people (the former of whom is still a mystery).

This is all to say that I still think while there is a logical order in which these PCB variations were designed, most likely they were all being made at the same time, and possibly by more than one manufacturer in Japan. And it's just by pure chance that the unit Univox dissected for their factory schematic happened to be a somewhat obscure example.

That mess aside, what I am most interested in, and think is the key to solving a large chunk of this riddle, is finding out what exactly happened in the nine months following February 1969. This is like a no-man's-land vortex between the end of Honey and the beginning of the Shin-ei era, yet we have hard evidence showing OEM Super Fuzzes arriving at stores within that period (Crown, Apollo, JH Experience). So who was making them? Who was distributing them? 

What's even weirder is that we've also seen pedals such as the Guyatone FS-3 from 1972 that appear to use old Honey parts, most likely auctioned off after the Shin-ei buyout. So what did that situation look like?

What we do know is that in 1970 Univox would go on to use a different manufacturer for the Super Fuzz model U-1095, continuing with the same factory that was responsible for their Uni-Wah. (This is almost certainly who, in 1967, Unicord hired to build the LRE Fuzz Sound as well). Unfortunately we do not know the name of this manufacturer, but it appears as though "Melos" could possibly have been their house brand.

Either way, I hope this was a bit interesting to you! I try to keep it fairly surface-level when it comes to the circuit analysis stuff (mostly because "surface level" is personally the amount of knowledge I possess on the subject :) but also because I think we can garner a lot from simply noticing the little similarities and differences between pedals, outside and in.

Thanks for reading!
And make sure to check out this classic blog post from Cult pedals that introduced me to many of these circuit variations years ago. It's a fantastic read, as is the entire site!
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