Mystery: Solved!!! (Yura Yura Teikoku)

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This tiny, blurry, illegible image that you see below just unlocked a 15+ year mystery. I was looking for pdf's of old Japanese Rock magazines and despite its size, this little photo caused me to do a complete double-take. The unfortunate part was there was not a larger version (which was pretty damn unfortunate for me). But the good thing was that it existed at all, AND I knew exactly where it came from... 

In 2010 a truly legendary music video was making its rounds through the various vintage pedal forums; the song was called "Tsumetai Gift" and the artist was Yura Yura Teikoku. The track was actually from 2003, but was only then being discovered by a group of enthusiastic American nerds some 7 years later. (*see video below)

The concept for the first 3/4 of the video seems to be, "look at how awesome vintage pedals are!", as it opens with an original Honey Baby Crying Fuzz on a rotating platform, before giving way to a seemingly endless line of pedal grail after pedal grail.

Back on my favorite forum at the time (the D*A*M forum), we all came together and attempted to name every pedal highlighted in the 06:14 video. There were a handful of obscure oddities, but after just a couple weeks of sleuthing we were able to pin down all but one. And as accomplished as we should have felt, that one pedal would haunt us for years.

Appearing at the 02:40 mark, with only two seconds of screentime, this large box that kind of looked like an early 70s Maestro Sustainer, but clearly wasn't, became an instant cypher to crack. The colors were correct (Black & Green) and the general design was similar to the Maestro, but the graphics were wrong, the enclosure was off, and it just wasn't it. But could it be an early clone or something?

Yes, the video was shot in Japan, but it featured pedals from all over Europe and the US as well. So could this be some foreign pedal that's just never surfaced before?

Everyone's best guess was that it was some kind of Russian/USSR pedal from the 70s or 80s. Most likely a clone and probably of the Maestro Sustainer. And at the time this felt the most "right", as there are still plenty of Soviet-era pedals being found in 2026, let alone in 2010. And many of these are so close to actual units made by Electro Harmonix, for instance, that they border on "counterfeit" territory rather than a simple clone.

And for years, the "it's probably some Eastern European pedal" theory was the best we had. It never showed up for sale on either Reverb or Ebay, or even any of the Japanese or Euro auction sites (as far as we knew anyways).

Well unbeknownst to us, on the other side of the world there was a group of likeminded pedal nerds in Japan who where attempting to do the exact same thing. And just like us, they too were getting stuck on the black and green mystery pedal. But they did have one bit of info we didn't, which was the owner's name of this amazing stash; Souichiro Nakamura, owner and acclaimed producer/engineer at Inter Music studio, later renamed "Peace Music", who recorded the song in question. (*see his crazy collection below)

When asked about the music video he admitted that many gear geeks had inquired about that specific green/black pedal over the years, and no one had ever figured it out (nor was he willing to give up the answer). So this led to even more best-guesses and forum debates, with the current consensus being that it must have been some vintage Korean pedal, possibly a copy of the Maestro Sustainer, that has just never shown up again...

So by now, if you are a regular here, you know that I can't get stuff like this out of my brain. It haunts me. 

And while I hadn't been actively seeking out that specific pedal over the years, I would immediately recognize it if I saw one. Which brings us back to that tiny, blurry photo at the top of this article.

As I stated, I was in the middle of one of my nightly internet rabbit hole scrolls when I came across that image, from a December 1975 issue of Music Life magazine (picture Japan's equivalent of Hit Parader). It was about as tiny of a scan as I've ever seen and impossibly pixelated, but luckily it wasn't obscured enough because I instantly knew what I had stumbled upon.

My very next step lead me to a Japanese auction site where I found the exact issue of Music Life that hopefully contained the image. I hit the "buy now" button, filled out the necessary forms, and the wait began...

And here it is!!!

After 15+ years of searching for the mystery black/green pedal from the Yura Yura Teikoku video, we have finally done it!

What you're looking at is the C.S. Cathey Sound effects series. Featuring the AS-01, AD-02, AB-03, and AO-05. The AS-01 Sustainer, being the pedal from the video, is described as a "Soft Fuzz" effect that is "popular these days". Which makes me think it was a Big Muff copy as they were extremely popular in Japan by 1975 (the Elk Super Fuzz Sustainar, the Guyatone FS-6 Sustainer, and the Ace Tone FM-3 Fuzz Master were all out by then). The AD-02 Distortion Box is described as a "return to the origins of fuzz", with a "powerful sound" and intense distortion effect. Could this possibly be a Tone Bender copy? The AB-03 Distortion /Booster is described as a booster that can get into distortion territory. This makes me think it's some kind of overdrive effect, but it's hard to know for sure. And finally the AO-05 Upper Octave is exactly what you think it is. The description makes it sound like an Octavia or Green Ringer style effect.

While we were able to get amazing hi-res scans from the magazine, unfortunately the original images left a bit to be desired. So it's still impossible to make out the logo or text under each control knob. But if I had to guess, based on the description, I would put my money on "Volume", "Tone", and "Sustsain". 

Another interesting thing that comes up in the description is that each pedal featured an On/Off switch built into the "Volume" pot (think, Maestro FZ-1). And they all run off of two 9v batteries (think, Rozz Dead Heat, although this would have almost certainly predated the Rozz). 

One final, and possibly insignificant aspect, is the knobs. It's hard to tell from either the scanned image or the video, but they look very similar to the knobs found on some 1970 Univox effects, and the final version of the Sekova wedge fuzzes. I have long believed that whichever factory made the Melos effects also made most of the Univox pedals, and that possibly these knobs were some indicator of a connection? It's a longshot, but worth pointing out.

So that's it! We finally did it. 

And I was feeling super accomplished yesterday putting all of this together, and this is normally where the post would end. But then I remembered a random Twitter post I came across last year where people were discussing and trying to list the pedals from the Yura Yura Teikoku video. And yet again, they were getting stuck in the same spot. But one response lingered in my mind, and I thought to myself, "I should go and look at that again, just in case!".

The commenter went by the name Pedakichi, and I remembered that he posted a pretty convincing illustration, that I assumed he drew from memory, possibly after physically seeing the pedal long ago:

THAT'S IT!!! 

Pedakichi knew exactly what the pedal was. And when I checked out his own posts, I not only came across 4 separate mentions of the C.S. Cathey line, but also his description of the magazine where he discovered the image... and it did NOT sound like the same one I had found.

So I went and signed up for a Twitter account and sent him a message asking if he had any further info on the brand.

Well Pedakichi (ペダ吉) came through big time! And sent me a handful of images, including his own rendering of what the pedals probably looked like based on the descriptions in the advertisement above.

He also noted that the earliest mention he was able to find about the C.S. Cathey line dated to October 1975, and the latest was April 1976. So a short window for sure, and one that probably ads to the impossible rarity of these effects. A rarity that even after I found the initial advertisement last week, I considered the possibility that they were a case of vaporware; conceived, advertised, but never brought to market. And somehow a "prototype" just made its way onto the set of the "Tsumetai Gift" video.

But now that we know they were adequately marketed, and lasted at least 6 months, the reason for their rarity almost has to lie somewhere else. Maybe they just had poor or no distribution, and you could only get them from a couple shops in certain neighborhoods? Who knows! They weren't any more expensive than any other effects at the time, and Japan certainly hadn't become so oversaturated with pedals by 1975 that they would have gone unnoticed. So yeah, that part is still a mystery. 

After seeing the image above it appears as though my guess about the knobs was correct! But obviously that doesn't mean they have any connection to Melos/Univox. Just something for me to dig into more later.

My other guess on the knob functions of the C.S. Cathey AS-01 was super close as well! I just flipped the order; so they actually run left to right, "Sustain" "Tone" "Volume", where the volume knob also acts as an on/off switch. That all considered, I am still sticking with my "it's probably a Big Muff" guess for now (or at least until someone finds one and comes forward!).

So my big grand discovery had already been discovered (thanks Pedakichi!), but honestly something like this is exactly what I hope happens more often. Don't get me wrong, I love being out here in the uncharted and nerdiest depths of guitar pedal history, but it saves so much time and effort when someone else has already done similar work and can meet me halfway to share their findings! No guesses, no lies, no need for grand theories, just hard evidence that shows that a pedal existed, when, and what it might have sounded like. 

So thank you to everyone who has reached out over the years, and to anyone who's doing their thing, deep in the cut digging up their own stompbox gold and willing to share it with the world.

Thanks as always, and if you happen to own a C.S. Cathey pedal or have any more information, please feel free to reach out to me via Email, Substack, or Instagram!

-ed