Fulltone ’69 mkII

Do any of you play with another guitarist, and when that said guitarist steps on a pedal, you get pissed with envy for that particular pedal? Well I do. You guys might be familiar with Jimmy Rolle who does the playing on the demos here at EffectsBay.com. I’ve been in various musical projects over the years with him, and there is one pedal he uses, that I wish I could steal and put on my board without him missing it. That pedal is the Fulltone ’69 fuzz. That to me is the best sounding fuzz hands down. Every time I play his rig, I ended up messing with that fuzz. Love it.

Fulltone discontinued that pedal since the transistors (germanium) were hard to come by.. and hard to find a matched pair of transistors to meet his specs. Later he released a small batch called the Fulltone ’69 Slight Return which were quickly snatched up. My head was in the sand during that time.. or I would have picked one up. The original Fulltone ’69 fuzzes are pretty hard to come by.. and usually fetch hefty prices on eBay.

So today, while I was sipping my coffee, things got perky when I saw that Fulltone is releasing the Fulltone ’69 mkII! Basically, he’s able to get the transistors sorted out, and now he’s bringing the ’69 back!

Here is a snippet from fulltone.com

3/14/2011 Due to the overwhelmingly positive response to the recent limited-edition 69-“Slight Return” (Sold out!) and the fact that I have patched things up with the transistor company that made my germaniums during the heyday of the 69 pedal (1994-1997).

I can now get perfect germanium transistor matched pairs (same as used in the recent 69 Slight Return and same that were used in the 1994-1997 69’s)…so am officially coming out with a small box version of the 69 pedal (in a OCD, FatBoost3 sized enclosure) called “69 mkII.” Boxes are done, pcb is done, silk-screens are done, we start building in a couple of weeks.

Now, I was curious how much the ’69 Slight Return differed from the original, and how this pedal will differ. I found this comparison video between the vintage ’69 and the Slight Return by TheToneshack:

You can pick up the Fulltone ’69 mkII for $169.15 at Musician’s Friend. It’s not out quite yet, but you can preorder. They will be officially available on 7/14/11! This time I’m not going to miss out!