1968 Mosrite Fuzzrite
The Mosrite guitar company was started in Bakersfield, CA, in 1956, by Semie & Andy Moseley. The name, ‘Mosrite’, was a derived from the names of the two Moseley brothers. In the early 1960s, the company became involved with the Ventures, sponsoring them and making various signature models for infamous surf-rock bandmates. These were also available for purchase by the public. In the mid 1960’s a Mosrite employee named Ed Sanner started developing circuits for a range of amplifiers that the company planned on offering. Sanner supplied the steel guitar player, Leo LeBlanc, with a custom-made fuzzbox, and Semie Moseley became interested in potentially manufacturing this pedal on a mass scale. This circuit eventually became the Mosrite Fuzzrite.
From 1966-1968 the Fuzzrite was made in two major circuit configurations. The earlier circuit design is based on Germanium Transistors and was very temperamental to temperature variations and radio interference. The second and later circuit design is based on much more stable Silicon Transistors, and was a major departure from the Germanium Fuzzrite. The switch was not just the type of Transistor as is often assumed, but the entire fuzz circuit was completely re-designed. The two Fuzzrite pedals don’t share much in common, and are quite distinct in sound/tone. The Fuzzrite was produced in over a dozen internal construction styles over its brief initial two year run, this was regardless of the actual electronic design the pedal contained. This particular Fuzzrite is from the last year of manufacture and is the Silicon circuit. The construction of this unit is the floating eyelet board design with the foot-switch kept off the board and connected through flying leads. Notable users: Eric Brann of Iron Butterfly, Ron Asheton of The Stooges, John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Dominic Simper of Tame Imapala.
This pedal came in the shop in entirely original condition. Aesthetically it was fairly beat up with pretty much all the original screen printed lettering and logo worn off. The circuit itself was untouched. The customer wanted this restored to factory condition. This pedal was very noisy when it arrived, which was caused by a bad foot-switch, cold solder joints, and the wrong type of 9V battery.
The pedal was fully restored. A new vintage replica Carling brand DPDT foot-switch was installed and wired in the original bypass configuration. The original switch did not always actuate correctly, which is expected for a nearly 60 year old mechanical device. The potentiometers were cleaned thoroughly with De-Oxit and all of the solder joints on said pots were re-flowed. Because the eyelet board is held up by the strength of the solder joints it is important for them to be robust. Two #6-32 screws were installed as the originals were missing.
A new vintage spec correct Carbon-Zinc battery was installed to provide the right resistance to the circuit and give good vintage tone. There actually is an audible difference between modern Alkaline or Lithium-Ion batteries and the old style Carbon-Zinc batteries for the tone of certain simple analog circuits like Fuzz or Wah effects. This is because there is a difference in Ohmic Resistance that each battery provides to the power supply circuit which changes the bias on the transistors and therefore the sound. This particular circuit design has no power supply filtering or protection so it makes a huge difference in the Fuzzrite as the Collectors of the Silicon Transistors are hardwired directly to the battery. It now sounds great and operates with no obtrusive noise.
