THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY
ROLAND DOUBLE BEAT AD-50 FUZZ WAH PEDAL
Many years ago, long before eBay and Craig's List, I was walking around downtown San Diego just basically being a tourist in my own town. I live about 25 miles north of San Diego proper in a little beach community, and unless I'm headed to a Padres game or I have a gig, I just don't head downtown all that much. So, when I happened upon a pretty cool pawn shop on 5th Avenue I had to wander in and take a look around. It was one of those pawn shops that tries to be sort of old-timey, with a wooden indian by the front door and a giant antique scale and other antique decor. They had a few guitars, but nothing too nice. Then, up on a glass shelf, I spied what looked like the remnants of some old science experiment. Or was it a weird wah pedal?
I asked the lady if I could take a look and she carefully pulled down a double handfull of pedal, wires, capacitors and a battery and put it on the counter. I'd never seen a pedal like this before, but it turned out to be a pretty beat up Roland Double Beat Fuzz & Wah pedal, missing it's bottom plate. Although it looked like a mess, it did appear to all be there...just missing the plate.
I asked how much and she said $50. I said how about $20, since I only had about $20 to my name. However, I knew I needed this pedal for some reason and, even if it was my last few bucks, I was going to offer it up. To my surprise she said okay, and the pedal was mine. Now I had to carry it around for awhile with all the wires and guts hanging out.
I'm sure I looked like an amateur bomber walking the streets.
I got the pedal home and found a piece of thin wood which I cut out to fit the bottom. I screwed it all together and it actually looked acceptable. Barely. But the cool thing is that it worked. I played around with it and got some funky fuzz tones out of it. It has a knob that lets you choose between three fuzz waves. Then you can kick in the wah and either do fuzz wah or plain old funk wah with no fuzz. The pots could have used a cleaning, but otherwise it was pretty decent.
Like I said, this was before eBay and the like, so there was no way to really get this in the hands of someone who knew it's value and would be willing to pay top dollar for it. I took it down to my local music store one day and used it as a partial trade for something...no clue what. But I do remember the guy being pretty happy to get this rare pedal. I never went back to see what he was actually selling it for. Sometimes that's for the best...get what you can, be happy with it, and don't look back.
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One of these photos "borrowed" from DiscoFreq, a GREAT pedal archive