ilovefuzz.com

quick intro, as im new to the forum. my name is daniel danger, im an artist and musician living in massachusetts, i do alot of work for notable bands and movie studios and all that fun stuff. as well, ive been an avid EHX fanatic for most of my adult life with a room filling collection bordering on complete. i call it the arsenal.



so back in january an "Elk Fuzz Sustainar" popped up on ebay (title was "JAPANESE LEGEND 1970-MID ELK SUPER FUZZ SUSTAINAR 1st BIG MUFF Triangle Copy") out of tokyo from the seller "okamichi22318". i keep my eye on things, my collection will verify that, i look religiously, and this was the first id seen on ebay in years, and it was mint. i was excited, until i was outbid in the last seconds to the tune of like $1200. the seller contacted me and said he had a second one he could sell. i didnt question this too much because theres a couple holy grails i have doubles of, and okamichi has a history of selling pretty rare pedals. he spoke in very broken english so communication was difficult. a couple weeks later he popped the second on ebay and i won it for around $800. it arrived, sounded fantastic, and i was stoked.

then a month later he was selling another one, and then another soon after that. and then i saw Jext Telez selling one. and then another american seller. all mint. now what are the chances of NONE being available on the collectors market for YEARS and then suddenly theres a bunch of mint ones all claiming to be "mid 70s" over a 4 month span. fishy? yeah. i outright asked the seller "is this a bootleg?" "when was this made?" "was this made in the 70s" and got broken english responses that told me nothing (not necessarily to imply he was being evasive, i just couldnt understand what he was even trying to get at).

these are my replies from him. theyre plenty safe for work, but i nested them below for neatness sake. at this point it was past the paypal claim date, and now im pretty convinced i paid $800 for a bootleg. and that someone (perhaps in japan) made a run of them and has selling them as originals. i messaged jext telez on ebay with my suspicions a while back, no response. another one popped up for sale the other day and i messaged the seller, who said he bought it from jext telez. i emailed kit rae with my suspicions last night and havent heard back yet but i know he will be interested.

so yeah, i dunno. beware i guess? maybe ill have more info soon once i can talk to kit. or if i find anyone with a proper original who i can compare the internals to. worst case scenario, it still sounds amazing. but a couple people paid real good money for something probably made last year.

i should note that i dont know for certain, just circumstantially this is very weird. its not common for an influx of a identical mint rare things after years of nothing.

Hey, Danger, thanks for the warning. Sorry to hear you got scammed.

I looked at your website. Your artwork looks great. Hope you'll stick around.

(Are you a fan of Dan McCarthy?)

well, the more time i spend around people who have too many pedals the less bad i feel about having way too many pedals. so im sure ill stick around. and thanks!

mccarthy and i are good friends, we've done shows together.

Hope this situation with the possible bootleg gets cleared up to your advantage.

Hey Daniel, I believe me and you had some correspondence some time back about my EHX schematics for your site nice to see you round here!

I gotta be honest... the tooling marks on that enclosure look modern...

I feel like a gut shot might help, unless the potential counterfeiter copied the wiring and components perfectly.

Well Jext Telez is a member here now, so we can put his ass on the hot seat about that one. Not the original seller though.

That sucks man. I'm sorry to hear about this. I always feel like something like this could happen to anyone of us because of how good others are at cloning shit now. I wouldn't be in the 800-1200 dollar pedal market, but others on here are.

I'm more curious in tracking down the source of these originally.

I'd check the pot codes just to be sure. Unless they used all NOS pots, that might be a total dead giveaway.

Here's the reverb link to the one jext sold: https://reverb.com/item/126281-elk-fuzz-sustainar-1972

One would hope that some guy found a box of them in a warehouse, sussed the value and sold them one by one, but that might be wishful thinking. Hopefully it's not a bootleg duder.

I missed the 20 Jazz Funk Greats reissue when TG reissued them in 2011, couldn't find it ANYWHERE despite picking up the other reissues relatively easily and they instantly went for $80+ on discogs, and walked into a record store last month and they had forgotten to put out a set of them. I picked it up for retail. Total score! Not even their best record (obviously that's Heathen Earth) but still, wonderful to not have to pay a 3rd party massive amounts of cash.....

I pm'd jext to ask him to come weigh in on this one.

I did get a message from the original poster last month when he wrote me with a theory about bootleg Elk Fuzz Sustainars. My take is that these are completely legit. The one that I bought from Japan for $950 was sold for $1150 and then resold to Kit Rae. So Kit can ultimately make the call on that unit but I'll say this; nearly impossible. If by some insane outside chance someone was genius enough to recreate these that well, it's worth the same amount as an original. If it's that indistinguishable from an original give this bootlegger a prize and job!
I worked in guitar shops throughout the 1990's, back when the Japanese used to keep American guitar shops open by showing up once or twice a year and draining them of the coolest gear, spending $50k, $100k in an hour and leaving. Japan is a stockpile of the best and rarest guitars, amps, and pedals. So it is not a stretch at all that a Japanese collector finally let his 5 or 6 mint condition Elk Sustainars out for profit. It is also not a stretch at all that somewhere in Japan a small crate of originals was discovered in a warehouse.
It's a constant surprise to collectors just how many of these rare holy units are actually out there, always more than previously believed. They start surfacing when the prices reach a point of interest. That's one of the bonuses of high prices in the vintage fuzz pedal market-- it motivates people to keep digging them out and finding them.

Thanks for posting dude!!