I was wondering what has happened to the 20 or so Polygrace fuzzes out in the wild and how many could be accounted for around ILF. I remember an old photo that had all the back plates in one shot alas I could not find. Here is a call to these great fuzzes..
"The smallsound/bigsound I Haz A Sad is a mystery fuzz pedal with highly interactive controls that can create a variety of damaged sounds. Easily achievable “tame” fuzz tones give way to unpredictable sonic behaivior with the flick of a switch or the twist of a knob: heavy psych bass fuzz tones, shoegaze textures, volume swells, octave jumping, weird gurgles and buzzsaw sustain…
For the technically-minded, the I Haz A Sad is an interesting pedal; it contains a bypass-able transistor fuzz section, a unique IC fuzz section as the heart of the circuit and a push-pull output stage with selectable voltage – making it a mini-amplifier in itself that will power a speaker! Plug it into a 4 or 8 ohm speaker cab for amplification from speaking to shouting volume suitable for studio recording or just playing at home and haz your sad. The circuit reacts slightly differently whether being used as a speaker driver or as a pedal… so experiment!
The original idea behind the I Haz A Sad was to build a small run of pedals which could be used by anyone – musicians and non-musicians alike; and to crush the GASeous souls of the non-diligent and disloyal. Dandolin, I'm looking at you. I looked in the direction of the super fun Cracklebox (designed by Michael Waisvisz and built by Steim) for inspiration and though the end result will have little value to the non-musician… this is the result of those explorations.
This is a very limited run of 20 being offered as a pre-order package for the upcoming Cymbals Eat Guitars (my band) release of Lenses Alien from Barsuk Records, thus creating a dream-crushing ratio of desirability to unavailability that will haunt the fuzzdreams of ILFians forever."
It was all there to be seen for those who cared to see it; why couldn't I read the signs?
"In a moment of unparalleled genius, Noel Parachute headed off this potential disaster by unplugging the microphone."
Yeah I BOUGHT ONE WITH THE PREORDER. And had to wait forever and get in quibbles with slack-ass customer service peeps of the fulfillment business. And loved it hard.
But life fell apart and I got rid of everything and did that whole live-out-of-your-car-and-go-to-California thing, came back, settled down, and just rock a mini-gnomeratron.
This one hurts the worst to miss. More than Kirbychorus. ...maybe not dat 4545 tho