Os Mutantes fuzz...

[mac]

Although is in portuguese, the pictures are clearer.

Easy read

mac

[Hatredman]

A curiosity: Claudio Cesar was a guitar maker also. He designed and built the guitars and basses the Mutantes used, and all their amps, pedals & stuff, and even their PA and mixing consoles. He is self-taught on electronics and, on top of that, had to use whatever retail components were available in Brazil in the 60's and 70's - which were scarce and of extremely low quality, the crap nobody wanted in Europe. And he achieved a lot with what he had, the guy is a genius.

On Sergio's guitar, the pickups were in fact six discrete pickups, one for each string (that's why they are so big). Each pickup went to one of six separate RV8's inside the guitar - so you have fuzz sound, but extreme clean because there is no (or less) intermodulation between the strings. All six separate fuzzes were then summed and delivered to the tone and volume pots, and then to the output jack of the guitar. Later models included a buffer just before the jack, to lower the impedance of the guitar and allow using 60+ meters of guitar cable without signal loss.

I've been wanting to replicate this for years - maybe not with fuzzes, but definetly using six separate distortion circuits - but I didn't find any pickup maker willing to build me one like this, and I'm too lazy to try to do it myself.

[Hatredman]

Forgot to say: he was a pioneer on piezo caps also. He used an old ceramic turntable pickup for that, and this is way back in 1965.

And yes, the newer guitars have a delay inside, but they are not made by Claudio anymore - he retired in 1994.