Tomorrow Is Your Day to Pick Up This Extremely Rare Keeley Electronics “Black Glass” Fuzz

Are you a fan of vintage fuzz pedals? No, I mean, do you fucking love them. Would you totally go steady with an OC81D germanium transformer? Do you have $300 of disposable income? If you answered “yes, absolutely” to all of these questions then tomorrow is your birthday, and your favorite present is the one you’ll buy for yourself.

That’s because Keeley Electronics, maker of such pedals as the “Keeley 4-Knob Compressor” and the “Keeley 2-Kmob Compressor,” as well as several others with much more interesting names, is set to release “Black Glass.” No, it’s not the name of some 70’s blaxploitation flick (possibly starring Ron Glass). Instead it’s a vintage fuzz made with the rare, difficult-to-work-with OC81D transformer. You know, the one you said you’d go steady with.

Here’s what Keeley had to say about it:

“Our design team focused on building a MkIII style circuit with a stash of OC81D transistors that Robert Keeley had in his rare stock of electronic parts.  This type of PNP Germanium pedal can be expensive, bulky, and can have variances in sound quality so our goal was clear: create a best-in-class product that combines compact versatility, repeatable musical tone, and low noise in a compact effect,” said Robert Keeley, founder and chief engineer, Keeley Electronics. “To achieve this, we employed several technical innovations from our Time Machine Boost and Holy Fuzz designs.  We also use techniques to nearly eliminate temperature coefficient problems in germanium designs.  The end result is that the Black Glass British Fuzz is vintage fuzz effect we are extremely proud of and excited to offer to our customers in this very rare and extremely limited edition and is ready for any stage, no matter how hot!”

Long story short, fuzz pedals of this ilk are sought after like Shure’s older Unidyne III SM-57 microphones, before production moved to Mexico, or the original “block letter” Peavey 5150. So if you want to get your hands on a germanium fuzz for the wine sniffer crowd, you can place your order with Keeley tomorrow at this address. But it’s now or never… well, I guess tomorrow or never, because there will only be 150 Black Glass pedals built.