The Rotosound Pedal Collection – Four Hand Wired Effects Pedals – Hand Built in the UK – One Package Only!
THE COLLECTION
These pedals were released in 2014 and a small number were imported into Australia by the Australian Rotosound distributor. We were invited to buy the four pedals that were available with the proceeds to be donated to charity. Of course we were happy to help and the four pedals became part of our “Vault” collection.
They have been on display in a glass display cabinet with not much effort made to sell them.
The door to the Vault has now swung open and we are offering our four limited edition pedals for sale as a collection.
While they will appeal to a collector, they are all incredible sounding pedals and will appeal to serious “Tone Hounds”.
We have also given some consideration to the price of this collection of which there is only one – a special opportunity.
Click on each of the four images below to view each pedal in more detail.
THE LEVELLER EQ
THE WOBBLER TREMELO
THE KING HENRY PHASER
THE CRUSADER CHORUS PEDAL
Rotosound began selling effects pedals in the 1960s. Most were built by Solasound in London’s Denmark Street. A short lived version was designed by Rotosound’s James How and built by Vox. This model remained mostly a prototype although James How did sell a few examples. Jimmy Page was a fan and was pictured using it. Eventually this Rotosound Fuzz Pedal became dormant and faded into obscurity.
Fast forward more than forty years to an email to Rotosound from a gentleman in Arizona who claimed to have one of these prototype pedals. This resulted in Rotosound reissuing the pedal in a limited run in 2012. They sold out almost immediately.
Having invested in the tooling to make the Fuzz pedal it only seemed natural to bring out a range of other pedals. The plan was to replicate the ‘vibe’ of the late sixties and make the pedals very retro looking and sounding. John Oram (who was an apprentice electrical engineer at Vox in the late sixties) helped design six brand new circuits unique to Rotosound and the pedals were manufactured at the factory in Kent.
John Oram is a remarkable person. He played drums for Marianne Faithfull, helped Stan Cutler develop the first wah‑wah pedal, created Reflex active guitar pickups, owned his own recording studio and been instrumental in a number of groundbreaking audio products, including Trident’s first parametric equaliser and a number of Trident recording consoles. Known as the ‘Father of British EQ’, which he accepts in a kind of tongue‑in‑cheek way, but there’s nothing frivolous about the way John Oram approaches audio design.
Drawing on John Oram’s considerable experience with shaping sound, and Rotosound’s painstaking attention to detail, these pedals are built to deliver studio grade performances, are intuitive to use and have impressive sonic capabilities. The pedals incorporate todays technology for consistency and sustainability combined with real 1960’s design for style and tone. They are hand wired and built in the UK by Rotosound using authentic components. Each pedal is finished in a durable pressed steel box in a distinctive range of eye-catching coloured hammer powder coatings.
There is a common saying within the rock and pop fraternity that if you can remember The Swinging Sixties then you weren’t really there – John Oram was there and fortunately for he can remember it in precise technical detail. Armed with a soldering iron and half a century of in-the-field experience John set to work designing six new pedals for Rotosound covering a wide pallette of tone tweaking effects. The brief was simple – these pedals had to sound as though they have been in gig bags and flight cases for more than four decades.
