This is another freebie I got from a friend since It was having problems.  After further inspection I found the power was grounding out on the enclosure. I asked if he wanted it back since I fixed it and he said he bought the nano version and was happy with it.

This is the 3rd version of the Small Stone pedal by Electro-Harmonix and can be identified by the lack of LED as opposed to the 4th version which has the LED. The 3rd version has 2 LM13600AN and one LM324N ICs and is considered by many to be the stronger and more balanced sounding phaser of all the other versions.

EDIT: All the above would be true but my unit looks to be the a 3rd version enclosure with 2nd version guts. Mine has the 4 EH1048 OTAs chips like the 2nd version. I will need to do some more research and see if this is from the factory like this or was a rehouse/repair. I would not be surprised if this came from EHX like this since they are so inconsistent with the builds.

 

This is a classic analog flanger made by Electro-Harmonix. This pedal seems to be the V3 from 1980-81 due to the model EH-5150-D on the PCB but I have not found a red PCB v3 before like this one. The inconsistencies make it so hard to track down exact information on this unit. I also do not think these are the original knobs.

 

In 1969 Electro-Harmonix came out with a Muff Fuzz which was the same form factor as the LPB-1 that plugged directly into your amplifier and had a switch to turn it on and off. Over the years people wanted more overdrive out of the muff fuzz and people started stacking them. Electro-Harmonix then introduced the Double Muff (Can’t find a production date) that was 2 Muff Fuzz circuits cascaded in one box.

I aquired this 1977 Clone Theory from ebay a few years ago. It was a bit harder than I thought to find an original one that did not break the bank. This is the first version for around 1977 with the SAD1024 IC and its in pretty good shape for its age. I have read a lot on these and found that this effect was responsible for some of the great sounds of Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order) and Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins)

This was a freebee from a friend that did not care for the small stone sound in general. It needed a bit of cleanup and a switch replacment (which I took from a broken version 3) and it was good to go.

The version 2 came out in 1979 and the circuit was not changed much from the version 1. It still used the EH1048 Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTA) chips. The Small Stone is a 4 stage phase shifter with one additional stage for feedback, which can be activated using the “Color” switch. At the time the only pedal that was compaired to the Small Stone was the MXR Phase 90 but instead of OTA’s it used matched FET transistors.

I love the old Electro-Harmonix PCB traces, they were like artwork.

 

The version 2 Small Stone uses the EH1048 Operational Transconductance Amplifiers (OTA) shown below:

I got this early 90’s DMM from eBay a few years ago and it’s been kicked on and off my pedal board. It has not been removed because I do not like it but for the reason that I have so many delay pedals that I constantly swap them around. I simply love this pedal but never used it enough to justify the real estate on my board to it. I decided to open it up and give it a bit of clean up and tool some photos along the way.

I did not think that this model had the Panasonic MN3005 bucket brigade delay chips, so you can imagine my joy when I seen this:

I buttoned this beast back up and played with it for about 30 minutes. It doesn’t take long to see why you keep a pedal like this around.