Spitfire Fuzz sprouts magic germanium mojo.

[brad]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=41418&item=7326533217&rd=1

"it maintains a certain vintage mojo (most likely due to the germanium)"

Ooooookay.  :shock:  I've also wondered why so many pedal auctions seem to include the fact that the pedal's been kept in a smoke-free environment.  It's not as if it makes a difference.

[KarbonHed]

I've also wondered why so many pedal auctions seem to include the fact that the pedal's been kept in a smoke-free environment.  It's not as if it makes a difference.

Yeah it does make a difference. Smoke, or the tar and other crap in it, can eventually dirty and gum up pots, jacks etc and make electronic gear behave "sub optimally". Probably never outright destroy them, but make things cruddy and intermittent - scratchy pots, jacks that need a jiggle to work propperly, slightly muffled sound.

And it stinks.

Play out in bars/pubs a few times and the airborn crud will start to mess up your kit noticably, so in a 24/7 smoker's environment there's no escape.

And it stinks.

[brad]

Pedals sit on the floor and get trod on though.

...not that I'm don't believe that smoke could possibly crud up pots.

[nelson]

Wow, every peice of electrical kit in my house must be behaving "sub optimally". I sure do hope my VCR or DVD player dont start crackling.

Personally, I think, short of storing the pedal in a smoke filled nightclub for 10 years, the build up of "crud" is going to be minimal, smoke rises, pedals sit on the floor, unless you use a pedal as a filter or a bong it is not going to make the slightest bit of difference.

[col]

I've been in studios wherb no-one was allowed to smoke to protect the equipment. It was probably more important when using tape than digital as the tape was exposed to the air.

[Steben]

Centrist to the bone, I must concur to nelson's signature  :lol:

[nelson]

Centrist to the bone, I must concur to nelson's signature  :lol:

 

[petemoore]

Smoke changes ALOT !
 Sea air can be wayy worse, eating through paint and metal in minutes/hours/days, after a 6-8 hour exposure time, 500ft. from Galvestons Ocean, at the Beach Club. spectacular destruction to All equipment can be observed with one gigs worth of exposure. Perhaps 'smoke laquering' equipment helps prevent sea air damage?...lol.
 "Amp sounds alot livlier and louder after I cleaned the pots with tuner cleaner"...a common enough comment....Read Up to figure out if you're gonna like it though...and to figure out if you wanna put 'that' stuff in your pots.
  Sure...there are oils, tars, resins that form from exposure to smoke, they get on everything. Cleaning a cable tip, sometimes you can see an instant difference, they're easy to clean...
  Smoke byproducts include stickiness, ability to grab stuff, probably increased amounts of bioactivity and dust.
 Oil is about non-conductive, great for capacitor building, not so good to terrible for making electromechanical connections.
 Note that increased # of "EM" connections = increased possibilities for increased EM connection problems.
 If the pedal is pretty much sealed from the outside air flowing at all, the amout of smoke that 'stains' the insides will be super reduced, as you can imagine.

[Steben]

If someone can live with all the massive degradation of the own body functions, surely that person can live with minimal byproducts on the pedal I guess.
Of course I smoked now and then some fags in my teenage years, but now I really dislike the stinksticks. It's a hard fight to build up the needed tolerance... if you know in Belgium there will be "almost certainly" (which means "maybe" in fact) a general banning on smoking in restaurants and public places in 2007.

[spudulike]

Hey this is funny - some prick on ebay says his fuzzbox has a germanium op-amp and you all kick the smokers to death ... ha ha.