Best Fuzz Face Ever! Time-O-Lite Fuzz | R2R Electric x Waterslide Guitars | Strat Tones

Best Fuzz Face Ever! Time-O-Lite Fuzz | R2R Electric x Waterslide Guitars | Strat Tones

Shell pink single coils. NOS OC44 black glass germanium. A swirling all-tube univibe. And a vintage Fender Deluxe Reverb doing what it was born to do. Welcome back to Edge of Breakup.

In this episode, the R2R Electric x Waterslide Guitars Time-O-Lite Fuzz takes center stage — piloted by my Nash S63 in shell pink loaded with Lollar Vintage Blonde pickups (neck and middle) and a Lollar Special Bridge, into a vintage 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb with vintage Jensen speaker. Guest starring the Effectrode Tube Vibe.

The Time-O-Lite is a long-time collaboration between R2R Electric founder Chris Vincent and Waterslide Guitars — over two years in development. The enclosures are genuine Time-O-Lite industrial darkroom timers, converted by hand into fuzz pedals with painstaking care for the original hardware. The concentric potentiometer configuration repurposes original controls: the lower larger pointer for Volume, the upper small red pointer for Fuzz — period-correct CTS units, a 1966 CTS 500k and a 1983 CTS 1k, working in concert. NOS Allen-Bradley carbon comp resistors, NOS capacitors, a 1979 ITT .01uf chicklet-style cap, and true bypass switching complete the build. Every pedal ages differently — each one tells its own story before you've played it.

This unit features a pair of hand-selected NOS OC44 black glass germanium transistors — a low-noise, high-gain device with warm, musical compression that sits beautifully in a Fuzz Face-style two-transistor circuit. R2R also builds the Time-O-Lite with OC42 and AC107 germanium transistors, each imparting its own distinct character. The range spans from gated and spitty at low bias to large, open, blooming fuzz at full bias. One important note: no buffers upstream. This must sit first in your signal chain.

The Nash S63 brings a fundamentally different voice to this circuit than the semi-hollow ES-335 featured in earlier Time-O-Lite sessions. The Lollar Vintage Blonde is wound to capture the voice of the most sought-after pre-CBS Stratocaster pickups — underwound, Alnico 5, scatter-wound — with an open, airy character, clear bell-like highs, and a softness on the attack that lets the germanium circuit respond with maximum expressiveness. The Special Bridge adds a touch more output and midrange authority without losing the single-coil definition.

Paired with the smooth touch sensitivity of a well-worn germanium circuit, this is a combination that rewards nuance at every turn.

The 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb's AB763 circuit — 22 watts, a pair of 6V6s, tube-driven spring reverb — provides a clean, bold, American platform with more headroom and authority than a Princeton, while still breaking up beautifully under a fuzz's sustained low frequencies. The vintage Jensen speaker adds the warm, mid-focused character that defines the classic American clean tone. Into all of this, the Effectrode Tube Vibe brings its all-tube photocell-and-bulb univibe voice — triode tubes running at real amp plate voltages, dual LFOs offering Classic swampy throb and Smooth ethereal chorus voicings, with a Chorus/Vibrato switch for Hendrix-style vibe or pure pitch-shifting vibrato.

Shell pink. OC44 germanium. Vintage Jensen. Tube vibe. This is the session.

Be sure to join @r2relectric's email list so you know when his ultra limited hand-built NOS fuzzes, boosts and wahs hit Reverb to purchase! They DO NOT hang around long!

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🎸 Nash S63 | Shell Pink | Lollar Vintage Blonde (Neck & Middle) | Lollar Special Bridge

🎛️ R2R Electric x Waterslide Guitars Time-O-Lite Fuzz | NOS OC44 Black Glass Germanium Transistors

🎛️ Effectrode Tube Vibe

🔊 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb | Vintage Jensen Speaker