Time-O-Lite Fuzz | R2R Electric x Waterslide Guitars | Gibson ES-335 Tones (1967)
A darkroom timer from another era. Two NOS OC44 black glass germanium transistors. And one of the most singular fuzz enclosures ever to find its way onto a pedalboard. Welcome back to Edge of Breakup.
In this episode, the R2R Electric Time-O-Lite Fuzz takes center stage — piloted by my 1967 Gibson ES-335 loaded with Ron Ellis 60's Bette Humbuckers and Emerson Custom Treble Bleeds, into a vintage 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb on the Normal channel.
The Time-O-Lite is the product of a long-time collaboration between founder of R2R Electric's Chris Vincent, and Waterslide Guitars — over two years in the making. The enclosures are genuine Time-O-Lite industrial darkroom timers, converted by hand into fuzz pedals with painstaking care for the original controls. The existing hardware has been repurposed rather than replaced — including the concentric potentiometer configuration, where the lower larger pointer controls Volume and the upper small red pointer controls Fuzz. Those pots are period-correct CTS units: a 1966 CTS 500k and a 1983 CTS 1k, working in concert. The rest of the component list is a collector's dream: NOS Allen-Bradley carbon comp resistors, NOS capacitors throughout, a 1979 ITT .01uf chicklet-style cap, and true bypass switching. Every pedal is unique and has aged in varying degrees — each one tells its own story before you've even played it.
This particular unit features a pair of hand-selected NOS OC44 black glass germanium transistors. R2R also builds the Time-O-Lite with OC42 and AC107 germanium transistors depending on the build — each transistor type imparts its own character, and every unit is individually matched and voiced to its specific pair. The OC44 is a low-noise, high-gain germanium device with a warm, musical compression character that sits beautifully in a Fuzz Face-style two-transistor circuit.
Tonally, the Time-O-Lite is a classic two-transistor germanium Fuzz Face-style circuit, shipped tuned to vintage Fuzz Face specs with an internal Blue trimpot for Q2 bias adjustment. The range — from gated and spitty at low bias to a large, open, blooming fuzz at full bias — is enormous, and the circuit is extraordinarily reactive to guitar volume and pick attack. Like all great germanium fuzzes, it rewards a light touch and punishes nothing. One important note: this is a true-to-vintage circuit that does not play well with buffers upstream — it must sit first in your signal chain with only true bypass pedals before it.
The 1967 Gibson ES-335 is one of the great guitar-and-fuzz pairings in existence — the semi-hollow body's natural woody resonance and acoustic bloom add a dimension to a germanium fuzz that a solid body simply cannot replicate. The Ron Ellis 60's Bette Humbuckers are specifically voiced for this application: based on the patent-era humbuckers used in early-to-late 60s ES Gibson guitars, they are fundamentally honest pickups that let the acoustic character of the instrument speak clearly. Hand-wound in Carlsbad, California and named after Ron's mother, the Bettes have beautiful musical timbre on every note — you can genuinely hear the wood of the guitar through them. The Emerson Custom Treble Bleeds keep high-frequency detail intact as you roll back the guitar's volume control, which in a fuzz-forward rig like this is not a luxury — it's essential.
Through the warm, bold voice of a 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb, this combination of semi-hollow body, PAF-voiced humbuckers, and NOS germanium fuzz achieves something difficult to describe and impossible to fake.
Be sure to join @r2relectric 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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🎸 1967 Gibson ES-335 | Ron Ellis 60's Bette Humbuckers | Emerson Custom Treble Bleeds
🎛️ R2R Electric Time-O-Lite Fuzz | NOS OC44 Black Glass Germanium Transistors
🔊 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb
