Wooden Sola Sound Tone Bender Prototype Disclaimer

From the very beginning of this project, we were absolutely committed to the idea that all effects units included in both Stompbox: 100 Pedals of the World’s Greatest Guitarists 

and Vintage & Rarities: 333 Cool, Crazy and Hard to Find Guitar Pedals should be the real deal. 

 In the course of putting our books together, we ran across (and photographed) several pedals that looked extremely worthy of inclusion, only to eventually reject them. In some cases, we couldn’t be completely sure of a pedal’s provenance, and there were a few seemingly rare vintage pedals which turned out, upon further research and examination, to be latter-day fakes. There are two pedals in Stompbox that had to be substituted for long-lost or -destroyed original units; but we have noted both of those cases in the book, because the integrity of this project is of paramount importance to us.

 Unfortunately, sometimes things still slip through the net despite our best efforts. We have been notified by the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project that the “super-rare” wooden Sola Sound Tone Bender Prototype we photographed from their collection—and featured in Vintage & Rarities—is actually a counterfeit. The folks at EMEAPP were certain of the pedal’s authenticity at the time we shot it, however; and since none of our team of pedal experts flagged it as dubious in any way, we ran with it. 

“We appreciate your research, diligence and accuracy, which is why it is so difficult to compose this letter,” EMEAPP Director Drew Raison wrote to us on November 23. “Someone in-the-know spotted clues that indicated that the pedal’s provenance was dodgy. After much discussion and even more research, we have sadly come to agree with their opinion… Please accept this letter as a public apology, we will continue our efforts to vet incoming acquisitions with the knowledge that authentication is a continual process.”

We here at Stompbox would also like to apologize to our readers for the pedal’s inclusion. That said, we still stand by the legitimacy of all the other pedals included in both of our books.

Besides, 332 Cool, Crazy and Hard to Find Guitar Pedals (and One Really Sweet-Looking Forgery) has kind of a groovy ring to it, don’t you think?