EFFECT GUITARS by Jacques

What else? Once you have collected guitars and pedals you naturally go for those wacky hybrids for sure! They seem to be hot again as Danelectro has issued a nice cheap line of these gremlins. But my heart will always go for vintage monsters.

Let us start with this real rarity; The WEM project 4 guitar !!! Charlie WATKINS 's brother, Reg, started to make electric guitars for the WEM brand around 1961. The RAPIER 22, 33 and 44 electric guitars were born. They are quite rare now but everybody in England have fond memories of these lovely guitars. Reg also invented a guitar-organ predating VOX by several years, which sank with no visual or aural traces. WEM manufactured a fuzz box called PROJECT 5 , which, while very rare, is well known to collectors. But what about this project 4 guitar???

 

The fifth man logo is quite obscure but the WEM is the usual one. Now, let us have a look at the first group of commands: drive, edge and level are really bass, treble and volume, no mystery. But the selector is another thing. The fact that: 1- you can have a mix of the fuzz sound and the clean tone 2- you can choose from guitar alone or project 4 off are quite puzzling.

 

 

 

These are the 2nd group of commands concerning the effect itself. First, the sting switch, which has nothing to do with the project 4: it is very dynamic preamp that make monsters out of these British pick-ups. The selector is the pick-up selector but the 3 other pots control the project 4 effect. What is project 4? A nice fuzz effect with a slight swooshing back, like some kind of light static phasing. But , I was surprised at first by the fact that the clean sound was louder than the fuzz.

 

How come such an over-engineered effect like this one is not disgusting loud? There must be an answer. ( While you are here, take a look at the beautiful English veneer and stunning sunburst)

Here is my interpretation: as you may see, there is a hole all through the neck, finishing here at the zero fret. In this hole, run a wire connected to the complicated circuit ground. My theory is that the project 4 fuzz is produced by some kind of transducer hidden in the bridge. Therefore, as the bridge is used for this application, the only way to connect the strings to ground is to use this strange connection reminiscing of organ guitars. This could explain why you can have both clean and fuzz sound at the same time. Furthermore, when you use project 4 only, the guitar pick-ups really seem disconnected: no real sound when you tap on them.

I

Here is a close-up of the weird bridge. For me, the transducers are those rusty hole the strings pass through, thus not touching the ground. Notice the chisel saddles. Definitely not a Floyd rose.

UPDATE FEB.26:

To solve this mystery, I have contacted by email Mr.Charlie WATKINS himself as no one else could give me more accurate information. He was very kind to answer me and I thank him again so much to give from his precious time for my humble site.

The bare and precious facts:

-This guitar really evolved from the WEM guitar-organ. Here are Mr.Watkins comments: "It grew from my original Guitar Organ conception (which played an organ generator from the fret board. About the biggest commercial disaster I ever invented. It was too big, heavy, expensive and took too long for me to realise that a guy buys a Guitar because that's the sound he wants in his ear. If he wanted organ sound he probably would buy an organ."

- The project 4 fuzz sound comes from the bridge itself and not from the pick-ups, exactly as I have guessed. "The drive comes from the funny magnet arrangement by the bridge designed for me by a professor at Sussex University in 1965, which is about the year we started to sell them."

This really is precious information from the creator of this guitar himself. I here thank Mr. Charlie WATKINS again for enlighting this article with the original truth.

Used by permission from Jacques www.ts808.com site maker of the Fuse Blower !