Foxey Lady

The Bill Berko designed "Axis" fuzz was the debut product for Electro Harmonix in 1968. Founder Mike Matthews quickly landed an account with Guild to take over Guild "Foxey Lady" production from Mosrite. The Berko's Axis fuzz circuit replaced the Mosrite circuit.

This unit does indeed have mid 1968 pots (week 29), meaning it can be no older than that.

The circuit board mounted footswitch seems so ahead of its time! This is very common today, but most vintage pedals, including the bulk of EH's line, used wire to connect the switches. The wire method is more flexible when circuit boards are redesigned, but the direct mounting method is quicker to install and adds support for the board. Direct mounting is often associated with modern and cheap boxes, so it has an undeserved bad reputation amongst some pedal enthusiasts and boutique builders. This is a great example of where direct mounting is cool and vintage.

This particular unit had no problem with it, but I couldn't pass the opportunity to get some pictures of it. One of the two electrolytic caps is obviously a replacement (the blue one).

The FUZZ does not (appear to) turn up the gain. It functions more like a tone control. Fully clockwise was more like "fizz" than "fuzz." I have yet to trace the circuit from the photos.

A schematic I found online indicates this is pretty much a Mosrite Fuzzrite variation.

This pedal does not feature the clever input jack power switching scheme that would soon become standard. There a SPST switch on the back of the volume pot, and an additional/redundant power switch on the footswitch. So when you stomp this pedal, you are actually toggling the power as well as the audio. There's no reason you couldn't go ahead and implement the input jack switch trick if desired.