Vic Flick

Mentioned and pictured in this April 2012 Vintage Guitar interview. According to this November 2009 Guitarist interview with Gary Hurst, Flick gave his unit to Hurst for modification, becoming the basis of the Sola Sound Tone Bender.

Guitarist, November 2009, "Bend It Like Beck Can"

“Vic Flick walked into the shop with his Maestro Fuzz-Tone and said, Listen, I can’t do much with this – can you have a look at it for me?” says Hurst. “I’ve still got it actually – he never took it back! Anyway, I took it to pieces, but I couldn’t get any more sound out of it than it was already making, that is until I modified it. And then I said to him, I could build you a better one.

“I’m not trying to hide anything here, the Tone Bender was based on the Fuzz-Tone, but that’s what things were like back then.

Vintage Guitar, April 2012, "Vic Flick - 007 Guitar Man"

In the studio, I rarely changed volume, as the sound man had all his knobs adjusted for the mix. Mostly, I used a DeArmond pickup through a DeArmond pedal and then into a Fender Vibrolux amp. I purchased the Fender amp in ’62, just prior to the Bond recording that June. There’s a picture of the amp and an original Maestro Fuzz Tone pedal in my book. I did have a 15-watt Vox at the time, but it fell off a stage.

Visible in this late 1950s photo with The John Barry Seven and mentioned in this April 2012 Vintage Guitar interview.

In the studio, I rarely changed volume, as the sound man had all his knobs adjusted for the mix. Mostly, I used a DeArmond pickup through a DeArmond pedal and then into a Fender Vibrolux amp. I purchased the Fender amp in ’62, just prior to the Bond recording that June. There’s a picture of the amp and an original Maestro Fuzz Tone pedal in my book. I did have a 15-watt Vox at the time, but it fell off a stage.

While there is no photos or film of Vic using a Sola Sound Tone Bender MK-1 it’s been recollected by Gary Hurst and Vic himself that he got Gary to modify a Gibson-Maestro FZ-1A “Fuzz-Tone” for more sustain and with a second jack instead of a built in cable so he could play farther away from the pedal (the “Fuzz-Tone”s cable is only around 8 feet long) and Gary produced the original prototype “Wooden Box” 1965 Sola Sound “Tone-Bender” (Mark 1) which was later developed into the Mark 1.5 (The Fuzz Face circuit) and Mark 2 “Professional” which would be used by players like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, without Vic, most modern fuzzes probably wouldn’t exist and I’m really suprised this pedal isn’t on his equipboard page to be honest. NOTE The photo I used is just to show the prototype Vic had next to the production model Tone Bender Mark 1’s