There is a nice Roland AF-60 Bee Gee fuzz stomp box up for auction at Yahoo Auctions Japan. The AF-60 is a really hard to find fuzz effects pedal that is no longer being manufactured.

It is very simple to use - with just tone and out-put level controls. As such the sound doesn’t offer much in way of versatility - so this is one of those effects pedals where one either really loves its specific sound or one hates it. The Roland AF-60 Bee Gee fuzz effector has a distinctive analogue lo-fi fuzz sound which to some ears sounds muddy.

This stomp box is up for sale and they are asking 30,000 yen for it. The auction has a couple more days to run. These pedals come up for auction not very often, if you miss this one it isn’t too big a problem - we see these once every 3 to 4 months. Not sure why the pedal is called Bee Gee - something to do with the band of the same name? Despite the name (or because of it) this is one really cool pedal!
You can check out the auction by following this link: Roland AF-60 Bee Gee fuzz stomp box up for auction at Yahoo Auctions Japan.

Found this beauty this morning - a Roland GR-300 Guitar Synth up for auction at Yahoo auction Japan. The Roland GR-300 Guitar Synth was the first guitar synthesizer to really be playable. These were produced in the early 1980’s.

The auction is scheduled to end on July 24th @ 23:54pm. And the seller is looking for a price of 89,500 yen. You can check out the auction here.

There is quite a bit of information on the GR-300 on the internet. Synthemuseum.com had this to say about the Roland GR-300:

The GR-300 was considered the first “playable” guitar synthesizer. (It’s predecessor, the GR-500, was plagued with tracking problems that rendered it virtually unplayable.) The GR-300 had no MIDI and could only be played through a GR-300 series guitar controller.

The actual synthesizer module sat on the floor and had the rugged appearance of a large guitar-type foot pedal (complete with carrying handles). It featured 6-voice polyphony, one voice per string and 2 oscillators per voice. Each pair of VCOs were harmonically locked to each string but could be tuned separately to play different pitches. The GR-300 also featured a VCF with variable lengthsweep up and down, and an LFO. Each string had an enable-disable switch as well as a string sensitivity switch (basically audio compression). Built-in footswitches controlled the VCO mode (single/dual), the VCO harmonize pitch (detuning of the VCO’s), and the VCF mode (on, bypass, or inverted). There was also a pedal control input for the VCF. The GR-300 could output either the guitar, the synth, or a mix of the two.

You can check out their page about the Roland GR-300 here.

Also of interest is  the page at joness.com. They have lots of interesting material about the roland gr-300 - including a great description with diagrams of how it works, sample sound files, and recommended effects pedals and stomp boxes which sound excellent when used in conjunction withe the Roland GR-300 guitar synthesizer. Check it out here.