Maxon's Best Kept Secret
A lot of pedal series are fairly simple to collect. Not necessarily easy (after all, it wouldn’t be very satisfying if you just walked into your local Guitar Center and saw all the pedals you’d been looking for laid out like ducks in a row), but the collecting itself still tends to be simple. Check Sweetwater, check Reverb, check your local music store. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The Maxon Fireblade Series was not simple to collect. Like, at all.
In fact, this series of just eight pedals literally took me two years to collect. There were a ton of factors:
1.) This pedal line was exclusive to Japan, and thus any advertising copy that might help me locate these pedals was written in Japanese. I don’t speak, read, or understand Japanese, which puts me at a slight disadvantage.
2.) It was produced through Maxon, a private label/OEM manufacturer for Ibanez, so the true origins of this pedal line are a little mysterious. These pedals could have been based on any third-party designs that Maxon produced.
3.) The original print ad from a Japanese guitar magazine in 1994 showed five pedals, even though the series itself included eight. Were the final three pedals added later, or did they leave them out on purpose?
4.) The writing on the pedals was in English, even though these pedals were exclusively marketed in Japan, which begs the question: where should I be looking for people to buy these pedals from? Japan or the rest of the English-speaking world?
So you can understand why it took me a while to get all these pedals together.
Before we dive in, I’d like to address a rumor floating around on Gear Page that the Maxon Fireblade pedals are actually Ibanez SoundTank pedals in a different enclosure. Unfortunately, that theory doesn’t hold water, because the SoundTank series was released by Ibanez in 1999, whereas the Fireblade series was released by Maxon in 1994. So, unless someone time traveled, that's impossible.
Let’s take a look at these pedals.
OD-F1 Overdrive
The OD-F1 Overdrive is yet another Tube Screamer. The world didn't need one, but Maxon still gave us one, and there’s a kind of “circle of life” rationale to that. Pedal makers will always create more Tube Screamers, and guitarists will always play them. Then the pedals become grass, and the antelopes eat the grass, and the guitar players eat the antelopes.
Or something like that. I haven’t seen The Lion King in a while, so cut me some slack.
My assumption is that OD-F1 is based on the Ibanez TS-10 (the 10 series was released in ’89, and the Fireblade series hit the scene about five years later). They changed the bass and put in a slightly different tone control which really sets this apart from other Tube Screamers in the herd. TLDR: I’m a fan of this pedal.
DE-F1 Delay Effector
The DE-F1 Delay Effector has level, repeat, and time. It's nothing fancy, but it sounds really, really good. I’m honestly not sure why. Maybe it’s something to do with the DSP design for this series, but at the end of the day: a digital delay is a digital delay.
You can like one or not. I, for one, like it.
SM-F1 Super Metal
The SM-F1 Super Metal is utterly confusing, but in the best way. Even in the first product release photo, it’s hidden in the shadows, as though Maxon wanted you to know straight out of the gate that one of these pedals was not like the others.
Every other pedal in this series has a straightforward color-block design, but the SM-F1 Super Metal operates completely outside of those branding rules. Instead, Maxon gives it a camouflage pattern and they add knives. Like, actual knives. This pedal also has a dynamite graphic in the center of the enclosure that lights up, which lets me know it has LED clipping inside.
I’ll just admit it: I have no clue what the circuit is. It kind of sounds like a swarm of bees being chased by vampires. It has bass, middle, and treble, but the treble is the star of the show. If you like treble, you’re going to enjoy playing this pedal. Personally, it’s not my cup of tea (it’s a little too buzzy for me), and that’s okay.
GE-F1 Graphic EQ
Next up is the GE-F1 Graphic EQ. I’ll admit that it’s freakishly identical to the 10 series Graphic EQ, down to the fact that they use the same exact frequencies. It’s even possible that this came from an older design that Maxon did for Ibanez.
Pro tip: If you have a distortion pedal or an overdrive that just feels brittle, you can use an EQ like this one to reshape it.
CS-F1 Chorus Effector
The CS-F1 Chorus Effector does a cool rotary sound, but you can also use it to achieve a slower, wider bucket brigade/chorus sound like we did in this episode. I’m fairly sure this is digital, but I honestly don’t care one way or the other. It sounds good. I enjoy playing it. End of story.
CP-F1 Compressor
The CP-F1 Compressor is based on the three-knob Ross/Dyna Comp style, and it features a pretty solid attack control.
Also, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge that Maxon struck pedal-name gold when they dubbed these pedals “Effectors” (the DE-F1 Delay Effector, the CS-F1 Chorus Effector, and the DS-F1 Distortion Effector). Is it a guitar pedal or is it a Transformer? Maybe both.
AF-F1 Auto Filter
The AF-F1 Auto Filter is, hands down, the pedal that has brought the most pain and suffering into my life. For literally two years, I could not find it anywhere. I had three people looking for it in Japan. I hired Dog the Bounty Hunter to see if he could scrounge one up. Finally it arrived. I paid more than I wanted to, but I got it. It found it to be eerily similar to the 10 Series Filter.
The real mystery to this pedal is that it only dates back to ’96, even though the Fireblade series was released in 1994. This raises more questions: if the AF-F1 was designed in ’94, why did Maxon wait two years to release it? Or if it was designed in ’96, why did they feel the need to add this pedal to the lineup two years later?
Heck if I know.
DS-F1 Distortion Effector
This is how confusing this pedal series is, y’all. I was literally putting this episode together when one of the JHS staff let me know that I’d missed an entire pedal: the DS-F1 Distortion.
Because of course I did.
There’s not much to say about this pedal, other than that it distorts your guitar quite effectively.
**DISCLAIMER**
If you want to collect the Fireblade series, I beg you not to. This will break you. You won’t like the person you become when you’re trying to complete the Fireblade series. No one will.
But if you just can’t resist (after all, pedals one through seven are pretty easy finds, even if the AF-F1 Auto Filter is only available by bartering with the devil at the crossroads of Highway 61), then you might want to stock up on the essentials: toilet paper, Blue Bell, frozen pizzas. This is going to take over your life for a while. Good luck!