Earliest Jordan Boss Tone Advertisement?

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All the way back in 2011 I wrote this article on the history of the legendary Jordan Boss Tone fuzz. At the time it was my belief that the official release date landed somewhere in 1967, despite reports of a potential "prototype" version (*see image below) that was shown at either the 1966 NAMM show or in one of the large volume distribution catalogs like Targ & Dinner or David Wexler & Co, of the same year. *sadly the origin of the above photo is still unknown

At this point, and to my knowledge, a Boss Tone with this logo has never surfaced. And to the keen observer, you may notice that it shares a very similar graphic style to the insanely rare Jordan Vico Vibe. Which leads me to the believe that it wasn't a prototype at all, but simply the earliest version Jordan produced.

If this is the case, and 1966 is the true beginning of the Boss Tone, then it would answer the one question I've always had... Which was; if the Boss Tone came out in 1967, then that would leave an extremely short period of time for them to go through 4 different circuit variations!? 

By the Summer of 1968 Jordan Electronics moved from Alhambra to Pasadena, CA. and had already created the final, and most popular version of the circuit. But to get there they to go through a lot of fine-tuning and redesign. So with even just one additional year of production under their belts, this story begins to make a bit more logical sense.

Well that brings us to this awesome piece of evidence I found just a few weeks back; which is a newspaper ad from October of 1966. It was in the pages of the Eureka Humboldt Standard, out of Eureka, CA, and placed by Peets Music Co. who was apparently the exclusive dealer for Jordan Amplifiers in that area. We sadly don't get much in the way of a photo or description of the Boss Tone, but it's cool to see that it was promoted as a "Fuzz Tone' and originally sold for $29.95.

With this revelation, I may have to go back and edit my original Boss Tone post, because it's very likely that my "V1" is from 1966 and not the following year!

As of now I have yet to find an earlier mention of the Boss Tone in print, but it's highly likely that they were available before October of 1966. And if the "early graphic" picture was a NAMM promo, that would make it at least from July of that year.

It is also worth a note that I found another ad from November of 1966 that's for all three Jordan Juniors effects. Which again, rewrites the history I have been clinging to all these years. So I'll definitely update this post from a while back with that info as well.

As always, if you have any additional information or photos of 1966-era Boss Tones, I would love to hear from you. Please shoot me an  Email or Instagram message.

Thanks for reading,

-ed