Latest Spaceman Auction Accelerating to a Closing Flourish

As reported elsewhere on this blog, I have something of a love-hate relationship with the venerable Spaceman Effects marque and its Reverb.com store-front - Spacelab Orbital Workshop. The latter sees alternating bouts of super limited special flash sales and slightly more leisurely auctions - as is occurring right now on Reverb.com and is the theme of this piece.

I was late to the party on Spaceman Effects, in fact taking a most unseemly hiatus from my teenage years through to just a couple of years ago when I rekindled my passions for everything electric guitar. I then kind of let my pursuit of the Spaceman Gemini III blind me - as its now circa £900+ Reverb.com ticket price - plus delivery and customs / import charges makes it something of a fool’s errand.

I’m not sure how many Spaceman pedals there are in Europe, but I was lucky enough to come across a mint condition Red Cyrillic Sputnik I in Italy - via Reverb.com of course - which made the whole acquisition somewhat more comfortable than having to add sky-high delivery charges and customs and import charges on top of an already inflated price. I was indeed lucky to come across that one, and then my Titan II winch came via a special limited time offer on the official Spaceman Effects site.

I’ve said before that I’m fine with Spaceman Zak making revenues any way he sees fit, although artificially constrained production kind of grates against my sense of justice and fairness at times (Zak can after all just wheel out a new colour scheme any time he likes - do a small batch and then step back and watch the ensuing bun-fight). My Scandinavian self won’t allow me to overstep certain thresholds of reasonability, and thus these auctions are kind of self-defeating for me.

The rarest pedal on sale is actually the lowest-cost one currently - the super-rare Blazar Reverse Noise Gate (7 units total) - which though may not be particularly useful for most (it adds white noise when you stop playing!). Then again the highest priced here is a sparkly purple edition of the sold-out Voyager Tremolo which had a maximum retail price of $499 when it came out in 2015 and there was limited stock of that available in distribution as late as 4th quarter 2017.

I have one feasible Spaceman target which is to obtain a decent quality Aphelion Harmonic Overdrive - which was initially out back in 2011, and which sort of dried up a few years ago - though examples do pop up quite regularly. What you will notice is that some of the second-hand pricing is plainly ridiculous, and the pedal condition can be misquoted several times also - so it’s very much a case of buyer beware. In most circumstances the affordable core editions tend to be raw or polished steel, or black. With the most expensive versions typically shiny Chrome and Copper editions. You need to look out for the limited run number which also acts as an indicator of collector desirability.

I generally go for the core editions, but when you’re late to the party you need to take what you can get. As far as the artificially constrained manufacture goes - Zak can keep on releasing unique colourways ad infinitum - whether they are wholly one-off, or one of a few.

As noted elsewhere I was recently ’invited to acquire’ an Acid-etched Ayahuasca Trem-Fuzz from Abracadabra Audio - as part of their terms and conditions you cannot resell the pedal for more than you paid for it - which I really rather like. For Abracadabra it is a matter of limited run batches, but there is none of that 1 of only 10 of this kind ever. Of course Zvex to a degree pioneered the whole unique individually painted pedals approach - while I would always go for the screen-printed Vexter versions - as overall it’s the insides that count! Even though we are frequently led by our eyes as well as our ears.

Analog.Man has another different limited edition approach where you sign up to a waiting list as long as two years in advance - for the King of Tone pedal. With both of those last mentioned approaches you don’t get as much unnecessary price inflation and profiteering. There are several more Spaceman pedals I would like to get my hands on, but pricing will likely prove prohibitive - this includes the very original Rumblefuzz Fuzzstortion, Gemini III Dual Fuzz Generator and Mercury III Harmonic Boost. As it is I am looking to round out my Spaceman trifecta of Sputnik I and Titan II fuzzes with a decent Aphelion which I hope I can eventually get for around £350-£400 - and hopefully from someone already in Europe.

I was tempted to bid for the 2 Aphelions in the auction but they are both likely to go for circa $600 at the final hour I estimate - meaning that with delivery and customs and import charges I would be paying the best part of £600 - which really can’t be properly rationalised against a market valuation of circa £400. Versus the Spaceman Aphelion on the UK side you also have the similarly harmonically rich ThorpyFX Gunshot at £185 including delivery - another one of my wishlist targets - I still need to complete the Thorphy trifecta too of Fallout Cloud, Gunshot and Warthog.

So as with everything in life - it’s all relative, and all comparative. I am largely a patient man though, and I will wait until the time is right and my conditions are met. Boy do I like these Spaceman pedals though - why do they gotta be ’unobtanium’!