Silvertone, and Standel. Effects devices and amplifiers In 1941, Rowe Industries introduced the world's first effects unit intended specifically to modify the sound of an electric guitar. The floor-based Model 601 Tremolo Control contained a 120V AC motor that rocked a small sealed bottle fitted with two electrical contacts and containing electrically conductive fluid. The variable frequency of the "make and break" action of the mechanism created a type of tremolo effect. Bo Diddley and many other artists used this device. A foot-pedal version, the Model 800 Trem Trol followed in 1948, greatly reducing the awkward bulk of the 601. In the early 1960s, Rowe Industries created a line of guitar amplifiers, including a series for C. F. Martin & Company. Seeing a rising market for relatively simple (yet profitable) effects devices, in the later 1960s Rowe increased output of new effects-box models, the Square Wave Distortion Generator and the DeArmond Wa-Wa pedal. The DeArmond Weeper… Wa-Wah pedal. …three versions of phase shifters including the model 1900 Pedal Phasor, the model 1920 Tornado Phase Shifter and the model 1930 Twister Phase Shifter. Legacy Harry DeArmond retired in 1976, by which time his company had designed and manufactured over 170 different pickups for a wide range of stringed instruments, and many amplifiers and effects units. DeArmond and Rowe each received multiple patents, which were utilized far beyond the music industry, including widely in the aerospace industry: During the 1960s, in addition to their music-related products, Rowe Industries produced components for radar, aerospace and missile defence systems, including the Nike-Hercules missile, the Nike-X, the Apollo moon shot and the B-52 communications system. A DeArmond pickup was famously used by guitarist Vic Flickon a 1939 English Clifford Essex Paragon De Luxe guitar recording the original James Bond Theme at CTS studios in Bayswater, London. Later use of trade names Around 1998, Fender had acquired interests in various brands, including Guild Guitars and the DeArmond name. Fender launched a line of import Guild guitars in Korea and Indonesia under the DeArmond brand. The better Korean guitars had Dynasonic-style pickups also branded as DeArmond, and made in the United States, but there was no tangible connection to Rowe Industries or Harry DeArmond. The later "2K" pickups (subsequently appearing on models of Fender guitar) looked cosmetically like the Model 2000 but were just single-coil pickups, as is true of almost all subsequent copies. References External links