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BSM Releases the Spice Box

BSM Releases the Spice Box

The Spice Box is a faithful replica of the MTC unit, which has been used by Ritchie Blackmore's Stratocasters since 1978.

Frankfurt, Germany (March 3, 2017) -- The Spice Box is a faithful replica of the MTC unit, used by Ritchie Blackmore in all of his Stratocasters since 1978. Since the inventor and builder of the MTC died some time ago, they are no longer available. So I took my chance to re-engineer this device when I had four of the originals on my workbench so I could do extended tests and analysis with them.

  • Famous sweet sounding midrange filter for creamy lead sound by using a toroidal coil.
  • Extra sounding treble bleed circuit for biting sound by rolled back the guitar´s volume control.

One feature of the handmade BSM "Spice Box" is that when the volume control is rolled back, the tone gets clean with a tighter bass response, similar to an early 70´s stock Strat. Ritchie used this volume setting for soloing as well, especially when a soulful feeling was required. In order to get a sweet sound with this setting, the second feature of the BSM "Spice Box" was incorporated: the famous mid-filter, using a toroidal-coil with selected core. Compared to a standard tone control using a capacitor, the mid-filter creates more chime and high-end, resulting in a warm and sweet tone, but with a good portion of transparency to prevent it from getting muddy - one of the real secrets of the BSM "Spice Box" !

The BSM “Spice Box” is built for standard Stratocaster guitars and works also with similar guitar types with single coil pickups. The unit (2 ¼“ x 1 ½“ x ½ “) is intended to be placed under the tone pots, just like the original box. For fastening a piece of high-quality Velcro is included. Street price is $165.00

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BSM