To love fuzz is to practice polyamory—once you start to experiment with fuzz, it’s unlikely your heart will belong to just one type of pedal, but, that’s alright. Fuzz is an understanding lover, offering many partners to suit your many moods and needs. If you think you’re ready to fall helplessly into the thrall of fuzz but don’t know your Fuzz Face from your Big Muff, below are descriptions—roughly in chronological order—of the characteristics you’ll find in some of the most famous fuzzes.
Technically, it doesn’t begin with the Maestro Fuzz Tone, but it may as well. You know this pedal from “Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones and to give you an idea of how new fuzz was at the time, Keef was just using it to demo the horn parts he had in mind for the song—there was no sense, initially, that it was the appropriate tone for the song. The Fuzz Tone is nasally and buzzy, it’s muscular but (when compared to other fuzzes that followed) it’s comparatively lean. The Fuzz Tone provides what people refer to as a “velcro” texture, because of the serrated edge of the notes. The Mosrite Fuzz-rite has a different topology but ultimately a similar character (the Fuzz-rite was later copied in the first few versions of the Guild Foxey Lady pedals).
Tone Benders were created by Sola Sound (and later licensed to and, er, “adapted” by other companies) specifically to offer more sustain than the Fuzz Tone. Several variations were created, and each has developed its own legions of admirers. The MK I, as one might suspect, is the first iteration. It was used by many players, but it’s probably most closely associated with Mick Ronson (who got his from Pete Townshend) during his stint with David Bowie. He often paired the MKI with a wah, but once you realize he was using it on a variety of tracks, you get a sense of the fuzz’s base character, which is a much fatter, frequency-rich signal with a serrated texture that’s not quite as extreme as the Fuzz Tone’s simply because it’s offset by the denser tone. The excellently named Hornby Skewes Zonk Machine is based on the MKI.
The follow up to the MK I—the MK I.V—was short lived, but it lasted long enough to inspired the Fuzz Face, as both pedals share a virtually identical topology (notably, both use two-transistors rather than the three used in the rest of the Tone Bender family). The Fuzz Face, of course, is a sort of industry standard among fuzzes—or perhaps it’s the French vanilla of the fuzz world—notably used by Jimi Hendrix and David Gilmour, among countless others. The Fuzz Face, like the MK I, has a fairly balanced tone, but it’s a little darker, throatier and smokier, while being more saturated. These characteristics changed slightly when the Fuzz Face moved from germanium to silicon transistors, and the texture became harder, brighter and less woolly. Many players take advantage of the Fuzz Face’s interactive nature, rolling back the volume on their guitars to get a nice, open overdrive, then rolling up for thick, dense distortion.
If the Fuzz Face is the vanilla of fuzzes, then the Tone Bender MK II might be the chocolate-chocolate chip. Thick and saturated with a rich low end, the MK II has a sharp, “gated” attack (like the note just ran into a brick wall and got smeared all over it), quickly blossoming into rich, meaty distortion that emphasizes the fat bottom. The MK II is often associated with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck’s early solo records, but, between its almost square-wave attack transients and rich tone, it embodies some of the best that fuzz has to offer and it’s become increasingly popular in the last several years. The mythical Marshall Supa Fuzz was based on a MK II, and, while the dissemination of an inaccurate schematic muddied the waters, the consensus seems to be if it’s not identical to a MKII then it’s a little darker. Like the Fuzz Face and MK I.V, the MK II cleans up nicely when your guitar volume is rolled back.
The Tone Bender family kept breeding. The Vox Tone Bender (not the be confused with the Vox Tone Bender Professional MK II, which is, indeed, a MK II) offered another milestone in fuzz, hearkening back to the leaner Fuzz Tone while retaining some of the MK II’s juicy low end. I associate the Vox Tone Bender’s sound with Ennio Morricone’s work (although I don’t know that they were used on his sessions), and not just because both were made in Italy—you’ll recognize the nasal, cutting snarl immediately. The MK III and MK I.V had less intense gating than the MK II but a similarly rich character, and the benefit of a tone control; the Park Fuzz was based on the MK III.
While the Tone Bender’s were propagating, Baldwin Burns designed its excellent Buzzaround. The Buzzaround offers sweet, singing sustain; rich, full tone; and some gating (although less extreme than the MK II’s)—inhabiting a very sweet spot between the MK I and MK II Tone Benders. Robert Fripp is the player most closely associated with this pedal.
While the above pedals are glorious and could easily be put to use by any fuzz lover, Roger Mayer took the French vanilla Fuzz Face and put some crazy sauce on it when he built for Jimi Hendrix what would become the Octavia. The Octavia marries an octave up effect to fuzz, and the combination of the two effects really accentuates the harmonics that the fuzz creates via distortion and gating. The effect can be dramatic and somewhat unpredictable, but that’s part of the charm. Somewhat ironically, this advancement of the fuzz ideal often resembles a sonically kaleidoscopic variation on our old friend the Fuzz Tone. The Univox Super Fuzz (which was designed by Shin Ei, whose name is often attached to the pedal) took the Octavia concept and mass produced it (Roger Mayer did ultimately get his own design into regular production). Surprisingly, one of the most notable users of the Super Fuzz was Pete Townshend, who used it live almost exclusively from approximately 1969 until 1979. Townshend’s no nonsense guitar tone wouldn’t suggest he was heavily employing an octave fuzz, but you can hear how he had it set to deliver some additional meat and interesting overtones on, say, Live at Leeds. The Ace Tone Fuzz Master was based on the Super Fuzz.
Back in the United States, Electro-Harmonix (EH) was ready to take back some of the fuzz territory that had been ceded to the U.K. The EH Big Muff is a classic, in no small part because, like the Tone Bender, it’s had so many excellent variants. The Triangle and Ram’s Head Big Muffs (so-called because of elements of their visual design; the triangle’s knobs are arranged in a triangle shape, and the ram’s head features the iconic EH logo in the bottom corner) are famous for being the most articulate versions of the Big Muff, but all Muffs offer gobs of rich, chewy sustain, a very functional tone control and lots of output. Some people consider the Muff to have a “scooped” EQ, to the point where, for years, boutique builders have offered mid boosts (and EH has recently followed suit). If the mids are scooped, the bottom end is voluptuous—the Tone control rolls off low end even as it adds top but, as someone who loves low end in general and uses the Muff’s tone control liberally, I’ve always found the tone control to be very well implemented. The fuzz itself is very compressed, and it takes up a lot of sonic real estate. David Gilmour is a Muff user, as is Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis, and countless others of Mascis’ late ’80s, early ‘90s alt-rock peers.
Apart from the Muff, most of the fuzzes mentioned here were traditionally based around germanium transistors, which helped account for the volume knob cleanup (and, some would say, tone mojo), but also led to issues with inconsistent biasing—I’ve played an original MK II that sounded amazing, and I owned an anemic Fuzz Tone that was clearly in need of a re-bias. The latter issue is interesting, because a lot of germanium fuzzes derived their character from their biasing, so a classic recording attributed to one of these pedals may not be a great exemplar of that pedal’s standard tone. Fortunately, many modern builders offer bias knobs, both in germanium and silicon pedals based on the classics. Modern versions also tend to be easier to include in a daisy chain on a pedalboard (an issue with germanium-powered pedals), offer more output, and are built so impedance is less of an issue, making positioning in the signal chain less of an issue (many vintage fuzzes demand to be first in your signal chain; a drag if, like me, you really prefer to run overdrives and wahs into your fuzz).
What I’m really saying is, the above isn’t supposed to be a guide to collecting or a list for a treasure hunt. Instead, I hope it will serve as a kind of matchmaker as you look to start your own unique love affair with fuzz.