Wednesday, January 22, 2025

The Lexicon of Fuzz

Over the last month I've been digging through various newspaper and magazine archives looking for anything pedal-related. (I know, I'm a huge nerd :) And something I started to notice was how rapidly the earliest references to "fuzzy" guitar tones evolved, and to much of the same terminology we use today. 

So I thought it might be cool to map out this evolution, and explore the lexicon of fuzz...


While the word "fuzz" had been used since the dawn of radio to describe a poor or noisy signal,  and later to describe a faulty or overdriven amplifier, it doesn't seem to have been widely applied to an intentional guitar tone until 1961, with the now legendary release of Marty Robins' Don't Worry from January of that year. 

Shortly after, the earliest gear nerds were already asking "HOW did he get that sound!?" And the article above, from January 22nd 1961, gives a really cool snap-shot into this world; describing the exciting (and confusing) "new sound" that guitarist Grady Martin used for the track.

Additionally, mentioned towards the end of the blurb, was that Martin had just released a brand new instrumental track of his own called The Fuzz, that he apparently made after realizing this very unique and "new sound" could disappear at any moment.


Well we all know the story from here, but it wasn't until the spring of 1962 that Gibson would release the Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz Tone; with the earliest reference I could find being an ad from the April 13th edition of the Tampa Tribune

And from this point through to 1964, all fuzzes were simply called "Fuzz-Tones". Which makes sense, because in that time there doesn't seem to be any other commercially available fuzz pedals on the market. And obviously from here on out, we can assume that all the true dates are actually a few months earlier than their appearances in print, but it's still cool to see.

That brings us to the next reference of note, from the December 1964 issue of Beat Instrumental. It's quick and simple but shows that by this time some hipsters in the scene had already adopted the more generic "fuzz box" (which implies that some non-Maestro fuzzes were available by then).


The usage of "fuzz box" finally became official in the September 1965 issue of Beat Instrumental, where they conducted a give-away contest for six MKI Tone Benders.

Not only do we see "fuzz box" printed a whopping 7 times throughout the pages, but it also makes its first appearance on the cover of a major magazine!





*one more term of note from this issue of BI, is the use of "fuzz unit"; Which had also been seen a month prior, in the classifieds section of the Duluth News Tribune from August 24th, where the seller listed his "Gibson electric fuzz unit" for sale.

From here we continue with the October issue of Beat Instrumental, where we find discussion of the 1965 BMII trade show; Watkins brought out their Pep Box, and more importantly (in the context of this article) Vox introduced their new Distortion Booster. Which as far as I can tell, is the first time we see the term "distortion" used to describe a pedal (or plugin) itself.


So by the end of 1965 there were enough non-Maestro fuzz pedals that the use of "fuzz box" had become the go-to designation. And enough so, that even down in Australia we saw it used in print.

Here is an ad from the December 23rd 1965 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald for Fi-Sonic amplifiers and their own "fuzz box", the Fuzz Blender.


"Fuzz box" would reign supreme for the next couple of years, but a full-on fuzz explosion was about to happen, flooding the market and again changing the vocabulary.

In the January 30th edition of the Springfield News Sun we find a small blurb that describes a theft of musical equipment, including a "distortion box". And while this term didn't seem to catch on, it can be found again just two months later in an ad for the "Pro-Fuzz Distortion Box".


In March of 1967 we get our first use of the word "buzz" in an Oregon Daily Journal article about the amp brand Sunn, in reference to their new fuzz plugin, the Sunn Buzz

Just a month later the term "Buzz Tone" is found in the classifieds section of The Gazette. It's unclear if this was the name of the pedal itself, or a generic term used for a random fuzz. But we do know that the Kimberly Fuzz Box was released in 1966 and at some point changed over to the Kimberly Buzz Box and Volume Expander. But as of now we don't know the exact date.

And finally, four months later, the Canadian amp brand Verlage placed an ad for their Buzz-A-Tone in The Brandon Sun.


Interestingly enough, we don't actually see the use of the word "pedal" when it comes to fuzz effects until 1968! And even more odd, we see it as "distortion pedal" first.

The below classified ad is from the September 9th edition of the Vancouver Sun, that shows what has to be a Vox Tone Bender for sale.


And the following month in the pages of The Charlotte Observer, we again find an ad for what is possibly the Vox Tone Bender, but this time it's referred to as a "fuzz pedal".

Something else to note about this one, is that it was very common in the late 60s to offer a "Free Fuzz Pedal" with the purchase of an amplifier or guitar. I must have run into 40+ promotions just like this from 1967-1970 alone.


Once we hit 1969, "fuzz tone", "fuzz box", "fuzz pedal", and "buzz tone" were all being used interchangeably. And by the beginning of the next decade "distortion pedal" would make its way to the top.

The journey "Fuzz" has taken in such a relatively short period of time can be found throughout the history of linguistics, especially when it comes to a major invention. And just like "airplane" was the term used since its inception, "fuzz" no doubt hit the nail on the head from Day 1.

*and a final note; as was stated earlier, the dates on these references do not necessarily correspond to either the exact dates or the exact order that the terms were created. But I thought it was important enough to document, and hopefully you got something out of this one.

thanks for reading,
-ed 

1 comment:

  1. Wow! Thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate it 🙏

    ReplyDelete