Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
For those under age 70, the sound of a distorted guitar might as well be violins. This “broken” sound is so natural to us, most can’t imagine popular music — especially rock — without it.
Fuzz (being different than distortion or overdrive…hang with me), is fifty! And to celebrate? We shall talk and write articles about this event. Check out fuzz connoisseur William Weir’s article in The Atlantic, “50 Years of Making Fuzz, the Sound That Defines Rock ‘n’ Roll.” This article includes some great sound samples of early fuzz adopters.
Also, from WNYC Public Radio, an excellent conversation with Weir and Mike Matthews, founder of Electro-Harmonix, who talks about the fuzz boxes he’s been building since 1969, including the ever-popular Big Muff.
- Through midnight, May 27, for each guitar pick sold we will donate one pick to Washington Middle School and the kids of La Habra, CA, through the band Nude.
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The program on the history of fuzz/distortion was VERY interesting! Wanted to point out that in the 60′s time frame, a notable piece of fuzz/distortion work was on the Beatles album “Rubber Soul” called “Think For Yourself”. The bass was “fuzzed”. Mark Lewisohn’s book “The Beatles Recording Sessions” lists a recording date of Monday 8 November 1965 and says “The technical people at Abbey Road built fuzz boxes for use with guitars, ‘It was an electronic device in which you could have controlled distortion’ says Ken Townsend, then one of the technical engineers. ‘You actually made the sound overload’ ” Further information comes from the Andy Babiuk book, “Beatles gear” on page 173 referring to the year 1965 and specifically to “Think For Yourself”. He also says that the Abbey Road/EMI people built their own boxes but that the unit used on this song may have been a prototype VOX Tone Bender. Babiuk also goes on to say that “……..Harrison and Lennon had fiddled around with a Maesto Fuzz Tone unit as early as 1963.”
Great info, Duane. Thanks for adding it!