Jennings Fuzz (F.1)

The Jennings Fuzz (F.1) is a vintage British fuzz unit, described by the history site Fuzzboxes.org as "a simple standalone Fuzz unit"¹. It was made by Jennings, the company Tom Jennings set up after leaving JMI and the Vox brand, and it belongs to the same late-1960s family of British fuzzes as the circuits behind today's Fuzz Pedals.

What it does

The Fuzz (F.1) does one thing: it switches a fuzz effect in and out of the signal. Fuzzboxes.org describes it as "featuring just a foot switch to toggle between the effect and the bypassed sound", so there are no knobs for tone, level or fuzz amount¹. The player sets the sound by how hard they drive the input, in the manner of the early British fuzz boxes it sits alongside.

Circuit and design

Internally, the unit was "built following a textbook shunt-series feedback amplifier circuit", and Fuzzboxes.org places it among "similar to the circuits found in other early British fuzz boxes such as Sola Sound's two-transistor Tone Bender 'MK1.5'", along with Arbiter's Fuzz Face and certain versions of the Vox Distortion Booster¹. In other words, it is a two-transistor style fuzz of the same era, rather than an entirely new design.

Versions

Two formats existed, with the same circuit in different enclosures:

The Jennings Fuzz (F.1) keeps its control set to a minimum: a single footswitch toggles between the effect and the bypassed sound, with no other controls on the unit¹.

History

The Jennings pedal range arrived over a few years of change at the company:

1. The Jennings Fuzz (F.1) carries a single control: a footswitch to toggle between the effect and the bypassed sound¹.
2. That footswitch is the only control on the pedal, with no knobs or additional switches¹.
3. The design keeps operation simple: press the footswitch for the effect, press it again to return to the bypassed sound¹.
4. Beyond the footswitch, the pedal's controls end there¹.