Park Fuzz Sound

The Park Fuzz Sound is a British fuzz pedal sold under the Park brand from roughly the late 1960s until the mid-1970s. Despite the Park name on the box, it was a rebranded Sola Sound product: the same London builder that made the Tone Bender line supplied the circuit, and during the late 1960s Park Fuzz Sound pedals came with Tone Bender MKIII circuits in MKIII-type enclosures¹. Park itself was Jim Marshall's alternative company back in the 1960s, born from Marshall Amplification and originally started by Jim Marshall himself, and it produced only a select few effects pedals alongside its amps, of which the Fuzz Sound stood out above the rest²³.

A Tone Bender MKIII in all but name

The question of whether the Park Fuzz Sound is a Tone Bender clone has a simple answer: it is the same pedal under a different name. The MKIII Rotosound Fuzz Boxes were built with the same electronic circuits that Sola Sound was also supplying to companies including Park concurrently, and that circuit was ultimately Sola Sound's fuzz circuit that replaced the MKII⁶. Aion FX lists the Park Fuzz Sound by Park Amplification alongside the Vox Tone Bender as variants of the Tone Bender Mk III family⁷. Premier Guitar's reviewer put it most directly:

JHS Pedals likewise describes the Park Fuzz Sound as a clone of the Tone Bender MK3⁹. For a player, that means the Park Fuzz Sound belongs to the three-transistor germanium fuzz family of the late 1960s rather than the two-transistor MKII style. On how that circuit behaves, the technical analysis at Guitar FX Layouts notes that the early MKIIIs sound fuzzy and choppy¹⁰.

MKIII and MKIV versions

Surviving original Park Fuzz Sounds fall into two broad groups, and the differences are mostly about controls and enclosure rather than circuit family¹:

Date codes in surviving pedals confirm the pressed steel MKIV-style version was built until the mid-1970s¹. The transistors in these MKIII and MKIV Tone Benders were almost always unmarked, probably a British type made by STC, and their exact specifications will likely never be known¹.

The controls

The original three-knob Park Fuzz Sound carried the same control set as the three-knob Tone Benders Sola Sound was building for other companies at the same time¹. The EarthQuaker Devices reissue keeps the three-knob arrangement, and its manual describes each control plainly¹¹:

On the reissue, the Tone control range was increased so the fuzz goes from warm and mellow to biting, and Delicious Audio's buying guide notes the Fuzz knob has twice the gain range of the original⁴¹².

Sola Sound, Gary Hurst and Park

The circuit lineage traces back to Gary Hurst, a former Vox technician who began experimenting with fuzz circuits in 1964 after Tom Jennings of Vox was not interested; Hurst teamed with the Macari brothers, whose Sola Sound went on to build the Tone Bender line¹³. Hurst later recalled his own designs having been rebranded for a number of companies, which included Park¹. Sola Sound supplied the same three-knob fuzz to several brands at once: the Carlsbro Fuzz of the same period was identical to the fuzz boxes Sola Sound was supplying to Park and Vox, and to the Tone Bender MKIV sold under Sola Sound's own name¹⁴. Park's own few effects were mostly generic variations of wah pedals, which makes the Fuzz Sound the standout of the brand's pedal output³.

The EarthQuaker Devices version

In 2014, Park Amplifiers and EarthQuaker Devices teamed up to bring a faithful recreation of the original Park Fuzz Sound to market, the first in a collaboration to produce effect pedals consistent with the Park brand⁴. The reissue, sold as a Vintage Germanium Fuzz Tone, was hand-made one at a time in Akron, Ohio, and sold through EarthQuaker Devices dealers and distributors worldwide⁴. Its full specifications are on the EarthQuaker Devices Park Fuzz Sound page; the maker's own figures are:

• Circuit: Faithful recreation of the original, with NOS germanium transistors matched for consistency from pedal to pedal⁴¹¹
• Fuzz range: Wider than the original, more than twice the range¹¹
• Bypass: True bypass with electronic relay-based switching; audio will not pass without power¹¹
• Power: Nine volt adapter jack with standard polarity, 3 mA current draw, suited to isolated power supplies⁴¹¹
• Impedance: 100 kΩ input, under 1 kΩ output¹¹

EarthQuaker describes the reissue as retaining the original sounds while adding modern upgrades to improve performance, reduce extraneous background noise and add versatility, in a smaller pedalboard-friendly size⁴¹¹. Premier Guitar's reviewer found it delivers great '60s-style germanium fuzz tones with a little extra gain and range, an effective tone control and colorful overtones, and noted it is less gainy and hectic than the Mk II, though at its highest gain levels the new version has a bit more sizzle than an original⁸.

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