Rotosound Fuzz

The Rotosound Fuzz is a vintage-germanium fuzz pedal built in the UK by Rotosound, based on the Tone Bender Mk III circuit. Premier Guitar's reviewer heard "girthy, buzzing garage-psych fuzz on lower strings and biting higher notes that trade buzz for a spittier, more fractured rasp," and called the pedal "articulate, warm, and violin-like" with the tone rolled back¹.

Circuit and history

The pedal's lineage runs through Sola Sound's Tone Bender designs. The MkIII circuit was Sola Sound's fuzz circuit that replaced the MKII, and the MkIII Rotosound Fuzz Boxes were built with the same electronic circuits that Sola Sound was also supplying to Vox and Park concurrently². Fuzzboxes.org notes that pedals formally labeled "Vox Tone Bender MKIII" could have been built with any one of at least three entirely different fuzz circuits under the same label, so the Rotosound version belongs to a family with tangled branches³.

The circuit family also connects to other early British fuzz boxes:

• The Jennings Fuzz (F.1) uses a circuit similar to Sola Sound's two-transistor Tone Bender "MK1.5"⁴
• That same Jennings circuit also resembles Arbiter's Fuzz Face and certain versions of the Vox Distortion Booster⁴
• Fuzzboxes.org describes the Rotosound Fuzz as otherwise identical to the Jennings F.1, apart from bearing a different brand name⁴
• The Tone Bender's three-transistor circuit became, in Delicious Audio's words, "one of the staples vintage fuzz designs"⁵

Premier Guitar's reviewer described the Fuzz's character in detail: "the Fuzz is articulate, warm, and violin-like, like a more white-hot version of Clapton's Cream-era woman tone," with the guitar's neck pickup and pedal tone rolled back two-thirds¹. The treble control, the review notes, affects definition in a busy mix¹.

The reissue story

The reissue keeps the look of the original, with what Premier Guitar's reviewer called a "battleship/tackle-box gray hammerite finish [that] is a thing of beauty"¹. The announced features of the pedal include:

• Vintage germanium stock
• The original 1960s circuit configuration with modern resistors and capacitors
• True bypass switching
• UK manufacture at Rotosound's Sevenoaks, Kent factory

Premier Guitar's September 2023 review listed the pedal at a street price of $299 in the US¹. At that price it sits alongside other vintage-germanium fuzz reissues, and the review judged the tones it produces to be "authentic vintage-germanium fuzz tones"¹.

Controls and design

The pedal carries three knobs:

There is no LED indicator, which the reviewer argued "arguably offsets this advantage" of the foot-friendly controls¹.

The enclosure is finished in what Premier Guitar called a "battleship/tackle-box gray hammerite finish," which the reviewer described as "a thing of beauty"¹. Size-wise, the reviewer called the Fuzz "a beast, the size of wah, with a tapering profile like a less corpulent Vox or Sola Sound Mk II Tone bender or the Colorsound Mk III Tone Bender"¹.

What reviewers said

Premier Guitar's reviewer placed the pedal in a wide field:

On tone with the treble rolled back, the reviewer compared it to "a more white-hot version of Clapton's Cream-era woman tone," with the neck pickup and guitar and pedal tone rolled back two-thirds¹. MusicRadar, covering the original reissue announcement, described the Tonebender circuit as the basis of the original Rotosound Fuzz pedal and "much-loved"⁶.

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