Jeff Beck

Beck's effects story starts early. Roger Mayer met Beck and Jimmy Page around 1962 to 1963 at local music venues in the Surrey Delta, and they became his earliest customers; in 1964 Mayer built custom fuzz pedals for Big Jim Sullivan, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page¹².

Yardbirds fuzz: the Tone Bender

The Tone Bender grew out of the Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone. Session guitarist Vic Flick modified his FZ-1 to produce more sustain, then approached Gary Hurst to modify it further, and Hurst's modifications led him to design his own circuit, the Tone Bender⁴⁵.

Beck used the earliest wooden Tone Benders from the start and destroyed a few of them⁶. The wooden-case prototype MKI units were distributed to artists across London, including Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck, and used a circuit of one OC75 and two 2G381 transistors⁷. Due to Beck's heavy use of the pedal he smashed a unit with his heavy foot stomping movements while playing on stage⁸. Gary Hurst has often described how the shift from wooden to metal casings came partially as a result of Beck crushing the wooden pedals on stage⁹.

On record, Beck used a Tone Bender MkI on the 1965 Yardbirds single "Heart Full of Soul", in an attempt to give the riff a more Eastern sound¹⁰. The MKI is described by British Pedal Company as most famously used by Jeff Beck and Mick Ronson, defining tones throughout several hit songs of the 1960s and 70s¹¹. BSM also ties Beck to the tighter-sounding V*X/Sola-Sound Tone Bender Mk1.5 style in the early Yardbirds, a sound its Fuzz Bender, a handmade germanium fuzz, switches to from a Fuzz Face style¹²¹³¹⁴.

The 1974 rig and the Kustom Bag talk box

Weeks before recording Blow by Blow, Beck appeared on the BBC show Five Faces of the Guitar in 1974, representing rock alongside Paco Peña, John Renbourn, Barney Kessel and Julian Bream¹⁵. His modest setup at the time featured a ZB volume pedal, a Dunlop Cry Baby wah and an early '70s Colorsound Overdriver, a boost style pedal, running into an Ampeg amplifier¹⁵. He performed with his Oxblood 1954 Gibson Les Paul¹⁵.

The most curious part of the setup was an odd-looking device called the Bag, a Kustom Electronics talk box¹⁵. On his 1975 LP Blow by Blow, Beck used a Kustom Bag to talk his way through the reggae-tinged cover of the Lennon/McCartney classic "She's A Woman"¹⁶. General Guitar Gadgets' JD Sleep lists Beck alongside Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton and Joe Perry as a traditional talk box user, and recalls seeing Beck use one live in 1977¹⁷.

The Klon Centaur and the Archer

Beck is one of the players most associated with the Klon Centaur overdrive. Klons have been used by Jeff Beck, John Mayer, Joe Perry, Ed O'Brien and countless other guitar heroes¹⁸, and Bill Finnegan's pedal has been used by such high-profile players as Jeff Beck, John Mayer, Joe Perry, Nels Cline and Matt Schofield¹⁹. The pedal even carries a Beck connection in its design: the MOD switch, famously requested by Jeff Beck on the original pedal, lets players extend the bass response for added low end drive tones²⁰.

Later, Beck moved on from the Klon. On That Pedal Show, Mick Taylor and Dan Steinhardt discussed the J Rockett The Jeff Archer, the Archer variant with black knobs:

Guitar World's fuzz buying guide also names Beck among players who relied heavily on solid-state Rat distortion pedals to create their signature sounds²², and Pro Co's Scott Burnman recalled that the biggest thrill was in 1985, when he saw a picture of Jeff Beck using his pedal²³.

Death and tributes

Beck died on January 11, 2023²⁴. Joe Perry paid tribute on Instagram:

Instruments used throughout Beck's career, from his early days with The Yardbirds to his final tour in 2022, went to auction in 2024³.

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