An original 1967 Arbiter Fuzz Face.
Photo courtesy of Starman19842. Jimi Hendrix's Arbiter Fuzz Face
As Frank Zappa told
readers of Life magazine’s
“The New Rock” issue
in June 1968, the only
way aspiring guitarists
could even hope to
sound like Jimi Hendrix was to “buy
a Fender Stratocaster, an Arbiter Fuzz
Face, a Vox wah-wah pedal, and four
Marshall amplifiers”—and even then,
of course, nothing was guaranteed.
Shaped like the round, cast-iron base of
a microphone stand, the Fuzz Face was
a simple and durable unit that delivered
gain and distortion with a vengeance.
It was produced by Arbiter Electronics in
London and went to market in the fall of
’66—perfect timing for Hendrix, who had
just arrived in England and was wide open
to trying the latest gadgets, no matter how
experimental (as Roger Mayer, inventor of
the famed Octavia pedal, found out when
the two met the following spring).
“Love or Confusion,” from the Jimi
Hendrix Experience’s debut Are You
Experienced, is the first recorded instance
of his use of the Fuzz Face, but the best
example on the album is probably “I Don’t
Live Today,” where the lower reaches of his
tone actually start to break apart into shards
of pure, controlled noise, years before anyone
even thought to overdrive a guitar to
such extremes.
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