1959 Gibson Custom Shop Historic Reissue

Among the many fuzz pedals to carry the Tone Bender name, the MkII might be the one that rips the most. And though not as common as the Vox Tone Benders that American psych-punk fans wrestled with for decades—which were generally Mk1.5 or MkIII versions—it might have been the Tone Bender version that people experienced the most thanks to Jimmy Page. As Page superfans and fuzzspotters outed the MkII as the sound of Led Zeppelin, it came to embody what a Tone Bender should be. Consequently, a lot of builders jumped on the bandwagon.

There is a practical, musical upside to the MkII that transcends the Jimmy Page associations. Some desert, doom, and stoner rockers, for instance, love its ability to sound huge and evil while occupying less mix space than a Big Muff. And while not as sweetly sensitive to input dynamics as the Fuzz Face (or the very Fuzz Face-like Tone Bender Mk1.5 and first-generation Vox Tone Bender), its germanium transistor topology makes it responsive to guitar-volume attenuation. EarthQuaker’s new take on the MkII, the Barrows, shares all these attributes. And between its very convenient size and refinements that make it less noisy, Barrows represents a ceratin sonic, functional, and practical ideal of what a vintage-style germanium fuzz can and should be in 2025.