When I was eleven or twelve, after endless hounding, my dad finally caved in and bought me an electric guitar—a Conqueror (at left), which looked a lot like a Lyle, which in turn was a kind of like a poor man’s Gibson ES-335, only it had a Bigsby-style whammy bar, which I loved, and used to great excess. Along with the Conqueror, I received an Alamo amp. It was a tube amp, 5 watts with a ten-inch speaker. My dad, a classical music guy, would give me guff for immediately turning the amp all the way up, but it sounded great that way. He used to say “you know, if you turn it up past 4 or 5 it begins to distort". To be fair, he had pretty good taste in music for a dad; his favorite composer was Bela Bartok.

Alamo 5-Watt Tube Combo

It would be many years before I’d find another amp that sounded that good. In fact, I had no idea what a good thing I had; I was just a smart-assed little kid, after all. My next amp was a Vox. It was solid state and the note attacks would cave in unless the treble was cranked. Yikes. . . and I had that one forever.

(I’ll spare you the details of all the bad guitars and amps I used through the years—it would be embarrassing for both of us.)

Along with the amp and guitar (and I’m hazy on the details here) I got a Jordan Boss Tone. This meant I could play the licks from “Incense and Peppermints” and have some credibility.

Jordan Boss Tone

To this day I have no idea how the Conqueror and the Alamo got lost in the shuffle, but I had that Jordan fuzz effect for a few years, until the circuit board cracked, and then I bought another one that I modified so it would work as a floor pedal, which I also broke after about a year. I loved the sound of that thing; it was the essence of “acid rock” and it’s almost embarrassing how little my tastes have changed in that regard.

I mentioned the Boss Tone in my last blog “Getting All the Sounds You Need With a Guitar, A Volume Knob, And A Tube Amp” and my editor, Owen, sent me a link to a guy that builds replicas of the Jordan Boss Tone, calling it the “Buzz Tone” and using high quality components to model them after the best examples of the old Jordan fuzzes. Well, I bought one. So much for my moratorium on pedals. Only this sucker isn’t a pedal—it plugs straight into your guitar, so only one cable required. This doesn’t really let me off the hook; it’s still an effect. But it’s a great effect.

Mahoney Buzz Tone

It has two knobs for distortion and volume, and an on-off switch. Very simple, and is in true bypass mode when not engaged.

The thing about fuzz boxes is, no matter how good they are, when you play them through crummy amps they really can sound bad, but through a good tube amp set fairly clean, they really shine. The Boss Tone had a very warm, rich sound, especially for its time, when other distortion boxes could be relentlessly harsh and grainy.

The following sound samples were made using my 1980 Les Paul Custom and a 65 Amps Lil’ Elvis with conservative (for me) settings:

One note: since the Buzz Tone is an L-shaped jack that plugs directly into your guitar, it won’t work with any guitar that has a concave input jack (like my GC1 guitar or my Strat). Mahoney Guitar Gear does have a modernized floor pedal version of the Buzz Tone, which is a bit more expensive but decidedly more practical.

The first setting is with the fuzz on just a little bit and the volume up about two-thirds:

• Mahoney Buzz Tone - Audio Sample 1

Even at this setting the distortion is pretty aggressive, sounding a bit like a higher-gain Marshall. Having the volume on the Buzz Tone up a bit gives you a much fuller sound- if the output volume of the device is too low the sound begins get a bit thin and scratchy, but still usable for distorted background parts that need to be at a low level.

The next setting is full out distortion, and this is where the effect really makes sense to me:

• Mahoney Buzz Tone - Audio Sample 2

There is always the looming threat of uncontrollable feedback, and each note tends to disintegrate into a world of multi-phonic splendor. It’s like sonically riding a bucking bronco. Somewhere in the middle of that mess is something resembling nearly infinite sustain. Yum.

No effect gizmo is perfect, and you’re not going to get the low-end definition or the three-dimensional sound stage of a pure, overdriven, high-gain tube amp, but it is a pretty amazing sound. Backing off your guitar volume will clean it up a little, but it’s never really clean; for that you need something more like the various Fulltone overdrive/distortion pedals. I have the Fulltone GT-500 and it’s a wonderful device that deserves its own review.

My thanks to Chris Mahoney for reproducing this great distortion device! I’ve wanted to get one for years but didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars on e-bay for a rusty artifact.

Composer, guitarist and arranger Steve Kirk's music has been featured in film, video games and TV. This includes music for the Disney game version of "The Princess And The Frog", Microsoft Games "Voodoo Vince" , the FarmVille Theme for Zynga Games, and to be released in Spring 2011, Cantina music composed for the Star Wars MMOL game The Other Republic.

Steve teaches guitar, music theory and composition privately in Oakland, California, as well as Blue Bear School Of Music and Community Music Center- both located in San Francisco, California. He is also the guitarist for Club Foot Orchestra and Orchestra Nostalgico.