Inspired by the desire for fuzz, a new distributor got in on the act. From 1960 to ’64, John Hornby Skewes worked as the U.K. sales rep for Hohner, then Fenton-Weill guitars.

“When I went to school, if you played the guitar you were a sissy,” he said. “Then suddenly, you were a sissy if you didn’t play the guitar.”

Skewes translated that cultural shift into a business; with his wife, Madge, he founded his own musical-instrument company in ’65, from his home in Garforth, in West Yorkshire – far from swinging London. Among his first products was a fuzz pedal.

To design and build his stompboxes, Skewes commissioned a small firm called Wilsic Electronics, in the village of the same name near Doncaster. Owner Charlie Ramskirr set to work.

“Charlie designed the pedals, and I guess he cribbed circuit ideas from others, though I do not know whether from the Tone Bender,” Skewes remembers.

Beyond the Fuzz-Tone and Tone Bender, there were few others from which to borrow. Regardless, the Hornby Skewes Zonk Machine made its debut in late ’65. ~Vintage Guitar Magazine