It’s 1965, and the Rolling Stones have released a new single. is an instant sensation due to Keith Richard’s unforgettable riff, which introduced the sound of a fuzz pedal to a worldwide audience. While there had been records featuring fuzz before, this was the one that really put it on the map and sparked a demand from guitar players for the sound. The fuzz pedal that Keith used was the Maestro FZ-1 which first saw the light of day in 1962 and, 60 years on, Gibson have revived the Maestro brand name for a series of new pedals. If you’ve never heard of Maestro that may be because the original brand became extinct in 1979, but you’ll certainly have heard their gear in action – that lovely liquid phasing on the Isley Brothers’ was a PS-1 Phase-Shifter, the distinctive wah intro on the was a BG-1 Boomerang Wah and the various models of the Echoplex tape echo were used by many, not least Jimmy Page. The five new all-analogue Maestro pedals; the Fuzz-Tone FZ-M, Discover Delay, Comet Chorus, Ranger Overdrive and Invader Distortion are the sort of substantially-built pedals that could double as a doorstop if
