Way back in the dark ages of the late ’60s, the music industry experienced a sudden explosion of fuzz pedals that popped up on the market like mushrooms on cow dung after a spring rain.

In an instant the market was flooded with all kinds of square-wave distortion devices with names like the Tone Bender, Fuzz Face, Pep Box, Buzzaround and even a few other names that weren’t cheeky drug references.

Sometime in early 1967, Jordan Electronics decided to expand its business beyond Cold War atomic age devices like Geiger counters and dosimeters by entering the wild and wacky world of electric guitar effect devices with the Jordan Juniors series of products.

These were compact devices housed in small plastic boxes that plugged directly into a guitar’s output jack and sold for only $29.95.

Products included the Vico Vibe tremolo and Boss Boost treble/bass booster, but by far Jordan’s most popular effect was the Boss Tone fuzz, which sold by the thousands thanks to its low, low price and absolutely wicked, ripping tones.

The Boss Tone features one of the simpler circuits out there, using two silicon transistors, a pair of diodes, a small gaggle of capacitors and resistors and little else.