Glenn Snoddy, 96; engineer helped develop ‘fuzztone’ guitar sound

Glenn Snoddy, a Nashville, Tennessee studio engineer who built a pedal that enabled guitarists to create the snarling “fuzz tone,” unleashing sonic distortion possibilities that influenced generations of rock guitarists, died May 21 at his home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He was 96.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his daughter, Dianne Mayo.

Whenever you hear guitar distortion on a heavy metal or punk rock record, or the feral guitar of Keith Richards on the Rolling Stones’ 1965 signature hit, (“I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” you’re listening to the legacy of Snoddy, whose device allowed guitarists to go from clean to dirty picking at the tap of a foot.

The fuzz effect was first heard – by accident – on country singer Marty Robbins’s 1961 record “Don’t Worry.”

During the recording session, guitarist Grady Martin’s six-string bass guitar was being run through a console with a defective transformer. The distorted and almost flatulent sound initially annoyed Snoddy, and he requested a redo. Martin, producer Don Law and the other musicians convinced him that they had stumbled on something new.

“No one else used [the fuzz-toned transformer] to my knowledge,” Snoddy told Vintage Guitar magazine in 2013. “Nancy Sinatra came to town and wanted to use that sound, and I had to tell her people that we didn’t have it anymore because the amplifier completely quit. So I had to get busy and conjure some other way to make it happen.”

Snoddy took apart the bad transformer and built a foot-operated pedal to duplicate the sound.