[3][4] In 1961, While engineering Marty Robbins' song, Don't Worry at Bradley Studios, a technical malfunction unexpectedly transformed session musician Grady Martin's Danelectro six-string baritone guitar tone into an unusual distorted sound.
"I'm pretty sure what happened was the primary transformer opened up, causing session player Grady Martin's guitar sound to go from clean to bludgeoning", Snoddy told The Tennessean 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.
[7] Snoddy decided to team-up with fellow WSM radio engineer Revis Virgil Hobbs to build a stand-alone device entirely based around three 1n270 germanium transistors that would intentionally recreate the novel fuzzy effect.
While the initial run of 5000 units was a commercial failure, sales soared after The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards used an FZ-1 to record the main riff of the band's hit 1965 song (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.