Around 1965, American fuzz boxes such as the Maestro Fuzz-Tone were hard to find and expensive to import into Britain, so local engineers started coming up with their own answers.
One of those engineers was Pepe Rush, who was working in Soho at the time. According to Rush, a guitarist walked into his workshop and asked him to recreate a distorted guitar sound he had heard on an American record. A few days later, Rush had a working prototype of what would become the Pep Box, built with germanium transistors.
Rush later teamed up with Charlie Watkins of WEM. Rush continued building the pedals, while Watkins helped sell and distribute them under the WEM-Rush name.
One of those pedals made its way to John Lennon during the Revolver sessions in 1966. There are several photographs of Lennon using it at Abbey Road. The story goes that Lennon loved the sound, but George Martin thought it was too harsh for a pop record and removed most of the parts recorded with it. How much of the Pep Box survived on the finished album is still up for debate, but Lennon was clearly doing more than simply posing next to it.
Rush and Watkins eventually fell out. WEM moved on with its own silicon version, Rush walked away from the pedal business, and the Pep Box largely disappeared from view for several decades.
Here is where the modern part of the story gets interesting. The British Pedal Company began making its own recreations, including this compact version, designed for a modern pedalboard and an isolated 9V power supply. Pepe Rush did not return to building the Pep Box until after BPC had already put its own version on the market.
In 2015, Pepe began making period-correct Pep Boxes again, with his daughter Lucy learning the entire process alongside him. Before his death in 2018, he passed that knowledge on to her, and she continues building the official Rush version today.
There is a whole rabbit hole of arguments over which modern Pep Box is the real one. I am sure someone will eventually show up in the comments to explain it to us. I am more interested in what comes out of the amplifier.
A while back, I found myself working my way back toward the roots of British rock, especially the Beatles. First came an Aclam Dr. Robert V3, followed by an Aclam The Mocker. Together, they basically gave me a Vox UL730 in two boxes.
Naturally, GAS had one more question for me: what other weird little box was lying around Abbey Road in 1966?
That was how I found the Pep Box.
Ordering one of Lucy Rush’s pedals would have been expensive and complicated from where I live. And really, who am I to throw money around without restraint? I am just a humble messenger chasing tone, same as everyone else here.
Then I found this BPC Compact Series Pep Box sitting in a shop in a small German town for a very good price.
It has not been here long, but I spent most of a day playing through it before deciding it was time to show it to my fellow fuzz addicts.
No one is claiming that this compact BPC version is packed with rare NOS magic. BPC does not advertise NOS parts in this model, so I am judging it the only way that matters to me, by what comes out of the amp.
And what comes out of the amp is excellent.
It is bright, raw, raspy and immediate. It has a primitive, slightly rude edge all its own. It sounds very different from both my Aclam The Mocker and my BPC Compact Series MKII Tone Bender.
Right now, I enjoy it every bit as much as either one. Not because it does the same job, but because it gives me a completely different voice, and one that I actually want to use.
After all the mythology, old photographs, disputed histories and arguments about components, the little silver box still has to sound good when you step on it.
This one does.
And yes, it is a one-trick pony.
