{"": "The pollen came, and Josh Scott couldn't see.
In the spring of 2009, as allergy season swept across Mississippi, Joshua Heath Scott found himself blind, swollen-faced, and dependent on rotating antihistamines just to function. The American South delivered an ungodly amount of pollen — a substance so relentless it rendered him functionally incapacitated. And from that suffering was born the Pollinator.
Born in Allergy Suffering
The fuzz circuit Scott created produced a tone that matched exactly how he felt during pollen season: thick, aggressive, slightly unhinged, and impossible to ignore. The name followed naturally from the sound.
"It was so named because of its fuzz circuit," Scott explained about the pedal bearing his misery, "produced a tone not unlike the way its creator felt during pollen season." The reference wasn't accidental — it was deeply personal.
The Pollinator served faithfully across two versions. Version one and version two provided Hendrix-adjacent tones to the masses, cleaning up beautifully with the guitar's volume knob and generally conducting itself with honor upon pedal boards both great and small.
The Retirement
In 2017, the Pollinator was retired from active production — not in disgrace, but in dignity. Its circuits folded, its bias knobs stilled, its germanium transistors returned to a state of peaceful rest. The pedal that began as an expression of seasonal misery had run its course.
But something bothered Scott about the name's future.
"No name in the history of effects pedals has ever been more naturally, more cosmically, more obviously belonged to a bee-themed pedal company than the name Pollinator."
The Transfer
In Los Angeles, California, lived Betronics — a family-operated guild of sonic artisans who by choice or fate devoted their entire professional lives to the aesthetic, spiritual, and tonal legacy of the bee. Their whole brand is a clinic doing something right with products and how people relate to it, building an entire ecosystem around bees.
Scott realized the name had always belonged to Betronics. The fact was so self-evident he was embarrassed he didn't think of it sooner.
On March 3rd, 2026, in the sovereign jurisdiction of the internet and also Kansas City, Missouri, Scott officially granted the name Pollinator to Betronics — to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, in fuzz and in delay, in analog and in digital, till the end of all things or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first.
"This transfer shall include but not be limited to the name itself," he wrote, "all associated vibes, all residual mojo, the concept of pollination as it relates to a guitar tone, and the general right to put the word Pollinator on a pedal without me texting you about it at 1:00 in the morning."
The Original History
For Scott, the Pollinator story began right before he moved to Kansas City in 2009. He was building things by himself, tinkering around, obsessing over the fuzzace circuit — something every young budding pedal builder has to get through. It is the rite of passage.
The original number one ever made Pollinator looked weird because it was weird. Scott didn't know what he was doing. There was a sticker on it where he realized JHS Mods, what it was called then, would probably become JHS Pedals. The first one had a paper cutout of a bee — this girl named Megan did some hand-painted fun stuff and Scott asked her to paint the case.
"Put a bee on it," he told her. That is where it all started.
The original stamp logos didn't have the icon that is now known. There was a generic high school football team stamp found at a craft shop. This was really early, and pedals came in all kinds of colors — there wasn't a standard color. He built these per order using the logo and called it the Pollinator.
Version one got the classic green lightly sparkled powder coat and the official stamp with the old typeface. Then they learned that if you get rid of the center black fill, it stamps much cleaner. Then they went to printing. The labels are officially printed — a transitional pedal with only a few surviving both eras, crossing the bridge from stamping to printing.
The version two was put into an almost sand, chalky enclosure with a crimson aesthetic when it came to the knobs — an oxblood crimson thing. Same logo, but with a gain control using four controls: volume, bias, fuzz, and input gain. Still AC128 germanium transistors.
"We'll never make this again," Scott said to collectors. "Find them. They're really fun."
The New Pollinator
The Betronics Pollinator Hazy Delay arrived with eight modes: filter, tremolo, time, feedback, mod, and mix. It features a rotary with various settings including phaser, auto wah filter, step phaser, reverse slow gear, and tremolo mode. Two sections — a filter and trim on the delay — mean this mod control changes whatever setting you're on.
Scott plugged in the old original Proto Pollinator he hadn't touched in ten years. It fired right up, still sounds great despite not being built great inside — he was learning.
"This is already 100 times better than my pollinator fuzz," Scott admitted.
Critics might note that the transfer raises questions about why Scott didn't think of this sooner, and whether sentimental attachment to a name should factor into such decisions. The emotional weight of giving up a product identity you've built for nearly two decades is considerable.
Bottom Line
The strongest part of this argument is Scott's self-aware humor about the obviousness of the name belonging to a bee company — his embarrassment at not thinking of it sooner is genuinely endearing. The biggest vulnerability is that the piece leans heavily on nostalgia and wordplay rather than substantive analysis of what makes Betronics' products special or why the name transfer matters tonally. The reader gets the history, but not necessarily the product.
Scott hopes you enjoyed this. Hit like, subscribe, comment about it, do all the stuff — but most of all, go check out this new Betronics pedal."}