Category Archives: Tonebender (MkII)

Cramble on.

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Ahhhhhh holy shit, another ToneBender.  Why another ToneBender?  Because they fucking rule like some knees on some bees.  And because the customer requested it when given the lineup of “uhhh…do you wanna go more Hendrix, Page, or Gilmour with this?”.  Page was picked and so here is a vintage-modern MKII tonebender.

Its largely built as a vintage late-60’s ToneBender would be, but with some modern touches like AC-power, negative ground polarity and an LED to make it a bit more useful in today’s world.  Transistors are WOS (weird-old-stock) germanium Soviet ГТ311Бs selected to appropriate gain specs and biased to taste.  The thing sounds gritty like a fuzz face but more smooth and fat.  I dont know how else to describe it but the thing is kinda *thick* sounding.  Super tight.  Ive also recently fallen in love with these knobs, so they got put to use, and may on future builds as well!




Frontiers.

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My buddy John Adams and I have this saying:  “Frontiers”.  It started a long time ago when John was kind of spaced out and said it to some automatic-opening doors at a Chevron station.  The point is that, then and now, it has been slang for “next-level shit”.  This is some next-level shit.

Enter the great Erick Coleman, who must be tired of just ordering single pedals from me because this time he ordered a whole rig of matching pedals.  These were based on an original couple of MKII Tonebenders that I had built, one of which Erick possesses.  Three new ones in matching style have been added to the original fuzz:  a boost, an overdrive, and a tremolo.  None of them have LEDs (by request), none have labels, and the whole rig will drive gearheads crazy trying to figure out what each box is.  Frontiers.

From left to right they are the boost (ZVEX super hard-on variant), the tremolo (modified Diaz Tremodillo), the overdrive (TS-808 tube screamer with bass-boost), the fuzz (stock MKII Tonebender).

Trio of MkII ToneBenders

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These are a few months old but they’re worth mentioning.  Three ultra-mojo clones of the original Solasound MkII Tonebender from the 60s.  Each uses old-stock 2N1304 germanium transistors with mallory and sprague caps, housed in a slightly oversized 1590J enclosure.  They’re totally basic fuzzes but totally amazing ones at the same time (very early zepplin!).  I have one, Will Adams (Lower Dens, Ka-Nives) has one, and Erick Coleman (The Speed Knobs, Saturn Missile Batteries, StewMac Trade Secrets!) has the other.