Revisiting my DIY Tonebender Mk I Fuzz pedal.

[DrNomis_44]

Hi Everyone,


I just found my DIY Tonebender Mk I Fuzz pedal, and thought I'd start this thread as a way to re-visit it, and would you believe it, the pedal still works, I tried it out with my Gold Strat and it sounded brutal, heaps of sustain at full attack settings, anyway here's a couple of new pics I took of it:


Outside:

19158


And Inside:

19159


Will post a demo later on....stay tuned.

[Andy40]

Thats an old school circuit board Doc!

[DrNomis_44]

Thats an old school circuit board Doc!


Yep, it's a very old-school way of building electronic circuits that probably dates back to around the mid 40's, the early Vox AC30's used to have most of the circuitry built on Tagboards like the one you see in the inside pic, although the Tagboard in the Vox AC30 was longer and there were two of them.

On the Tagboard, you can see three silver cylinders that have numbers written on them and three coloured wires coming out of them, these are some old AC125 Germanium Transistors that I bought on eBay.

[DrNomis_44]

I'm just going to see if I can get a new demo recording of my DIY Tonebender Mk I done so you can hear what it sounds like.

Here we go, here's the new demo I recorded....enjoy!!!

https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/mk-i-tonebender-demo


In the demo recording, I start off with the Attack control set to it's lowest setting, and as I progress through it I gradually increase it's setting till it's maxxed-out at the end of the recording, this is to demonstrate how the Attack control affects the sound you get from the pedal, as you increase it, the sound gets more saturated.

[DrNomis_44]

I'm going to be stripping the Tonebender Mk I down to the bare box so that I can give it a new paint finish this coming fortnight, original Sola Sound Tonebender Mk I pedals came packaged first in a hand-made wooden box, and then in a folded sheet steel box that was painted in a Gold Hammerite finish, I'm going to spray-paint the top part of my DIY Tonebender Mk I in the same Gold colour I used for the Gold Strat, and the bottom is going to be spray-painted Black, both parts are going to be clear-coated but the top part is also going to have some proper labelling put on it with some Letraset sheets, and then I'm going to spray it with a couple of coats of clear coat to protect the labelling, should look a lot better afterwards.


But before I do the re-finishing work, I'll wait till I've recorded a demo of the new Boss RE 20 Space Echo pedal that I'm getting this coming Tuesday, cause I want to record it with the Tonebender Mk I to get some psychedelic fuzztones recorded.

[Andy40]

Cool riff man, great example of a fuzz use ;)

I can see what your saying about the attack, by the third adjustment you can really hear it.

[DrNomis_44]

Cheers mate, it probably has way more gain then you'd probably ever need, but that in itself is actually a good thing, it also has a huge amount of output-level when the Level control is maxxed-out, if my memory serves me right, the Level is something like about two volts peak-to-peak or so, most modern pedals are only capable of about half that, so you could easily kick a guitar amp into feedback and get more sustain out of it.


I think I've got my DIY Tonebender Mk II Pro here in my flat somewhere, I'll see if I can find it and then start a thread like this one about it, with pics and a demo as well, actually, I just found it but the case needs a bit of a clean-up before I can take any pics of it.


And here's a link to a youtube video so you can hear what a real vintage Sola Sound Tonebender Mk I actually sounded like, I think my DIY Tonebender Mk I comes very close to it in terms of sound, maybe a bit smoother though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZX0SUZAYj4

[Andy40]

Yeah not bad at all doc. good comparison

[DrNomis_44]

I also managed to find my Rangemaster Vintage Treble Booster pedal at home, soon as I can buy some new strings for the two guitars I have at home, I'll do a revisit thread for it with a demo clip and pics of it and it's insides, hopefully it still works since it uses a single old Germanium Transistor, it should still work.

Might also include a write-up on it too.

[Andy40]

I was thinking of building a rangemaster clone at some stage.

[DrNomis_44]

I was thinking of building a rangemaster clone at some stage.


It's actually a really simple circuit to build, I'll post a hand-drawn circuit diagram of my Rangemaster pedal in the Rangemaster revisit thread exactly as I've built it, seeing as I'm not doing much I've decided to go ahead and get the thread started today, I can wait till this coming Tuesday to get the demo sorted out, if you have trouble sourcing some suitable Germanium Transistors for your Rangemaster pedal build, I can have a look through my stash of old Philco Surface-Barrier Transistors if you like and pick out some useable ones and post them to you if you want, I have quite a few of them.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:

There seems to be a problem with the link to the Tonebender MkI sound demo in my dropbox folder that I posted, so I'm going to sort it all out for you, I've got a sound demo that I uploaded to my soundcloud account.


Update 2:

All sorted now.