Tonebender MKIII

3-Knob Tonebender Fuzz

Most popular fuzz circuit besides the Fuzz Face is probably the Tonebender, which is also very simple but has 3 instead of 2 transistors.

There have been different variations of the Tonebender Fuzz curcuit. The MKII has two knobs - volume and fuzz - and there are also 3-Knob versions which have an additional tone knob. 

 

Tonebender is a Fuzz circuit that consists of 3 PNP germanium transistors. That means a voltage inverter is required if you want to run it with all your other pedals on a multi power supply. Otherwise you would need an own power supply only for this pedal or use a battery.

 

My Build

For my build i have used a terminal board with end-to-end soldering. I used carbon comp resistors, mallory caps and AC75 transistors.

For the voltage inverter i went with the madbean road rage, which features a 3PDT wiring and a charge pump (or voltage inverter) all on one PCB.

I use solid wires, which hold the terminal board in place.

 

You can find the schematic on FuzzCentral:
https://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/3knob.php

I have built the The Vox ToneBender MKIII version.