Colorsound — Tone Bender Distortion — David Main — D.A.M

Everything about this pedal is pristine, with the exception of the indicator light which has never worked since purchase. Sounds and operates perfectly otherwise.

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Colorsound Tonebender Distortion reissued by David Main of D*A*M

Tonally it fits in along side its op-amp brethren from that time period. With the tone control pushed open it's plenty bright with a somewhat sparkly shimmery clarity. Rolled over into the bass frequencies it produces more of that dirty overloaded amp kinda thing rather than the feel of a deep heavy fuzz tone. Set at medium to lower gain level settings it plays remarkably well with a heavily pushed valve amp and reacts superbly with the guitars controls, personally I'd say this is where this thing really shines. If you're a fan of using an 808 style overdrive or a Distortion + style dirt box as a gain boost to your already driven amp tone you'll likely really dig this thing. Running this straight into the front end of a crystal clear amplifier tone, maybe not so much. I should also mention it works most excellently for squeezing extra gain boost from your existing fuzz boxes.

So what is it? Technically, a single non-inverting op-amp stage with symmetrical back-to-back diode clipping wired in the negative feedback path, so its kinda like Tube Screamer? Yup. The gain control is labelled 'Fuzz' the enclosure says 'Distortion' but it's actually an overdrive?!

Well something like. The diodes produce soft clipping like an 808 circuit or say an SD-1 as opposed to hard clipping like a Rat or a DS-1, but unlike the afore mentioned the Tone Bender Distortion makes usage of some pretty gargantuan values for the coupling capacitors. This along with other circuit oddities do deliver a somewhat fuzzy tone at maximum gain settings.

The tone stack is lifted straight from the Jumbo and Supa Tone Bender topology, or I could just say, its Big Muff style tone control. Which again adds quite a unique flavour and quirk for a circuit type such as this. It's pretty much an unforgotten wonder of the 1970s/1980s* op-amp family tree.As a rule of thumb.