Fuzzy Twist

An utter beast of a take on a hybrid Tone Bender.

Fronted by a pair of silicon cans, but backed up by the all important germanium funkiness to bring you the sweetest of smooth fuzz. Unless of course you want it nasty, in which case this also has your back, thanks to the external bias pot.

Yeah, we've heard it all before. Sure, but how about you mash in a little bit of HM-2? Well, not really, but the special sauce in this hot take is the active gyrator-based EQ, offering huge boost across your bass and treble ranges, rather than the usual frequency dumping of passive stacks.

So, smooth and classic or gated and glitchy - take your pick, then twist those dials and pick again. It's going to be a long night...

Now, we've taken a liberty with the bias control. The original uses a combination of log pot and parallel resistors to do exactly the same job as a linear pot of a lower value would do, so we're offering the choice of either until we run out of 250KA dual gang pots. It makes no difference in use, honestly. We're also offering it up without the germanium transistor, just in case you have something special tucked away for a rainy day you want to use.

The kit is supplied with vertical-mount pots which have round shafts, so you'll need set-screw fitting knobs.

If you want the PCB without parts there's a link for that at the bottom of the page.

Partial kit: PCB, all board-mounted components, pots.

Full kit: As above, plus footswitch and appropriate daughterboard/components for your selected bypass type (see Downloads section for details of those), jack sockets, DC socket, battery snap, hook-up wire, LED.

Enclosure (pre-drilled) is available as an option with full kits, and can take a battery if desired with footswitch positioned 22mm higher, closer to the controls. Knobs are not included.

Inspired by: Fuzz Bender

Difficulty: Easy

PCB size: 50 x 50mm

Knobs required: 5

Enclosure: 1590B

Direct Connect compatible (4-way)

Download the INSTRUCTION PDF