Moody Sounds BJF Bone Bender 1 fuzz kit

Bone Bender 1 kit, this must be rock n roll in a box! And a piece of rock history. Bone Bender, as the name suggests, resembles the 60’s Tone Bender. Two transistors that are set for high gain and another one that buffers and impedance matches the signal. But Bone Bender has some clear improvements, making it much more DIY friendly and useful.

 

First the sound, a short description. It is fuzz it’s all about. The pedal leaves a perfectly solid and heavy germanium sound, full of harmonics. There is a lot of pressure in the circuit so for those who want to be listened to, it’s no problem, and you adjust the right output level with the volume knob. The pedal also has an exciting knob called Attack. The knob connects to the circuit in a slightly different way than in a traditional TB. And when you turn Attack, another spectrum of Fuzz sounds is rolled up. Those who like the Tonebender character on fuzz will not be disappointed.

 

Other improvements and good additions are the trimpots. The two germanium transistors, AC127, which set the characteristics to the fuzz’, will vary in so-called hFE value in your kit. The circuit is furnished with two trimmers so you can bias-adjust them. This makes the circuit more independent of the individual characteristics of the transistors, it is possible to trim it so it sounds right. We measure the transistors and label them, to make sure they are in the right hFE range.

 

Another aspect of Bone Bender is that the first impedance matching transistor is a JFET. This has a much higher inimp in itself than the Tone Benders transistor. This in turn means that Bone Bender has less noise and becomes more independent of what is plugged in.

 

The Bone Bender kit is designed by Björn Juhl. We have developed a kit with a newly designed PCB to offer from here. Share discussion about this circuit on the BJFE forum. Read more about Bone Bender, Fuzz 109, Sparkle Face and other DIY kits there.

 

The Bone Bender kit includes all the parts needed to build the pedal including a pre-drilled enclosure. The kit also includes some modification components for those who want to fine tune the sound. Read “description and working theory”, linked to below, and take a deep dive into how the circuit works and get suggestions for modifications.

 

https://moodysounds.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/bone-bender-kit-eng-1c.pdf

 

https://moodysounds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Bone-Bender-1-description-and-working-theory-text-.pdf

DIY kits contain complete instructions and all components needed to build the effect including pre-drilled enclosure.