Tone Bender MKII silicon version - worth building?

[Mann]

Anybody built Tone Bender MKII silicon version and if, is it worth building?
(Decent Ge transistors are hard to find or expensive...)

[Doug H]

Check this out:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/dbhammond/hsi.htm

There is a sound clip of it at my sound page.

I like this one a lot. The tone control and "fat" switch adds as lot of flexibility to it.

Doug

[RedHouse]

Doug,  nice clip whipping out the 'ol Trower.

(I just gotta get some clips going)

Is that a band or is it digital rythm tracks?

[Doug H]

Thanks, the rhythm section is all MIDI.

Doug

[Lonestarjohnny]

Doug, The Si version sounds kickass, was that a humbucker in the neck position ? and have you ever built it with GE's, what would the tone diff be ?, I have some old GE's, 404a's, about 100 hfe, would these work for the Bender ?
JD

[RDV]

There's 2 different ones in Schems 2. Doug's is smoother than the other one(mine), but mine has a very gnarly spitting sound kind of like the original cause all I did was reverse the original w/out changing much(except the biasing resister of Q3).

Regards

RDV

[Doug H]

Doug, The Si version sounds kickass, was that a humbucker in the neck position ? and have you ever built it with GE's, what would the tone diff be ?, I have some old GE's, 404a's, about 100 hfe, would these work for the Bender ?
JD

It's a s/c neck pup. I've never built it with GE's so I can't comment on that. It's not quite as smooth as my Si/Ge Easyface, but the fuzz face is really a different animal anyway. I don't think a Ge TB is as smooth as a FF because of the extra gain stage.

The goal of the Hot Si was to get the "Tonebender gain without the pain" of finding and matching "speshul" components and etc. The idea was just to use readily available modern parts and build a damn fuzz box...

Doug

[petemoore]

Them Ge's can be a headache. Getting two of them to hold bias [FF] is hard enough, with 3 [TB], it becomes like trying to unlock a combination lock with no known combination.
 Sounds great one day, unusable the next.
 I like the VOX Treble Booster/FF combo, cap values not necessarily withstanding.
 I seem to have found a Germanium that sounds great, day to day in the Booster, and that lends very nice Benderyness to a Ge, Or Si Fuzz Face getting very good results with the Piggybacked Si FF.
 Everytime it seems a component [especially active ones] is changed so too the sound changes.
 I never had a 'wire it right and go' FF. Always I go back and re-tweak.

[RedHouse]

Doug,

Thanks, the rhythm section is all MIDI.

Do you mind if I contact you off-line about it?
(I still have your email from another communication)

[Doug H]

Doug,

Thanks, the rhythm section is all MIDI.

Do you mind if I contact you off-line about it?
(I still have your email from another communication)

Sure!

Doug