FUZZ ___TONEBENDERS ____WHICH ONE DO YOU PREFER ???____

TONEBENDERS
The video shows examples of all the germanium ones. They are not the Sola Sound originals. They were made by JMI around 2008 as faithful replicas. They do very well in showing the different characteristics of the different versions. A fourth Tone Bender has a very similar circuit but the germaniums transistors were replaced by silicon ones. More on that later.

Purist in general only accept the TB1, TB1.5, TB2 and TB3 as the only pure TB's. I own a part for part clone of a TB3 but I took it off my board. It is so sensitive to temperature changes it can turn the sound into a thin nasal sounding mess. It can also cut out at random or even shut completely off and stays off until the pedal is left in a room with a moderately cool temperature. None of this is unusual. This is just typical of any germanium transistors. They also react badly to having a buffer in front of them or in some cases even after them but that is more unusual.

GERMANIUMITIS 

I still use a SolidGold '76 octave Fuzz which has been designed to minimize some of the germanium problems. Even so sometimes it needs help. I found a trick where I leave my Keeley Compressor on but turn the blend control down to zero and kills 95% of the compressing but leaves my Fuzz in tack. If I turn off the comp I get a weak, nasally and thin sound.

COLORSOUND TONEBENDER JUMBO (TB #4)

The last TB is the Colorsound which simply swapped out the germanium transistors to silicon ones. It still has a very heavy TB sound and vibe. It does NOT have issues.

Big Knob pedals make the Colour Jumbo. The damn thing is

a totally 100% convincing clone! Better still it's only $130.00 USD.

OTHERS?

These were all made at the by Sola Sound  but rebranded to be sold by other brands. It was done as they felt if they didn't they would get cloned anyways ...they were certainly right about that. In this case you get to check out several MKIII versions. 

the fine print

One must keep in mind that pedal makers in the 60's were very, very small time. For example the early MXR pedals were made by buying discontinued entire circuit boards from IBM and desoldering the parts off of them. Sola Sound bought whatever was the cheapest or even available. It is not sarcasm if you said that nothing is better than their Script Phase 90 that if I lined up 30 of them and simply said "Which one???"

Many of these pedals were meant to have two matching transistors did not have 2 that are even the same brand let alone being matched electronically. 

Makers saw much of what they made as like any electronics that these pedals would become redundant in a few years and be scraped for a shiny new better one. On the whole they were right. Why would I keep my Big Muff when I could buy a Rat and why would I keep the Rat if I could ...etc. 

At least the new modern stuff is  consistent no 2 are made or sound different. 

The truth is there are many excellent new Fuzz pedals but still more that are merely OK. 

If you want the best, buy a pedal using your ears not your eyes.