Baja Tech Bone Bender Mini Review

[909one]

I got the Baja Tech Bone Bender last week, its a clone of the Italian Vox Tone bender. The only other fuzz pedal I have owned was a Fuzz Factory, so I can't really compare it to a vintage Tonebender first hand. I can roughly compare to a variety of Youtube videos of Tonebenders I watched. Here are some thoughts:

I was messing around with the pedal on my practice amp the whole week, but then got to try it with the band last night. My practice amp at home is a vintage Gibson Scout. The Scout is a really bright amp, and to be fair not very many distortion pedals sound good with that amp. So, to start I was pretty unimpressed with Bone Bender on the Scout. It sounded incredibly splatty and there was very little sustain with pedal at all. I guess I was pretty used to the Fuzz Factory's ridiculous amounts of gain and sustain.

On the Scout, it did cop the Beatles style fuzzes pretty well... the more messy, nasty Revolution style fuzz. And I was looking for a pedal to do that sound, but also was hoping for a little bit of the Beck/Yardbirds Mk1 sound as well. With the Scout, it just wasn't cutting it for those types of sounds.

Yesterday I finally got to try it in practice with the band. At my practice space, I have a 5e7 Bandmaster clone. This is a much warmer amp, and upon first use of Bone Bender I was instantly pretty impressed. The fuzz was much more organic sounding and managed to capture a wider variety of the sounds I was looking for. With the 'kill' control up about halfway, you could get a semi-convincing MkI sound. It sorta does the zipper sound that the Fuzz Factory is so good at as well. Its nice because that control also functions as noise gate too, for higher volume settings, my hollowbody doesn't instantly go into feedback. With the Kill control off, the pedal sounds more like something in the MKII or Fuzzface area. I did a quick Communication Breakdown with our drummer and it got pretty close to that sound. It does clean up pretty well with the guitar volume. However, the pedal really didn't offer much in the sustain department though still. I think that might be a characteristic of the Vox Tonebender circuit, and not the Baja Tech pedal itself.

The major issue I had with the pedal in practice was not the tone actually, but more of using it with other pedals. Putting it in the front of the chain seemed to work best tone-wise. But, even with my Barber Half Gainer on a low gain setting after the fuzz, the Bone Bender had a noticeable gain drop and didn't really cut through the mix very much. Putting the Bone Bender after the Barber resulted in enough gain with the fuzz on but, the tone was extremely shrill. I don't want to get into a situation where I am turning on and off two pedals at the same time every time I want to use a fuzz, so I am thinking about building a little switch box that will simultaneously switch one pedal off while the other one goes on.

So, to sum up... This pedal is a good approximation for a vintage Tone Bender style fuzz, but I feel like its only opening the doors for exploration into more fuzzes (which is bad for my wallet). Its an extremely affordable pedal to get you in that realm, but while its definitely not ending the search, it will satisfy me for a while a think.

[triviani]

Nice review. I had a Baja Tech germanium fuzz which was really good, but it also had some issues when stacking it with other pedals..

[wundergussy]

I had a bone bender, but it did not last long. Never melded with it.

[909one]

Yeah, I think its a transitional piece, until I save up so more money to try something else.

[909one]

What are some other MK1/Mk1.5/Mk2 clones in the under $250 category that would be worth looking into, that also play better with other pedals and have a decent amount of sustain on tap?