Communication Breakdown

Two classic ‘tone-bending’ fuzz flavours side by side

- Trevor Curwen 

Rightly regarded as one of the classic fuzz pedals, the Tone Bender, introduced in 1965 by Sola Sound, has spawned many straight-up clones and pedals taking inspiration from the various iterations of its circuitry. Now, Canadian company SolidGoldFX has put two fuzzes based on Tone Bender circuitry into a single pedal with independent foot switching for each, so you can choose to use them individually or both together.

The Communication Breakdown features Fuzz B based on the MkII Tone Bender introduced in 1966 and famously used by Jimmy Page. There is also Fuzz A based on the circuitry now known as 1.5, a transitional design that used two transistors and was briefly produced in 1966 between the very first MkI Tone Benders and the MkII, both of which are three-transistor units.

That two-transistor design may have been shortlived in the Sola Sound Tone Bender but it is very closely related to the Italian-made Vox Tone Bender circuit and the Arbiter Fuzz Face circuit. Homage to two sufficiently different vintage circuits in one pedal, then, but the silicon-based Communication Breakdown is no slavish retro-clone: Fuzz A has been equipped with hotter transistors and Fuzz B has a JFET preamp added for “stability and tonal clarity”.