Sola Sound

The company is still active. Sola Sound Ltd is now operated by Anthony and Steve Macari from their London based guitar store, and its Sola Sound and Colorsound pedals are sold through the Macari's⁵. Its Colorsound reissue range is described as completely hand made by the original manufacturer in London, England⁶.

The story: a London fuzz maker from the 1960s

The ToneBender was introduced in 1965 by Sola Sound, a British company based in London¹. Gary Hurst, an electronics engineer, designed the pedal, and Gary approached London retailer Sola Sound to market and distribute it from their London store, Musical Exchange¹¹. Ant Macari of the Macari family still holds the trademark applications for the words "Fuzz Box" and "Tone Bender" dated 1965⁸.

The first few available Tone Benders were sold as Gary Hurst designed units rather than Sola Sound pedals, with hand applied dry letter transfers; later units were silk screened and labeled "Sola Sounds Ltd"¹². By 1966 Sola Sound was also acting as an OEM, an original equipment manufacturer, supplying the same product for other brands¹³.

The timeline of the main Sola Sound models:

Known for: the Tone Bender and its many versions

The Tone Bender line is the heart of Sola Sound's reputation, and its versions differ enough that players still distinguish them by mark number¹²¹⁰¹⁵.

• MKI: Hurst's original 1965 design, sold first as a Gary Hurst unit and then under the Sola Sound name¹²¹⁴. Modern makers such as JHS have built pedals around this circuit¹⁶¹⁷.
• MK1.5: A transitional model dating to 1965. Its origins are disputed: there is no consensus as to whether it was conceived by Gary Hurst, by Dick Denney, or perhaps by somebody else¹³. With over 40 original pedals known to have survived, they are more abundant than many of the fuzz boxes built by Sola Sound¹³.
• Professional MKII: Originally designed by Gary Stewart Hurst and produced by Sola Sound back in 1966¹⁸. The earliest "short board" MKII pedals retained almost all of the individual parts of the MK1.5 circuitry, rearranged on the old stripboard¹⁹. Sola Sound later resumed building this model, and the company is blunt about its status: "This pedal is not a replica of a Sola Sound Tone Bender it is a Sola Sound Tone Bender"¹⁸.
• MK3: Launched in 1968 with a new punched metal casing, circuit board and three OC75 transistors¹¹.
• MKIV: The three-knob 1970s model, covered below.

The circuit's reach goes well beyond Sola Sound's own boxes. Sola Sound manufactured the Tone Bender MKII circuit for a number of different companies as the OEM¹⁹, and later pedal makers have kept the designs alive: Tone City's London Bender is engineered around 1970s British style fuzz tones with a pronounced midrange²⁰, and DIY builders can buy PCBs for Tone Bender derived circuits¹⁹²⁰.

Founder Gary Hurst

British engineer Gary Hurst founded Sola Sound, bringing fuzz distortion into maturity with his Tone Bender pedals⁹. He designed the pedal at the back workbench of Macari's Musical Exchange on Denmark Street in London²¹², and his name appears on the earliest units¹². He is also credited with designing the Professional MKII¹⁸. The MK1.5's origins are the one point where the record is unclear, with Gary Hurst, Dick Denney and others all suggested as its designer¹³.

Building fuzz for Vox, Carlsbro and Park

Sola Sound's OEM work is a large part of its history, and it explains why so many British fuzz boxes of the era share the same circuits¹³²¹²².

Vox. One of the most well-known versions of the Sola Sound Tone Bender MKII is the one supplied to Vox by Sola Sound via Macari's Musical Exchange²³. By early 1967, Sola Sound had scaled down printing its own brand name on the pedals: on early Vox-branded units, the "Sola Sound" name was crudely obscured from the face of the pedal with a black bar and replaced with "Vox"²³. Vox confirmed an order of 100 Tone Benders from Sola Sound²³. Sola Sound also built Hurst's circuit, slightly modified and in large production numbers, as an OEM product for Vox under the Tone Bender name²². The demise of the MKII resulted in Sola Sound's invention of the Vox Tone Bender MKIII, which Sola Sound continued to supply to Vox until well into the 1970s²⁴. The silicon version of the Vox Tone Bender MKIII was identical to Sola Sound's own Colorsound Jumbo Tone Bender pedals²⁴, while a later "Hastings" edition was likely manufactured in-house by Vox Sound Limited in Hastings, Sussex, based on Sola Sound's design²⁴.

Carlsbro and Park. Carlsbro offered a fuzz box supplied to them by Sola Sound: a three-knob pedal identical to the fuzz boxes Sola Sound was also supplying to other companies such as Park and Vox at the time, as well as to the Tone Bender MKIV sold under Sola Sound's own brand name⁴. The number of surviving three-knob, Sola Sound-built Carlsbro pedals dwarfs the earlier wedge-shaped Carlsbro pedal from 1966 by a significant margin, and date stamps inside surviving originals show the Sola Sound version was manufactured at least until 1976⁴. Some RotoSound and Park fuzz pedals also used the MKIII and MKIV circuit²⁵.

Sola Sound today

Sola Sound was based in London²¹¹⁰, and the company produced numerous variations of the Tone Bender through the years²¹¹⁰. Its roots go back to late 1964, when brothers Joe and Larry Macari created the brand²⁶.

The company's standing was recognized when Boss launched the limited-edition Waza Craft TB-2W Tone Bender, a recreation of the Tone Bender MKII made in collaboration with Sola Sound. Boss describes the partnership plainly: "The TB-2W represents a partnership of two icons of the pedal world: Sola Sound and BOSS"²⁷.

The range (3)

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