Boss Waza TB-2W Tone Bender

The Boss Waza TB-2W Tone Bender is a limited-edition fuzz pedal built by Boss in collaboration with Sola Sound, the London company that produced the original Tone Bender pedals in the 1960s. It is an "authentic sonic recreation" of the Tone Bender MK II, built around a benchmark unit pulled from Sola Sound's own archive, and it puts that circuit into a compact, pedalboard-friendly Boss chassis¹²³.

The pedal belongs to Boss's premium, Japanese-made Waza Craft series, and the "TB" in its name stands for Tone Bender⁴⁵. It was announced in December 2020 and became available in Q2 of 2021¹².

The controls: Level, Attack and a three-way voltage selector

The front panel keeps the original Tone Bender layout: two knobs labeled Level and Attack, plus a three-way voltage selector for shaping the overall tone and response of the pedal⁸¹.

The voltage selector is a Waza Craft series touch. Premier Guitar's reviewer described it as a 3-position switch with 7V, 9V and 12V settings: 7V emulates the tone of a fading battery, 9V is standard operation, and 12V provides higher headroom and more dynamic range⁷. MusicRadar framed the same switch as a way of adding headroom or choking the fuzz for more extreme tone⁹.

The pedal also offers selectable true bypass or buffered bypass operation, so you can choose how it sits in your signal chain when it is off¹. Pedal of the Day noted the buffered option is useful when inserting the pedal in an effects loop⁶.

History: a copy of Tone Bender MkII serial number 500

The Tone Bender MK II was first introduced in the 1960s by Sola Sound, and the TB-2W is a direct recreation of one specific unit. Boss engineers went straight to the source, collaborating with Sola Sound to reimagine the Tone Bender MkII, and using a "masterpiece" Tone Bender MK II, serial number 500, from Sola Sound's archive as a benchmark reference¹⁵³.

Premier Guitar's review adds detail on how that template was chosen: Sola Sound's Ant Macari picked MKII No. 500 from his own collection of vintage units for its smooth-but-nasty character⁷. The project hinged on securing a reliable source of germanium transistors with consistent, matched values, and Boss's engineers sourced enough to build 3,000 TB-2Ws⁷⁶.

Each TB-2W features rare germanium transistors, carefully tested for optimum tone, in a classic three-germanium-transistor fuzz circuit¹⁷. MusicRadar noted that circuit enthusiasts can presume a trio of Mullard 0C81D germanium transistors as per the reference pedal, though this was not officially confirmed⁴.

The limited run was a matter of parts, not marketing. Gearnews reported the pedal would be available as a limited edition run purely because the components would be hard to source⁸, and Pedal of the Day stated it plainly: only 3,000 were made⁶. Boss's own product pages later referred to it as a limited-run model developed while analyzing many vintage fuzz pedals¹⁰.

Visually, the pedal carries the same knob designs and textured enclosure as Sola's Tone Bender, housed in a Boss chassis¹¹.

What reviewers said

Reviews were strong. Pedal of the Day called it "possibly the finest Tone Bender recreation EVER"⁶. Premier Guitar's reviewer found that, for a classic three-germanium-transistor fuzz, it generates copious gain, and concluded:

MusicRadar included the TB-2W in its roundup of must-have stompboxes for 2021, noting that Boss sourced rare, NOS germanium transistors and worked with Sola Sound to design the pedal around the "masterpiece" reference unit⁹⁸. Premier Guitar's later coverage of the related FZ-1W described the TB-2W as a high-profile, very limited, and now very expensive version of the germanium Tone Bender MkII¹².

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