Colorsound Freakenbender

The Colorsound Freakenbender is a fuzz pedal from a 2017 collaboration between Rainger FX and Colorsound. It is a Tone Bender-inspired fuzz: a circuit Rainger FX designed for Colorsound, using the Colorsound Tonebender as its blueprint¹. It is no longer available, so players wanting one are looking at the secondhand market¹.

What it does

The Freakenbender sits in the Tone Bender family of fuzzes, the circuit behind the classic sharp, aggressive British fuzz sound. Rainger FX describes the design this way: "So this was a circuit we designed for Colorsound, using their Tonebender as the blueprint." The company adds that at its highest gain settings the Freakenbender transformed into the Dr Freakenstein circuit, Rainger FX's own higher-gain design¹.

That Tone Bender lineage is not always flattering. In a MusicRadar piece on drive tone, players including Adrian Thorpe, Brian Wampler, Daniel Steinhardt and Jamie Dickson discussed the original circuit, with one saying, "I've also got a Tone Bender that's just earpiercingly sharp"⁴. The Freakenbender's high-gain mode is one answer to that character.

Where it came from

The pedal was announced as a Colorsound Freakenbender collaboration in 2017, as Guitar Pedal X's review of later Rainger FX gear notes³. That Pedal Show covered it in an August 2020 episode on modern Tone Bender-style fuzz pedals, where Dan and Mick grouped it with other pedals worth hearing for players after that sound, discussing it from around the 07:18 mark of the video².

Related Colorsound fuzzes

Colorsound's name appears on several other fuzz and boost designs covered elsewhere on the site, including the Colorsound Supa Tonebender, the Colorsound Wow-Fuzz and the Colorsound Fuzz Phazer. For the wider family, see Fuzz Pedals.

Videos

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