JHS Bender

The JHS Bender is a fuzz pedal from JHS Pedals, part of the company's Legends of Fuzz Series. It is a replica of a specific vintage unit: a 1973 Sola Sound Tone Bender MKIII, the silver-and-orange "Onomatopoeia" version from Josh Scott's personal collection, which he calls the most prized Tone Bender in it¹². Where the original 1973 pedal used three special germanium transistors³, JHS built its version with carefully chosen modern silicon transistors, which the company says delivers the touch, feel and response of the vintage germanium fuzz with greater accuracy¹.

JHS describes the Bender as a fuzz that can go from middle-of-the-road crunch distortion to full-out aggression, with an extremely flexible tone control that allows dozens of sonic variations¹. Pedal of the Day framed it in player terms: "Looking to conjure up Zeppelin, Jeff Beck or My Bloody Valentine tones? This is your pedal."³

What the Bender does to your sound

The Bender sits in the Tone Bender family of British fuzzes, circuits that gearnews characterizes as ones that "spit and splutter and, depending on the version, can also generate some thick, warm sound"⁶. The MKIII circuit that the Bender recreates was Sola Sound's fuzz that replaced the earlier MKII⁷, and the 1973 version added a tone control to the earlier three-knob format⁴.

JHS says the tone control is the pedal's most flexible feature, one that "allows for dozens of sonic variations that most fuzz users only dream about"⁸. In practice that means one knob spans a wide range of brightness and thickness before you touch the fuzz level. The pedal keeps the classic three-knob layout in a wedge enclosure⁴, with JHS's own addition of a mode switch on top.

The controls: Volume, Tone, Attack and JHS Mode

The JHS Mode switch is the one control the original 1973 pedal did not have. JHS describes it this way: "Push that button for more gain and a mid frequency boost to send your leads soaring through the mix. With higher Attack [settings the fuzz slightly gates depending on picking dynamics]"¹. That gating behavior means the fuzz responds to how hard you pick, cleaning up when you back off, which is part of what gives vintage-style fuzzes their touch sensitivity. Guitar.com's reviewer listed the control set as "Volume, tone, attack (fuzz), mode switch (for mid boost)"¹⁰.

Power: 9V, 4mA, with battery option

The Bender runs on 9V DC, center negative, drawing 4mA¹. It also allows battery operation via a single 9V battery, installed on a battery clip under the backplate¹, which GuitarPlayer's reviewer noted as "an internal nine-volt battery clip for old-school power"⁵.

History: a 1973 MKIII Tone Bender replica in the Legends of Fuzz Series

The Legends of Fuzz Series is a JHS line built around four vintage fuzz circuits, with the Bender as Josh Scott's take on the 1973 MKIII Tone Bender¹¹. GuitarPlayer's Dave Hunter reported that the Bender draws on "what Scott calls the most prized Tone-Bender in his collection, a silver-and-orange 1973 Sola Sound Tone-Bender Mk3"⁵. Delicious Audio adds the detail that the 1973 Mark III was the version that added a tone control, and that the pedal comes from Scott's own collection⁴.

The Tone Bender line itself goes back further than the MKIII. The early Sola Sound Tone Benders were three-transistor fuzz circuits based on Gibson's 1962 Maestro Fuzz-Tone¹², and the MKII Professional version that followed was famously used by Jimmy Page on the first few Led Zeppelin albums¹³. The MKIII replaced the MKII in the line¹⁴. Players chasing the Page association should note that his documented pedals are the earlier MKII and possibly the MK1.5 circuit¹⁴¹³, not the 1973 MKIII the Bender copies.

JHS also transplanted the circuit into other formats: Neural DSP modeled it as the MK3 Silicon Fuzz, based on the JHS Bender 1973 London, for the Quad Cortex¹⁵.

What reviewers said

Guitar.com's review of the Legends of Fuzz series came down on the Bender's side: "Now we come to the Bender, and it might just be our favourite," calling it "a hell of an advert for the MkIII even with silicon transistors"¹⁰. GuitarPlayer's Dave Hunter noted the modernization work, writing that "JHS transmuted the circuit into a modern PCB using silicon transistors," adding true-bypass switching, an LED indicator and the nine-volt DC input⁵. That Pedal Show covered the pedal in its fuzz episodes, demoing the Bender as part of a roundup of Tone Bender-inspired fuzzes¹⁶¹⁷.

Alternatives in the same family

The Bender is one of several modern takes on the Tone Bender circuit. The Keeley Fuzz Bender takes a hybrid approach with one vintage Japanese-made germanium and two modern silicon transistors¹⁸, while the Warm Audio Warm Bender is a germanium multi-mode take on the Tone Bender, and the JMI Tone Bender Professional Mk II is a reproduction of the earlier MKII with germanium transistors and the original circuit. Within JHS's own Legends of Fuzz line, the JHS Smiley covers a different vintage fuzz altogether.

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