Skreddy Martian Tarantula

The Skreddy Martian Tarantula is a fuzz pedal from Skreddy Pedals, described by the maker as a "well-behaved Tonebender Mk1 fuzz"¹. It is built on the Tonebender Mk1 circuit, which Skreddy's Marc calls "the earliest fuzz pedal design"¹. The pedal is sold as a preorder, built to order, with a stated wait time of "approximately 2 weeks to 1 month"¹.

The circuit and where it comes from

The Tonebender Mk1 sits at the root of a long fuzz family tree. Coda Effects' history of fuzz circuits notes that the Sola Sound Tonebender designs "has been also been copied by many brands: Marshall Supafuzz, Vox Tonebender are examples of fuzz 'heavily inspired'" by it⁴. The original design's character is described by another maker building the same circuit type as having "a raw, primitive fuzz character which fits the early design of the original"⁵. Coda Effects describes the Tonebender sound as "a more classic fuzz sound, loud and powerful, with quite a lot of saturation"⁴.

Skreddy's take keeps that lineage but swaps the transistors. "I designed this using silicon transistors for temperature sensitivity and consistency from unit to unit," Marc says on the product page¹. That is the "well-behaved" part of the description: silicon parts hold their character as temperatures change and are more consistent between pedals than the old germanium units the circuit was originally built with.

Skreddy describes the resulting tone as an "angry sounding fuzz, nice authoritative voice"¹, and describes the early Tonebender-style tone generally as having "an interestingly bright sustaining sound on the high strings, and surprisingly good chord articulation" for something so grindy and fuzzy¹.

The Overload control

The Martian Tarantula's single knob is a rework of the original Mk1's bias-style Attack control. "I changed it completely, made it useful (but still not a gain control), and renamed it 'OVERLOAD' instead," Marc says¹. It is a bias-style texture control rather than a drive level, and Skreddy maps out its three zones:

The pedal also cleans up with the guitar's volume control: Skreddy describes "a decent amount of guitar volume cleanup; gets more polite and defined" as you roll back¹, which makes it usable at lower gain levels than a fuzz at full tilt.

Buying one

The Martian Tarantula is listed at $259 plus shipping on its product page¹. The maker's site also shows it at $259 with a discounted price of $233.10³, so the price you pay may depend on when you order. It is built to order as a preorder, with the wait time given above¹. Skreddy hosts a manual for the pedal as a PDF on its own site, linked from the product page¹.

Skreddy builds a range of fuzzes around different classic circuits, including the Skreddy Kusanagi, another Tone Bender-based design, and the Skreddy Rust Rod, modeled after '70s Big Muff pedals².

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