Sunhaus Ballam Dirt Fuzz

The Sunhaus Ballam Dirt Fuzz is a fuzz pedal from Australian builder Sunhaus, released in June 2026 as the first pedal in the company's Colourway Series. Guitar Pedal X describes it as "a low-gain Silicon evolution of a Tone Bender MKII", voiced with what the reviewer calls "a gravel-laden voicing, with a slow and chewy response"¹. It is a four-control take on a circuit that originally had only two.

The controls: Dirt, Volume, Clean Blend and Weight

The Ballam carries four controls, which Guitar Pedal X lists as "Dirt (Fuzz Intensity), Volume, Clean Blend, Weight : Heavyweight / Midweight"¹. The source circuit, a Silicon MKII Tone Bender, came with just two controls, and Sunhaus's Marcus expanded it into the four-control layout, with the Weight option switchable¹.

The Clean Blend is the control that sets the Ballam apart from most two-knob fuzzes. Because it mixes clean signal back in, it lets a player temper the gain and shape the output EQ, and Guitar Pedal X singles it out as particularly useful for bass players¹.

From the Silicon MKII Tone Bender

The Ballam's circuit is based on the Silicon MKII Tone Bender, the silicon-transistor version of the Tone Bender MKII fuzz design². The Tone Bender MKII line has a long history: the shift from OC75 to OC81D transistors seen in MKII Tone Benders supplied to Marshall and Rotosound is part of that lineage, as Fuzzboxes.org documents³. Other builders work the same territory, including the Jeds Peds Silicon Tone Bender, the Goliath FX Vintage Components Silicon MKII Tone Bender with its Volume, Fuzz and Bias knobs⁴, and the D*A*M Tone Bender MKII SCB. The JMI Tone Bender Professional Mk II is the vintage original type.

Ballam and Djandek

The Ballam is Colourway Series #1; the second pedal in the series is the Sunhaus Djandek Geological Fuzz, a different circuit with its own Disintegration Bias and Slump Input Gain controls². The two share the same Volume and Clean Blend controls, and both are priced at $305 AUD in Australia¹. Of the pair, Guitar Pedal X's reviewer wrote: "Judging from the demos alone, both fuzzes seem to be pretty exceptional - both in voice and feel."¹ The reviewer also noted a Gray Hammertone edition of the Ballam².

Availability and price

The pedal lists for $305 AUD, which the reviewer put at roughly $210 USD, calling it "a fair price"¹. For players in the United States, that means buying from Australia or waiting to see whether Sunhaus adds dealers elsewhere; the reviewer wrote that he still needed to see where Sunhaus's worldwide ambitions lie¹.

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