Time for my review.
I was expecting the Bone Bender to arrive sometime in the next week, so imagine my surprise when I heard the door buzzer yesterday. The delivery man came up the stairs and was carrying a fairly large box. It was my new cordless Dyson vacuum cleaner. As I signed for it, he said "I have one more package for you". My heart skipped a beat as I saw the USPS package!
This weekend I am actually battling a pretty bad cold, but momentarily I felt
way better...I rushed back into our apartment, packages in hand. So...what have we got here?
Nice sparkle...
This needs a black guitar!
This is the
NTE103A version of the circuit. We learn from Bjorn's post in another thread that there were two different versions of the BB, using AC127 or NTE103A components.
I quickly dropped a fresh battery in the BB to see what the score is. My first impression was...wow, this is the loudest pedal I have ever encountered, and I had a Zvex Super Duper in my setup for almost a decade! The volume on this BB is off the charts. In our apartment I can't get the volume past 9 o clock.
The fuzz is gradual. With the knob all the way down you still get some fuzziness to the notes, and the fun begins as the dial is twisted towards the maximum.
With the fuzz knob around 12 o clock, lots of fuzzy tones start leaping out of my Matchless' speaker. Many reminiscent of old 60s sounds. I couldn't help but smile. With that setting, open first-position chords sound big with lots of articulation. It sounds a lot like a great distortion pedal.
But I cannot help myself, I
NEED to max the fuzz knob. And I do. The sonic violence unleashed is incredible. Bitting, searing tones bounce around the room, through the walls and quite possibly through my neighbour's ears!
There is a violent splutter that appears in the lower E string when I attack it with force. The pedal reacts to my picking technique a lot like an amplifier would. Leads are effortless, chords still have lots of harmonics. Backing the volume cleans them up a bit, but this pedal is like a high powered sports car...it begs to be driven wide open.
The character of the pedal is bright and it matches my main guitar (A P90/Alnico Les Paul Custom) very, very well. There is a raspiness to it too that adds character. The one thing that I admired was that even though the pedal is bright, the notes still have body to them (more on that later).
After about 30 mins of playing it with the battery I was sufficiently impressed to take it to the next level. As a stand-alone effect, I found it to be an excellent fuzz with a vintage flavour. I would recommend to anyone to try it out in their setup. It is very cool indeed.
The ultimate test for me though is my pedalboard. Many pedals have tried to climb ontop on that Pedalrain Jr, some even managed to stay on for a while, but any new candidate for the top spot needs to play well with the established effects already on there. There have been occasions when I was blown away with a pedal only to be disappointed when I stuck it on my board.
So, I removed the Sparkle Face that has been on there for a while now, and dropped the Bone Bender in its place.
I spent about 3 hours in total playing around with the BB in a board situation, and I am very impressed so far. I will take my findings pedal by pedal.
1. Reaction to my silver Klon Centaur. The Klon is my main boost pedal, and I use it to take other effects to a gainier level. The BB has a lot of gain on tap, so I found that pushing it more didn't really take me anywhere worthwhile going to...the notes just splattered a lot more. Maybe for a certain crazy guitar solo that could be a great sound. It is a fun option to have. Playing on the higher strings here gave better results.
2. Reaction to my BJFE Honey Bee. The HB ate the BB up. The combination is magical. My god is there anything that the HBOD doesn't make sound better? Sometimes I think I could plug my washing machine through it and it would sound great! The one great thing that the HB did was take some of the top end edge off. In a way it "grounded" the BB more, lending its swampier vibe. The sustain here is incredible. Notes are effortless and musical. What a combo!
3. Reaction to my BJFE Model H 4K. The MH4K is my high gain sound. It is usually maxed and goes Randy Rhoads when I blast it with the Klon. Adding the BB to a maxed MH4K was just too much. The splatter was unbearable to play through...a bit like walking through thick mud. The combination also gave endless feedback, Time to hold my horses a bit. I backed off the gain knob of the MH4K to 12 o clock, and then to 11 o clock. Now we were getting somewhere. This combination gave me lots of classic rock high gain sounds. Very cool indeed.
The last pedal on my board is a Toneczar Echoczar with Angelbaby. Nothing to worry about there. Everything sounds great through that delay unit!
I also tried the BB into a boosted HBOD (by the Klon)...this surprisingly also worked well. Lots of gain on tap...a bit noisy and probably not a sound I'd use, but kinda fun to play with for a while.
How does it stack up to the Sparkle Face then? I tend to think of the two pedals as parts of the same project in a way, so trying them out side by side was something I was interested in doing.
I love my fuzzes maxed out, and the comparison was only about 10 mins long. I started with both fuzzes maxed out. The characters are fairly similar but different at the same time. When maxed out, the BB is brighter and more attacking...the SF thicker, and compared to the BB I would even say more "polite".
But, lets roll back the magic SF knob called "Saturation"...aha! now we begin seeing some similarity in how the pedals react...by doing that we can get them to a fairly similar place. But when set that way the SF lacks a bit of girth to the notes that the BB has.
This makes the pedals different enough to me. In a live setting this detail could be lost to the crowd, but the player would feel it in the way the notes sustained.
Now on the versatility of the two.
I found that the SF with every knob at 12 o clock is an excellent boost. The BB in a way to me had too much character. It stamps its fuzzy sonic footprint very hard indeed. For someone needing something to function as a great boost and as an approximation of the BB, I'd say the SF is the way to go.
But for an incredible soaring sound that retains musicality, the BB is up there with the best of them.
I shot a couple of quick videos when I got the delivery yesterday. Please keep in mind that at the time of shooting this on my iPhone, I have a cold and it is 11am...not my usual time to be exploring fuzz...or playing electric guitar...I usually strum an 50s Gibson acoustic in the mornings
The Bone Bender:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQHNIHRnXmkand the Bone Bender compared to the Sparkle Face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLQnCDQjgzMApologies for the length of this review. I hope that some of you will find it helpful...or at least enjoy looking at the pictures!
let's collect more impressions and experiences here as that is what this line of research is all about!! 
