3 Original Mark One Tonebenders - long demonstration / comparison

The only known remaining wooden Mk1 Tone Bender along with two later metal cased Mk1's plus sundry associated pedals. All demonstrated and compared to each other.

The story behind the Tonebender is one of those things that gets people all hot under the collar. All I'll say here is that I am researching an encyclopaedic book on the history of the earliest fuzzpedals, there is a rambling often left alone for years blog of mine at decadeoffuzz dot com with all manner of background. Recently there has been more argument over whether or not Gary even designed the mk1 !!! -- pretty silly considering all the printed records -- anyway Vic Flick the famous sessions player was recently reported as saying he'd never heard of Gary phoned me here for almost an hour the other week and we then sent each other some emails - I dug out emails and letters from him talking about the mk1's genesis dating back to 2002 which I have put by for my book one day as well as excerpts from ads & reviews in Beat Instrumental Magazine - I've amassed a full archive for my research -- its worth mentioning that for several years back in the 60's they ran a monthly Ask Gary page where readers would write in and Gary would answer their questions. Think we have to either accept that our memory suffers as we get older or somebody got their lines crossed. I was also in correspondence with the other studio sessions player who was instrumental in the Mk1's origins, Big Jim Sullivan over recent years -- he is sadly no longer with us but I have his letters for posterity, and the book!.

I have had several close friends asking me - make that PRESSING ME - for the past few years to show a demo of the early mk1 in my collection. SO I finally gave in a year or so ago but it was too big to upload then I finally managed last night !! Hoorah

Incidentally if you check my decadeoffuzz dot com blog Ill write more there

The pedal is almost certainly the only compete original one left - certainly genuine as it was hand delivered to my home by Gary himself who had taken it to various guitar shows over the years but generally was very fond of it having kept it for almost fifty years!! It took a great deal of persuasion on my part to get him to part with it!!- he and I have become good friends in the past years and we had the pleasure of him bringing his charming Italian wife Luiza here ~as well as a Rotosound branded mk1!!~ to our Island home last summer for a decent vacation. I have dozens of hours of filmed interviews with him too and IM extremely confident of my facts.
The youngest metal mk1 once belonged to Tony McPhee of Groundhogs fame - one of my favourite bands who played regularly in the area I grew up in so a player I saw perform live MANY times - Ive often wondered if he used this pedal!!!

Please ont forget to check out my blog as Im about to throw myself into the whole Tonebender saga - just be a little patient I have other responsibilities too. Also I just ths week bought a new HD version of the camera - the Zoom Q3HD - so in future will do more - shorter but hopefully better quality - demonstrations of many more of the fuzzes in my collection - You can see some pics of them on the blog or on my mate David Mains DAM forum where I contributed heavily for years and there are plenty of my pedals in show in his datadumps - there are also a lot of my pedals on my mate Barts effectsdatabase site - check out his new forum - very promising!!

Cheers Graham

ps forgive the length and poor photography and my poor three fingered playing but hopefully at least some people will appreciate seeing the comparison / shootout.