cubisteffects
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Examples Of My Work
COLORSOUND OVERDRIVE
In 1965, British electronics guru Gary Hurst began the UK fuzz pedal phenomenon with the building of the Sola Sound Tone Bender. This pedal, the MKI, was an advance of the Maestro FZ-1 and ran off 9V to give more sustain and output volume. These pedals provided the tone for guitar gods Pete Townsend, Mick Ronson,The Beatles and Jeff Beck. Further iterations of the Tone Bender (MK1.5 and MKII) are highly collectable units these days as that sound has been immortalised by Jimmy Page and that guitar tone captured on Led Zeppelin records.
Colorsound are a company that recreate some of the pedals that Sola Sound introduced in the golden era of rock and roll. These include some of the Sola Sound wahs, fuzzes and different versions of each. I got this Colorsound Overdriver Boost pedal from local Sydney muso Jeff Burch, who plays with a number of bands like Songs and The Mandala Trap. The Overdriver is a silicon transistor based pedal (whereas the Tone Benders were germanium based) that has a really usable Bass/Treble tone stack and a Drive control that lets you dial in the amount of gain you would like. The last turn of the Drive knob gives a nice bit of growl while retaining articulation and response.
He really liked the pedal but lack of LED and 9V DC jack limited its functionality on his board. So I added a yellow superbright LED with chrome bezel, true bypassed the sucker and added a DC jack.
C.
It seems to me to be a very cool and at the same time rare effect! At least when I look at the images I have a great desire to make my gear scream on maximum in order to feel the real sound of this pedal. Hope that I will have a chance to try it in my life…
This pedal uses positive or negative ground? looks awsome with the mods. I had one but sold it because when battery dies it cuts the signal…which is a nice indicator bt not very pratical in a pedal board.
Negative ground IIRC.
…and yes a DC jack makes it more reliable.
C.
Hi, I have a new Colorsound Overdriver (as well as their Yellow ToneBender) and I’m really interested in these mods for mine. Is there any way you write up a “How-To” for them. I really want the LED because I use mine with an already overdriven Bassman to thicken up the sound for leads, so sometimes it’s hard to know when it’s on or off, especially when in the middle of a tune. I’m our singer so I’m not always looking at the pedal when I stomp on it, so I’ll miss the button sometimes. Any info would be really appreciated. Thanks, -Ted
Hi Ted,
I true bypassed the pedal and used one pole of the switch to add an indicating LED. A Google search of how to true-bypass will give you a diagram you can follow.
C.