The Fender TBX:
A Cool 2-Band Tone Control

You can TELL it’s Photoshopped! There’s no TBX!

Thanks again to everyone who chimed in on the “What your favorite mod?” discussion. I got tons of great ideas from your comments.

Like this one, which I’ve been meaning to explore for ages: the Fender TBX tone control circuit, which appears in several Custom […]

What’s Your Favorite Mod? (Here’s Mine.)

How am me make guitar thing better?

What’s your favorite guitar mod? The kind that changes how you play. One you’ve become so accustomed to that you wince when you pick up an axe that lacks it?

I’ll choose pickup wiring mods as a starting point: During the year that Seymour Duncan sponsored […]

It’s Raining Germanium!

I just bought 500 germanium transistors.(Yes, as a matter of fact, I am insane. Why do you ask?)

UPDATE: My Dunlop Fuzz Face Mini review is live at Premier Guitar. Audio clips included!

How and when did it get so frickin’ easy to procure great-sounding germanium transistors?

I’ve been building stompboxes for four […]

Next Week on Fuzz Detective!

UPDATE: Based on cool info supplied by YOU, dear readers, I’m expanding the scope of this piece. I’m furiously wiring up clones of some very rare models, and I can promise many cool and interesting surprises. Thanks, guys! :beer:

Okay, now that we’ve all gotten that silly “reading” stuff out of our systems with […]

Tonefiend Book Week 2013: Epilogue

Monday: Theory and Technique Tuesday: Gear Wednesday: Repairs and DIY Thursday: Biography Friday: Fiction

Thanks to all my smart and cool readers who contributed to the first (maybe annual?) Tonefiend Book Week! I loved chatting about some old favorite books, and getting exposed to so many cool new ones.

An encyclopedia of rad […]

Tonefiend Book Week 2013
Wednesday: Repair and DIY

Monday: Theory and Technique Tuesday: Gear Wednesday: Repairs and DIY Thursday: Biography Friday: Fiction

Tonefiend Book Week is simple: I discuss a few titles I’ve found particularly enlightening, useful, or entertaining, and then you jump in and do the same. I’ve organized the days of this week by subject matter. Today’s topics are repair and […]

Tonefiend Book Week is Coming!

Next week at tonefiend we’ll be talking about our favorite guitar/music books. I’ll write about some of the titles I find especially useful, inspiring, or entertaining, and I hope you’ll chime in with some of your recommended reading.

Since there’s so much potential material here, I suggest we focus on a different book category […]

DIY Club Help in the Forum

Despair en masse in the Forum!

Mitchell “Super-Freq” Hudson, creator of our DIY Fuzz Face project, made a smart suggestion: Dedicated Forum sections for each of the Tonefiend DIY Club projects.

You’ll find them here. Thanks, Mitchell! 🙂

[…]

The Fuzz of a Thousand Faces

Lon Chaney was an early Fuzz Face user.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a guitarist in possession of a single Face Fuzz must be in want of cool Fuzz Face mods. (Sorry, Jane.)

Case in point: The comments section for the new Fuzz Face project.

We’re far from the first to […]

The “Super-Fiend” DIY Fuzz Face!

You can purchase a kit, or source your own parts.

UPDATE [06.16.2013]: Build instructions updated to v02. The Fuzz Face has inspired countless spinoffs since Ivor Arbiter unveiled the device in 1966. Some introduced meaningful improvements. Many didn’t.

The goal of this project, created by my friend Mitchell “Super-Freq” Hudson, is to create […]