This will certainly go down as one of the most memorable Christmas gifts I've ever received. This year I've been seriously lusting after Colorsound Tonebenders - the Freakenbender in particular - but I had no serious plan to hunt one down due to their price and scarcity. My plan instead was to wait for the upcoming boss waza tonebender collaboration pedal. A bucket list item would then be to actually pay a visit to Macari's one day should I ever find myself in the UK (my wife wants to go at some point).
Well my mother caught wind of this via my wife. She attempted to order a Freakenbender directly from Macari's and received an out of stock notification. She emailed to find out if there was a way to be notified when they would be back in stock and got in touch with Mr. Anthony Macari. Thus began a correspondence between the two that culminated in Ant boxing up the last Freakenbender he had in the store and sending it her way.
We celebrate Christmas at my parents on Christmas Eve. We generally keep the gift giving pretty small scale at this point in our lives (with the exception of my daughter). This was the second box i unwrapped from my small stack of gifts, and i just about passed out when i saw the Sola Sound packaging tape..
Needless to say I was flabbergasted. My mom was awfully proud of herself for pulling off such a surprise. She proceeded to show me the email chain between her and Ant - who seems like a very cool individual.
The Freakenbender is a collaboration between Coloursound and Rainger FX combining the 1980s silicon Tonebender circuit with the Rainger FX Dr. Freakenstein fuzz. the last bit of the drive knob (just past 3 o'clock) engages the Freakenstein - a pretty over the top cocked-wah sort of gated fuzz.
This pedal rips. It sounds good at pretty much any setting, but has a great range of control. I rearranged my band board today to swap my muffaletta for this bad boy. I'll be putting it through its paces through my Twin tomorrow
