In This Article Tom Morello Says This:

“While using an old, vintage distortion pedal called a Tone Bender, I found out that when I turned on the pedal but didn’t play anything, I picked up a crystal clear signal from a Korean radio station,” he told Guitar World. “In earlier mixes of Sleep Now In The Fire, that radio thing was featured more prominently. We had the signal running through the entire song, it was a little annoying, so we decided just to stick it at the very end. I always like to say there are no samples on any of our records, and this is a good example. That radio signal was no sample – it was played!”

This article from Dolphin Music says that in this image a Vox Tonebender can be seen bottom right, on top of the amp head.

At 1:27 minute mark, Corgan's Vox V828 Tonebender can be seen.

This photo of Shields' live rig from 2008 shows a Vox Tonebender.

Lou Reed used the Vox V828 Tone Bender during his time with the Velvet Underground, as documented on the archived Lou Reed Guitar Archive website.

According to Robby Krieger’s Guitars and Gear, Robby Krieger used Vox Tonebender on stage

"I’m terrible at recalling which gear goes with which tune, but I think I used my ’62 Fender Jazzmaster with Lollar P-90s for most of “Keep On Swinging.” I plugged that into either my Basic Audio Gnarly Fuzz or original Vox Tone Bender, into this little Supro amp."

In this user-uploaded photo from Tumblr, Ron Asheton is pictured using a Vox V828 Tone Bender fuzz pedal. Although the image makes the pedal slightly difficult to recognize, it is likely the V828 model, placed next to a Wah pedal.

This excerpt from a book about David Bowie states that Ronson used a Vox Tonebender.

Used on Loveless, as mentioned by bandmate Kevin Shields in this May 2018 Sound on Sound interview.

Next, Debbie Googe’s bass sound was created using a combination of DI and amp sound and, significantly, a Vox Tone Bender pedal. “Back then, there were no bass fuzzes that you could buy in the shops,” Shields says. “When you normally plugged a bass into a fuzz pedal, it would just sound a bit thin. Our pedal was a clone that put a weird load on the pickups. You could even put a really thin twangy guitar sound through it and it came out totally full and big, because it was taking all the top end off somehow and then the fuzz circuit was just amplifying everything below 2kHz or something. Nothing over 2kHz was being properly represented from the guitar and was just created by the fuzz unit. So it just had this certain sound.”

"I’m a big fan of fuzz pedals, and I have a ton of older models—a Fuzz Face, Super Fuzz, Vox Tone Bender, and a Color Sound. I also love the Z. Vex Wooly Mammoth and Fuzz Factory, which I use a lot.” - Mike Stroud

The in-house Vox Tone Bender at Mistlur Studios was used for the solo on "Field of Fire" as stated in this December 1986 Musician interview and in this January 1988 Guitar Player interview.

Musician, December 1986, "Richard Lloyd" by Bill Flanagan, pg. 26

For the solo on 'Field Of Fire' I used a Marshall 50-watt self-contained box through a Vox Tone Bender. A Vox Tone Bender is what Jeff Beck used in the Yardbirds. They're very hard to find, and Mistlur had one; every musician that went in there would touch it, but people are very honest over there so it's still there. I didn't rip it off; I don't know how I feel about that." Other than that tempting Tone Bender, Lloyd avoided devices and effects: ."It's mostly straight through the amps, turned up as loud as endurance could take.

Guitar Player, January 1988, "Richard Lloyd: The 6 String Alchemy of Richard Lloyd" by Mark Dery

Despite his lean attitude toward gizmos, he does have a soft spot for two old gadgets – the long-vanished MXR Blue Box octave divider and Vox' renowned Tone Bender (used by Jeff Beck with the Yardbirds). "The Vox Tone Bender, which I used on the studio version of 'Field Of Fire', is really hard to find. That particular one was in the studio in Stockholm. It's a very unusual device. It's like a distortion pedal, although it doesn't so much distort as squeeze the bandwidth, giving you a real silky, sustainy, bright tone.