Since the company’s launch in 2011, Warm Audio has provided recording studios with reasonably priced alternatives to classic highly desirable, rare and expensive mics and processors. A few years ago, Warm Audio added guitar effects to its product line that follow a similar philosophy, providing musicians with affordable, high-quality reproductions of discontinued classic pedals that have become prohibitively expensive on resale and vintage markets. With Warm Audio’s recent introduction of the Warm Bender and RingerBringer ring modulator, the company now offers eight impressive pedals that range in price from $119 to $219.
These two new pedals reveal that any timeline or technology is fair game to Warm Audio, with the Warm Bender being based upon the relatively simple Tone Bender fuzz circuits dating from the dawn of stomp box history in the mid and late ’60s while the RingerBringer is a reproduction of the much more sophisticated Moogerfooger Ring Modulator, which was produced up until 2018. The Warm Bender is both a faithful reproduction of a Tone Bender with Attack and Level controls and a modern enhancement thanks to the addition of a three-way switch that selects three different fuzz circuits plus a Sag switch that drops the voltage from 9 to 6 volts. It’s housed in a familiar-looking wedge enclosure with a gray hammered metal powder coat finish, but it’s scaled down to about half the size of the original.
The fuzz circuits consist of NOS 76, featuring new-old-s.