The Fenderizer (2002)

I love the clean sound of Fender's solid state guitar amps for jazz, having owned at different times a Princeton Chorus, an Ultimate Chorus, a Bullet Reverb, and a Stage 160. The preamp on the Stage 160 makes a very good amp simulator (if you use the effects send and not the noisy XLR output). I put the same circuit in a pedal and called it The Fenderizer.

Clean

Here is a "before & after" mp3. The Fenderizer is kicked on in the middle of playing first single note lines, then octaves, then chords. It was recorded using the Ibanez AR-250 with the Copeland Hex Pickup going through the Jazz Looping Pedalboard: (769K mp3)

Dirty

Though the Fenderizer has no internal distortion, it works well with distortion pedals. For this mp3, I used this setup:

+----------------+     
| Ibanez Les     |   +---------------+   +------------+   +--------------+      +-------+
| Paul Copy with +-->| Ibanez TS7    +-->| Fenderizer +-->| Boss RV-3    +----->| Mixer |
| Dimarzio X2N   |   | Tube Screamer |   +------------+   | Reverb Pedal |      +-------+
| Pickup         |   +---------------+                    +--------------+
+----------------+

The Fenderizer is kicked on in the middle. (254K mp3)

The Fenderizer has "true bypass" and so the switching is not exactly silent...but that's ok, I just leave it on all the time. The only time I use the stomp switch is to demonstrate to people how cool it sounds. :)

Schematic

Mostly standard components here except for the Fulltone footswitch for bypass.

The Fenderizer has been incorporated into my Jazz Looping Pedalboard.

If you like this sound but don't feel like building anything, the clean channel on the H & K Tubeman makes practically the same sound as the Fenderizer. Of course I didn't find this out till AFTER I built it. The Fenderizer does have the advantages of being smaller and running off of 9VDC.

If you have a copy of Native Instruments' Guitar Rig software, the TweedMan amp simulator (modelled after the Fender Bassman) sounds very much like the Fenderizer. I am working on replacing the whole looping pedalboard with a laptop...