Being a guitarist inspired by David Bowies original side kick, Mick Ronson, I can hand on heart say Ronno would have loved the Sona Fuzz. After having my eye on this dirt box by MAS Effects, I decided to pull the trigger and add it to my rig. As I’m a lover of Tone Bender style pedals, I haven’t been disappointed. Be warned however, this is a high gain fuzz, armed with silicon transistors - you do not need a lot of gain for it to sizzle. I’ve generally always used pedals similar to MKI or MKII tone benders for more Lo-Fi fuzz. However because I run two amp a wet and dry set up, I wanted a higher gain fuzz to run into the wet amp. The Sona Fuzz cuts through modulation and time based effects nicely. So shoegazers and dream poppers should not fear this fuzz. At present the fuzz knob is dialled in at nine o’clock - in that position - it produces enough heat there alone! It’s a dynamic fuzz, so as I soon as I hit it into a chorus and delay, there is no definition loss. The Sona Fuzz cleans up really well when you dial back your guitars volume knob, so it can give you nice “low gain” textures with a little spice. Does it doom? While I’m not a doom rocker, being a one time stoner / desert rocker, I can attest that it can produce nice low ends with the toggle up. As a test, for any fuzz pedal, I like to see if I can play some of my favourite riffs from old Kyuss / Queens of the Stone Age or Tumbleweed songs (I’m from Wollongong after all!) and the Sona Fuzz gets those tones nicely. Not only those, for lovers of bands like the Dandy Warhols, the Sona Fuzz can get trippy if you let it go there.
