MusicRadar Verdict
A new flavour of Tone Bender-style fuzz - but a tasty one nonetheless!
Pros
- +
Tone knob offers a wide range. Responds well to guitar volume. Robust build.
Cons
- -
Not much.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
The Way Huge Havalina Germanium Fuzz, is a three-transistor germanium-powered fuzz box inspired by a vintage 1960s design.
A three-knob unit, based on hand-selected Russian transistors and a passive tone circuit, it's essentially a pedal in the Tone Bender vein, but not a clone.
Sounds
"It cleans up wonderfully from your volume control, with a complete range of expression straight from your guitar"
The Havalina offers a range of overdriven tones at lower settings of the fuzz knob, but you can turn it up for nice thick fuzz. Not as syrupy smooth as some vintage Tone Benders, the Havalina stakes its sonic territory with a tone knob that covers a wide range and gets sizzly in the top end.
It's possibly beyond 'tasteful', but good if you need it, and plenty to cut through a band mix. It cleans up wonderfully from your volume control, with a complete range of expression straight from your guitar.
Smartly finished in anodised aluminium, this robustly put-together pedal deserves a spot on hard-working pedalboards. You can pay a lot for a boutique Tone Bender clone, so to get something similar for less than £100 (street price) is sound indeed.
“If it wasn’t for that song, that would have been the end of the band”: How one track’s sudden gear-switch led Coldplay into their imperial phase
“He was like, ‘You’ve got it all wrong, man": Mumford & Sons reveal what Neil Young told them about the way they were approaching their live shows and album recordings
How to write a ‘sticky’ hit: Pure luck can put you in the charts, but sticking around to make the big bucks needs pure science
