Today's news, the Colorsound Tonebender has been demystified.

     Last night on a whim I decided to build a Colorsound Tonebender circuit, a true classic that was originally released in 1966 and used on countless music recordings since then.  After assembling my collection of parts, pulling up reference schematics I went to work building the circuit.  After a few hours of soldering and wiring the circuit was ready for testing, but alas it didn't operate as intended and it was after midnight so I put it away until today.
     First and foremost, I built the audio test probe that I've been meaning to assemble for sometime. This will allow me to trace the circuit and find out where the problem is.  After an hour or so probing the circuit I discovered the first problem, a misplaced resistor. Silly me, I accidentally installed a 100 Ohm resistor in place of a 10K Ohm resistor. Voila! It fired right up after replacing the problematic component.  And yet another problem reared it's ugly head.  The circuit is quiet. Even turned at full volume it is only slightly louder than the bypassed signal. For a noisy, in-your-face fuzz, that is completely unacceptable.
     After researching several sources, communicating through Instant Message with other builders, reading the history of the Tonebender I discovered that this is a flaw inherent in the original design. This means my unit is working perfectly, and needs modification.  Tomorrow I will build a 4th gainstage to recover the volume lost in the tone circuit and report back with my findings.