Bondi Effects Del Mar mk2 Overdrive

Jon Ashley of Bondi effects will tell you that the Del Mar mk2 is not a Klon nor a Tube Screamer or a Blues Breaker, but a combination of the best elements of them.

The two gain voicings can be switched via a central toggle, with the lower position delivering tones often associated with the Blues Breaker, and the top one offering the clean section of the Klon with a TS-style clipping stage with all its articulate and detailed response.

As is expected from Bondi, this is a refined modern mid-gain overdrive that is hard to get a bad sound out of.

MkII brings some updates to the circuit that improve the power supply and decrease the noise floor further. The new version also features a new quiet true-bypass switching, but the tone is entire faithful to the original.

Here’s the first video of it. We added the Bondi Effects Del Mar mk2 to our article about the best Blues Breaker-style pedals.

Bondi Effects Del Mar mk2, Builder’s Notes

Back and better than ever!

The Del Mar mk2 combines the much-lauded Del Mar sound with the refinements that a further decade of engineering experience brings.

These refinements include:

• Our cleanest, most robust power supply ever
• The lowest noise floor of any pedal in our line
• Quiet true-bypass switching

The Del Mar was conceived in an effort to add a Tubescreamer-style clipping stage to the Klon Centaur. I’ve always loved the clean half of the Centaur, but my favourite clipping stage has always been the articulate and detailed response of the Tubescreamer.

My engineering sensibilities at the time were perhaps somewhat naive, and my attempts to incorporate aspects of the Klon, Tubescreamer and Bluesbreaker actually resulted in something that is not exactly like any of them.

In retrospect, I think that engineering things in the “wrong” way resulted in an inadvertently unique result, which at this stage and with the benefit of hindsight, is something I’ve come to be very proud of.

Features:

• Robust power input protection
• Clean Boost, Overdrive, or a blend of the two
• Dynamic and natural, responsive to your pick attack or volume knob
• Internally boosted to 24 volts – just plug in your normal 9V power supply and we take care of the rest
• Toggle switch, controlling the amount of headroom and character of the drive (the lower position gives an aspect of “Bluesbreaker” style clipping)
• Powerful active tonestack, capable of 15dB of boost or cut
• Soft touch true-bypass switching
• Power Requirements: 9V DC 100mA