TREBLE BOOSTERS

Just for fun...
The back of my Catalinbread Sabbra Cadabra...
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My Catalinbread Super Chili Picoso:
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My Fryette Memphis 30 amp with a Jimi Hendrix quote:
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I'm assuming Steven Fryette "personalizes" his circuit boards on a regular basis. Here's a pic I grabbed off the web that caught my attention many years ago. Mr. Fryette must be fun to party with...
VHT Preamp Board.jpg
 
Cadorman said:
Or maybe build my own if I can find decent transistors.
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That there's the spirit Cadorman. You'll find suitable & decent germanium transistors at Smallbear Electronics site. Pick a "Rangemaster" transistor (there's only one transistor in the circuit) & it will come with biasing resistors & a sheet of paper (like plexi67 posted a pic of earlier) showing where to use them schematically.
At R G Keen's GEOFX site you'll find a breakdown on the Rangemaster circuit & "how" it works, as well as a step by step guide to building one to the original layout.
If you need links I'll post them later when I'm not in a rush from oversleeping. Cheers
Edit: R G Keen was the guy that first gave up the "Rangemaster" goods to the DIY FX world. Cheers
 
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67plexi said:

The Dallas Rangemaster | Vintage Guitar® magazine

Eric Clapton christened it “woman tone.” On the famed 1966 “Beano” album, John Mayall’s Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton, the guitarist ran his Les Paul Standard into a Marshall Model 1962 JTM45 2x12 combo. Legend has it he added a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster to his signal path on several...
www.vintageguitar.com www.vintageguitar.com
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Great article, as always Mr Plexi, thanks for posting. As well as OC44 & OC71 transistors being used, I've also read of or seen pics of OC75's (I've read that Rory's was an OC75 & that the unit was modified for more transistor base current).
Of special interest in the linked article, in the gutshot we see that the input & output coupling caps are the red RS (radio spares) tubular ceramic "dogbone" types.
I do have a few of these in the 0.005uf (5,000pf) value (input cap), though don't have the 0.01uf (10,000pf) output cap value yet. To build a Rangemaster around the Mullard CV7003 0C44 transistor I will try to go "all out" in this regard. A 96 hfe transistor should make for a "hot" Rangemaster. Cheers
 
Colour Boost arrived; it's a nice alternative to OD for a solo boost I think; especially great on neck pickup. I like having four different tone options.

Sweetwater says this involves midrange notching. Not sure about that - I suspect the rotary simply offers four knee frequencies for the boost. Far left setting is well into the low mids. I think the low-mid frequency might work well for a clean amp with headroom, where regular treble boost would be prohibitively harsh.

Gut shot from Sweetwater:
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eclecticsynergy said:
Sweetwater says this involves midrange notching. Not sure about that - I suspect the rotary simply offers four knee frequencies for the boost. Far left setting is well into the low mids. I think the low-mid frequency might work well for a clean amp with headroom, where regular treble boost would be prohibitively harsh.
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"Midrange notching" is an advertising description used by 65 Amps for a long time to describe their Colour Boost treble booster. But in general, those yellow SOZOS caps filter out the low frequencies that will not be boosted. The larger the value of those caps are, the more they're going to allow the lower frequencies to get boosted.

Personally, I've never cared for a treble booster into an amp that's setup for a clean tone. The magic only happens when the amp has already started to break up, and all the way to full saturation. But you can still get some very interesting clean tones by backing off the guitar's volume and tone controls, so long as the amp and treble booster isn't all the way maxed out.
 
syscokid said:
Personally, I've never cared for a treble booster into an amp that's setup for a clean tone. The magic only happens when the amp has already started to break up, and all the way to full saturation.
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This. You want the amp to be at the least, just on the verge of break up. Also, guitar straight into the treble booster & the treble booster straight into the input of a tube amp.
I have one that is set up for selectable treble, mid or full range boost. I found the "full range" feature to be not to my taste & dont use it. The "mid boost" feature can get some interesting Iommi/Sabbath type tones, but at the end of the day I prefer it as a straight treble booster. YMMV.
Congrats on a great pedal, hope you like them as much as I do. Cheers
 
I have many originals bought before they became pricey, but they tend to be noise prone. I also grabbed all the old tranny's I could find when ebay was in it's infancy. Easy to build too. When I located/realized there were sockets for the transistors that was the last build for me as I have a blast swapping em out in the socket!
 
I found a few pics around the puter, so if your interested in this kind of cork … and it help's me remember where they are ….
NKT275

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OC75

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OC44

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Eventually they all get graded like below, for gain and leakage.

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And just for the halibut, my first pedal I bought in 1966 at the local Mom n Pop store. Made of balsa wood!

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P:lol:
Sure was what it says " BUZZ BOX ", still works too and sounds, well, like you imagine :fan:

There's a slew more of transistors but I can't locate them
 
Trev at Tipton Amps in England hooked me up with this little treble booster. He and a friend scored all of the original spec'd parts to make a few clones of the originals. Dubbed the Strange Mistress, he referred to it as “Rory in a box.”
With my DST 30 and my ‘62 Strat, it certainly sounds like it.
It’s a great pedal, and really like it.

270954DB-90B4-406F-AB32-26C94CA7ACA6.jpegDBEA34F7-C12F-4ED4-96BF-5F7D43A465F5.jpeg
 
This is re-igniting my interest in pedal builds.
Been a couple of years.
I built a couple of Fuzz Face clones, but never really happy with them.
I still need to make the test jig and measure the gain and leakage for the transistors I ended up with.

I did a SHO clone that works very well but wasnt using it much because I was not able to crank my amps to breakup.
was off my radar but i will put it on the board tonight.

I have the parts for Rangemaster clones; just got away from the pedals thing.
Got a lot of my info here:

Fuzz Central -- Dallas Rangemaster

One of the largest sites for do-it-yourself guitar effects builders. Schematics and Printed circuit board layouts for rare pedals like the Tycobrahe Octavia, Clyde McCoy wah and lots of vintage fuzz pedals!
fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com

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I may have to bump this up ahead of my JCM800 micro build; I have all the parts but have not fabbed up the chassis yet.
 
New Page 1 is where to go though Fuzz central is a good recourse as well but they have to be critically tuned to get the transitor to sound right, if ya can't it's best to toss and get another one. You need a 10K and a 100K adjustable wheel type part to tune it,
How to do that would just be me cutting and pasting from Geofex, go there and read very carefully... you'll be a pro in no time!
 
As far as I remember that Chandler tube drive was held in high regard! I think I was into my Mesa Boogie stage back then, so …. And the blackface Twins always come alive with a good quad of RCA Blackplate 6L6's in em. And it was always pedal friendly. But you can't play " Summer Time Blues " by Blue Cheer with a blackface anything, fer gods sake they recorded the song on a pier, and that goes back a long long time I'm sorry to say 36_11_6.gif
 
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