Midway Fair | 1 decade ago
This is a Germanium booster I built using Madbean Pedal's printed circuit board, based on the legendary Rangemaster. It's the third Treble booster I've made, and the second I made with Madbean's board. It runs on a standard -9v power supply (my One Spot in this vid) and I fit it into a miniature pedal case.
The guitar has Kinman broadcasters in the middle and bridge, and a Kinman telecaster pickup in the neck. Strings are Chrome Flatwounds. The darker guitar tone matched well with the treble booster.
Technical notes:
It's become very common for pedal makers (Analogman, Keely, etc.) to put a switch on their treble boosters to go from a treble to a mids boost. The madbean board has this, too. I decided to use a 100K pot instead of the switch to blend a very small capacitor (.0047uF, as close as I could get to the original Rangemaster value of .005uF) with a larger capacitor (.033); the result is a full range boost when the pot is all the way up, and also a good deal more distortion, so the pedal can become something more like an overdrive. You should know that using a pot *can* slightly affect the overall volume response of the circuit; this pedal is a little quieter overall than the PNP Rangemaster I built with a switch, despite nearly identical gain levels.
I should note that these are similar values to what's in the D*A*M Red Rooster, although he also puts a bias trimpot inside so you can tinker with the transistor's breakup.
The transistor is a came from Smallbear. It was one of their unsorted, untested transistors, and it was easily the best one I got from them recently. I guess I got lucky!
If anyone's interested in even more wonky details, I've posted a build report in the Madbeans forum.
