Treble Boosters: What's The Deal?
Moderator: jingle_jangle
Treble Boosters: What's The Deal?
Don: There are enough treble boosters on the market to make your head spin. Orange Treble Booster, Apollo Treble Booster, Crispy Cream Treble Booster, BSM OR & RM Treble Boosters, Vox Treble Booster and Dallas Rangemaster. I am confident that there are others. My question is, are they all essentially the same? Which one best produces the Treble Boosters of the 1960s using tube amplifiers.
Life, as with music, often requires one to let go of the melody and listen to the rhythm
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toneman
Peter; Gee, I know there's a ton of them out there now. It seems like when I first started making mine back in mid 1997 that nobody except ex-patriated Brits or musician's who'd spent time in the U.K. in the sixties and seventies knew what the "Rangemaster" or Treble boosters were.
As far as I know, Johnny Dallas was the originator of the unit and most likey had a hand in the later Orange unit and the early Vox Treble Booster.
Personally, I like to think that mine is the closest to the original sixties version as I copied my original Dallas Rangemaster for my original version that I built for a number of years. A couple years ago I decided to combine the original version and full-range version I built into one box and use a mini switch to choose one mode or the other. My original unit circuit-wise is exactly the same as the Dallas unit except I built mine into a floor box, use a Fulltone 3PDT switch for True Bypass(something the original unit's never had..) and add a status LED. BTW, mine is totally hand built.
Essentially all of the currently made one's on the market work pretty much the same as they use a single transistor cicuit to asymetrically boost and clip the incoming signal. This brings out a different set of harmonics from your guitar and amp.
I'm not sure about all the other units but mine does Not have a printed circuit board inside but uses the tag string and point to point wired method that was used on the orignal's. I also use carbon comp resistors and polyester tone caps along with a hand selected, pre-tested germanium NTK275 transistor. The original used a Mullard OC44 which are nearly impossible to find in any useable condition these days. Germanium(un-like silicon) transistors only have a shelf and user life of around 20 years or so. After that they start to seriously degrade.
I have not been able to hear any tonal difference between the two transistors as they are inter-changeable in any circuit that they were used in the sixties.
Anyway, my best advice to anyone interested in these cool little sonic enhancer's is to find out how they were built and the quality of the componets. I know some of the current one's use a silicon transistor which sounds a bit harsh to my ears. Germanium's were used in the sixties mainly because they sounded more "tube-like" but the trade off was that they weren't as stable as silicon in higher voltage applications. You don't need to worry about that in a 9 volt powered pedal though.
If you need any further info feel free to ask. I know this was a bit long winded but.. that happens.
As far as I know, Johnny Dallas was the originator of the unit and most likey had a hand in the later Orange unit and the early Vox Treble Booster.
Personally, I like to think that mine is the closest to the original sixties version as I copied my original Dallas Rangemaster for my original version that I built for a number of years. A couple years ago I decided to combine the original version and full-range version I built into one box and use a mini switch to choose one mode or the other. My original unit circuit-wise is exactly the same as the Dallas unit except I built mine into a floor box, use a Fulltone 3PDT switch for True Bypass(something the original unit's never had..) and add a status LED. BTW, mine is totally hand built.
Essentially all of the currently made one's on the market work pretty much the same as they use a single transistor cicuit to asymetrically boost and clip the incoming signal. This brings out a different set of harmonics from your guitar and amp.
I'm not sure about all the other units but mine does Not have a printed circuit board inside but uses the tag string and point to point wired method that was used on the orignal's. I also use carbon comp resistors and polyester tone caps along with a hand selected, pre-tested germanium NTK275 transistor. The original used a Mullard OC44 which are nearly impossible to find in any useable condition these days. Germanium(un-like silicon) transistors only have a shelf and user life of around 20 years or so. After that they start to seriously degrade.
I have not been able to hear any tonal difference between the two transistors as they are inter-changeable in any circuit that they were used in the sixties.
Anyway, my best advice to anyone interested in these cool little sonic enhancer's is to find out how they were built and the quality of the componets. I know some of the current one's use a silicon transistor which sounds a bit harsh to my ears. Germanium's were used in the sixties mainly because they sounded more "tube-like" but the trade off was that they weren't as stable as silicon in higher voltage applications. You don't need to worry about that in a 9 volt powered pedal though.
If you need any further info feel free to ask. I know this was a bit long winded but.. that happens.