Dallas RangeMaster

Dallas RangeMaster

The Dallas Rangemaster is one of the most famous treble boosters in musical effects history. It is known for a very sweet sound, not harsh or shrill like other treble boosters. This could be due to the fact that it uses a Germanium transistor instead of Silicon transistors that modern-design boosters use.

I get my OC44's from Small Bear.

Aside from one being NPN and the other being PNP, alll the old germaniums that were used in guitar pedals were all pretty much equivalents to each other. NTK275, AC128, AC127, OC44, CV7003, OC75, OC76, OC140, OC81D...They all had a typical gain of around 100hfe.

"It is important to realise the difference between a Treble-Booster and an Overdrive or Distortion pedal. The Treble-Booster takes a small totally clean and fully sinusoidal input signal from the guitar, and simply increases its amplitude all of the tonal nuances coming from the guitar pickup are preserved, as is the full sinusoidal nature of the waveform. This huge increase in amplitude further overdrives the valves, creating more of the highly desirable valve distortion. This is very different from the latter Overdrive or Distortion pedals, which simply convert the sinusoidal guitar signal into a square-wave signal, with approximately the same amplitude. As the signal level itself has not increased (only its shape having changed) there is no increase in the amount of the much preferred valve-overdrive tone the amplifier generates. Thus a Treble-Booster causes the amplifier to give more of its natural valve distortion."

-Adapted from http://www.brianmayworld.com/BrianMaysound.htm