BYOC Tri-Booster Pedal Kit

[duhvoodooman***]

I've been looking at THIS BYOC kit pedal for sometime, and finally ordered one yesterday. Unlike many of the BYOC kits, it's not really a direct "clone" of any one vintage pedal, though the basic circuit is derived from the revered Dallas Rangemaster treble booster of the late '60s. The really cool thing is that it has three switchable transistor boost modes: a germanium boost (the Rangemaster portion) that introduces some signal distortion, a "linear" silicon boost that's fairly clean, and an ultra-clean full range MOSFET boost. Additionally, the germanium boost mode has an associated 3-way toggle switch that selectively boosts the highs, the mids, or the entire audible range. The power LED even changes color between the three boost modes. Nifty! It's not a cheap kit at $95, but that seems very reasonable, given it's sonic flexibility.

Until I finally bought a boost pedal (the inexpensive & simple, but very effective Behringer PB100), I didn't have a real appreciation for how tonally useful these devices are. They are capable of MUCH more than just making your volume louder, though they certainly do that well! You can use them to push a clean amp tone into overdrive, to make an OD or distortion pedal sound even "dirtier", to emphasize a certain range of the tone spectrum, and more. Definitely a very useful device to have in the old tonal arsenal!

I'll post back here again when I've received the kit and built the pedal....

[Tone2TheBone]

Oooo another pedal making thread 'bout time I was getting bored as you can tell from my cloned meat post. heh

Keep us involved in this project Voo. I'm thinking of getting something from General Guitar Gadgets to build too. I feel like smelling solder.

[Spudman***]

Hmmmm. Vedey intervestink.

After using the PB100 I've become a firm believer in a boost pedal. I'm looking forward to your completed project and the post honeymoon report.

[oldguy]

Voodoo, it sounds like you once again are on a mission...or mad scientist experiment.... be looking forward to your report when you're finished.

[elavd]

I've ordered the "Large Beaver" (Big Muff's clone) from BYOC and I anxious to get it...

I am so anxious that I have already worked on some ideas of the pedal's look.

This is one example:



Check the other ideas here:
http://s49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...view=slideshow

[duhvoodooman***]

The new version of that kit incorporates a switchable tone-changing feature that previously had to be done as a mod. And you can build it as either one of two vintage Big Muff versions, the "Triangle" or the "Ram's Head". Nice kit. Keep us posted on what you think of it.

BTW, how are you planning to apply the graphics? I can't access any photo hosting sites due to the web filter software here at work, so I can't see what you have in mind.

[Adrian30]

Very cool design there, Elavd. Nicely done.

[abraxas]

The Tribooster seems like a very interesting pedal. There was a video test of it, in the BYOC site, maybe it's now on youtube, or something?

Voodoo, you are SO correct about the several applications of a lowly booster pedal. I personally use the TAD Range King, which is quite transparent and very quiet, and it's doing for me all those things you describe. :

[duhvoodooman***]

Whoa, I shoulda built one of these a LONG time ago!! Holy crap, is this puppy cool! The build is pretty straightforward (Keith Vonderhulls' super-high quality PCB's are a big part of why), and everything worked on the first "light up". The three boost modes all sound excellent, though I'm partial (so far) to the germanium mode. The 3-color LED is quite cool, too, since you can always tell which boost mode you're in at a glance (red = germanium, blue = linear, and green = clean).

One point to make right away is that, despite the nomenclature, I wouldn't use the term "clean" for the sound of any of the three modes. The point of this pedal is to add gain, but to do it three different ways. Yeah, if you have things dialed down with a single-coil guitar on a clean sounding amp, you can probably keep the tone from the "linear" and "clean" boost modes pretty clean, as long as you don't run the pedal gain over about 50%. But that's clearly not what this pedal is about. You want clean? Use your amp and guitar volume knobs. You want drive? This baby's for you!

The "linear" mode is actually the cleanest, most transparent sound of the three. It's called "linear" because the boost is applied equally across the signal frequency range. You'll still pick up distortion, but it's of a pushing-the-preamp type, and doesn't have the character of the sound you get from an OD or distortion pedal, where the signal is being artificially clipped. It's a more natural and transparent sound. The distortion starts almost immediately with a humbucker guitar; it's already noticeable with the Level knob at 9 o'clock, before you're even at unity gain with the pedal. With single coils, you can get up around 12 o'clock before the signal distortion becomes really noticeable. It's already significantly louder than the unboosted signal, by that point.

The "clean" mode is actually the middle of the three, as far as degree of distortion goes. This mode uses a MOSFET for the gain boost, and it gives a nice lush sounding boost that seems to emphasize the mids and highs a bit more that the "linear" does. It also distorts the bass and lower mids to a greater degree, and sounds rather muddy on the low strings with humbuckers. But if you're looking to bust out of the mix with a solo up on the higher strings, this is a great way to do it.

The germanium boost makes no pretense at cleanliness--this one is all about hot, nasty top-end sizzle. The gain here is provided courtesy of an OC75 germanium transistor, and the circuit is based directly upon the Dallas Rangemaster treble booster of the 1960's. It's pretty noisy, so running this pedal mode with a noise gate of some sort is recommended, unless background "fizz" just isn't a concern. Keith added a nice additional feature for the germanium mode, which is a 3-way toggle that lets you vary the boost frequency range. The choices are treble, mid and full boost. The treble boost is just too trebly for my taste, but I can see where it would have its uses. The mid boost is pretty useful, generating a TS-style mid-hump but with a different distortion character. But the full boost gives you that germanium "hair" across the board, and is clearly my favorite of the three. Interestingly, the germanium mode also has the best bass clarity of all three boost modes, which I really didn't expect.

I'll try to get a clip or two posted in the next few days. My MIL is staying with us for a couple of days, having just had an angioplasty on Thursday, so peace & quiet are the order of the day around here for the moment.

I haven't finished the enclosure yet, and probably won't for a little while. Gotta have some fun with this puppy before I tear it back apart for painting & decaling. Besides, with only two knobs, it's not like the unlabeled controls are confusing! And that 3-color LED eliminates any ambiguity! Check out the pix below:

[Robert****]

Cool, DVM, thanks for the update! Those lights are UBERCOOL, did you know that?

Can't wait to see the graphic work on the final product. Are you gonna make them available for purchase?

[duhvoodooman***]

Cool, DVM, thanks for the update! Those lights are UBERCOOL, did you know that?

Can't wait to see the graphic work on the final product. Are you gonna make them available for purchase?

Yeah, I love that little 3-way LED. Haven't seen one of those on a pedal before, though I assume they must be used in some commercial effects. But the best part of this pedal, by far, is the array of cool tones it spews forth. The more I play with it, the broader the grin on my face.

Re: selling 'em, I very much doubt it. Since BYOC is no longer selling just the PCB's, I'd have to drop over $100 apiece on the full kit + shipping cost. That means that for a completed one, including labeling/finishing, I'd have to charge somewhere upward of $160 to make it worth my time. That's a pretty stiff price, when you can buy a pre-assembled BYOC TriBooster HERE for $139, and finish it yourself.

Going to try to crank out a couple of clips this afternoon....

[duhvoodooman***]

OK, here a link to a clip recorded using my Epi Elitist LP Std on the bridge p'up through my Fender Blues Junior, set up for a clean tone. Besides the Triboost, no effects used except a little plate reverb on my DigiTech DigiVerb pedal. Same pair of riffs repeated four times:

1. Clean (no boost)
2. Linear mode boost
3. Clean mode boost
4. Germanium mode boost (full freq. range setting)

The level setting on the boost pedal was 12 noon (i.e. 50%) for all three boost samples. I recorded the no-boost sample at a higher mic input setting to keep the volume comparable to the three boosted samples. I think you can hear the distortion build in pretty clearly, and it's very obvious by the germanium sample, which is my personal favorite. But they all sound good to me. Tell me what you think.

Here's the link: http://www.box.net/shared/my7h52icco

[marnold***]

Tell me what you think.

Well, I'd like to say at least one of them was bad or meh, but I'm incapable. All three sound quite nice. So does the clean, but that's not the point

[elavd]

duhvoodooman you say that the first lick is clean (no boost), but I think that on 0:08" I hear some breaking up probably from the amp.

Am I correct?

[sunvalleylaw]

Wow, those clips sound really nice!

[Tone2TheBone]

Yup germaniums sounded pretty good there Voo. Any pics of the pedal?

[duhvoodooman***]

Any pics of the pedal?

Post #9 in this thread. That's how it's going to look for awhile, because I'm too busy playing through it to paint & decal it!

[pie_man_25]

do you think I'd be able to get one of those kits and use it instead of putting active electronics on my jazz? or possibly modding it slightly? or would I be better off just getting schematics to some electronics and modding that slightly to put it into a box? I just don't want to mod my jazz at all, but I do love the active tone that john entwistle got.

[duhvoodooman***]

I came across THIS informative article today, explaining how booster pedals work and comparing them vs. overdrives and amp gain stages. This shed some light for me on how my new TriBoost pedal is working, and why it acts like it does. Interesting....to a geek like me, anyway!