End-of-The-World Tone

[Eb7+9]

... here's my approach to achieving comparable tone qualities to the Pete Cornish / Brian May VOX "Germanium" Booster ...



It was known that increasing the input cap to 0.005uF or 0.01uF turns the VOX Treble Booster circuit into more of a "dirty" booster ... this mod likely  gave way to the Dallas Rangemaster circuit ...



This circuit uses a fairly low-valued volume pot that's useful for keeping noise low ... No big difference between the two circuits structurally - mainly a matter of different devices and biasing/impedance drive levels ... IMO a certain portion of the distortion seems to come from the low device drive characteristics of the booster ... since the Rangemaster establishes a higher input circuit impedance relative to the VOX by virtue of higher biasing resistors I suspect this might account for a slightly looser feel than the modded VOX circuit ... this aspect will be affected by varying the bias ... a not-too-high bias level being a good idea ... I use 2n2429 Germanium devices and have to pick through them to find the odd one that's just right ...



peace ... jcm~

 :|

[R.G.]

It was known that increasing the input cap to 0.005uF or 0.01uF turns the VOX Treble Booster circuit into more of a "dirty" booster ... this mod likely gave way to the Dallas Rangemaster circuit ...

I don't quite understand that - do you mean that you think the Vox TB came first, then the DRM? or that Cornish started with a Vox TB circuit and then went to a DRM style circuit?