hey guys, i just bought this on ebay for 20 bux...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200764886673&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:US:3160

anyone know anything about it? i know the board has been replaced, gonna hopefully find a schematic so i can make an appropriate clone of the original circuit.

found it on discofreq's website, with a great gut shot.



any info anyone can help me with is appreciated!!

http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/fal/treblebooster

here's the shot inside the one i bought...absolutely not the same circuit, and looks almost like a commercial board.

That is a little weird, I haven't seen too many (if any at all) screen printed/solder masked pcbs from the 60's

It's certainly not the same circuit, I see two transistors in the one you bought and one in the old one.

It's a pretty neat looking box!

yah, it's definitely something else in there...

guess i'll have to wait to see what....but i really wanna try and put the original circuit in this puppy!!

it does indeed look cool!

Who knows, that little circuit may sound great and you can throw it in another box.

Sorry I can't be of any help, I had never even heard of a fal treble booster.  I just checked the post because you have such good taste in effects.

"a 1967 Goya catalog

The original English Treble Boost. Precision made. $24.95

More info at http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/fal/treblebooster#ixzz1vpJojthl
"

suck factor is the lack of guts. total suck. gonna have to find one of these things somewhere, so i can clone it and re-stuff this thing. it doesn't look like too many components,
but can't see the trace side.

i blew up the guts, but my eyes are way too spent to be sure of what i think i see.

i knows i'se an idiot....

but do ya think it's a rangemaster clone?



"http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?977469-my-rangemaster-pedal-keeps-going-*POP*-when-I-turn-it-on"

Quote"I also have a faithful clone of the Dallas Rangemaster, a vintage FAL treble booster and it doesn't even have a switch, just plug and play that noisy bastard pedal "

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i realize it'll never be original, but i'd still love to try and restore this thing!!

Hi jimi, look for a circuit with 4 resistors, 6 caps and one tranny. Resistors might be 1K, 4K7, 10(or 100)K and 56(or 560)K. There's two blue electro's, one is 5uF, the other might be 20uF as a  guess. The two mustard caps would be small value, can't read it. The tropical fish cap at the bottom is maybe 0.1uF but you can google for reading tropical caps. The little brown cap at the top might be mica and small value. I could be miles out with this but it might help in the absence of other posters. It might be similar to the rangemaster but we have 2 caps left over...

thanks ian, i really appreciate it...

hopefully one of the gurus will pop in. i know i've seen a similar looking board before.

Hi
Regarding the original, the big electro is probably for smoothing the power supply. One end of the top (mica?) cap looks to be soldered to the DC input, maybe as an extra filter to ground.
The input cap will be small, given that the input impedance is moderate in a common emitter circuit, and it is a treble-boosting circuit. Maybe the trop fish cap is for input (from the cable to its right?).

The two resistors with orange 3rd bands (1k multiplier) are almost certainly the bias resistors (68k and 10k), which must always be the highest values, while the others (red band, 100 multiplier) are likely to be Rc and Re (4.7k and 1k, respectively). For Rc and Re with a ratio of 4.7:1 there would be a gain of 4.7 (ie a small boost), but I suspect that the 1k is bypassed by the 5uF electro next to it, to get lots extra boost.

Those mustard caps are a bit of a mystery, as just one of them would be needed for output.

Of course, these are all guesses.
cheers

thanks brett,
makes sense...
i'm gonna have to mess around with it some when it gets here, still scouring the web for info...

gonna try and sign into my old HC account and ask the guy who said he has one if he can send me some gut shots, and hopefully the trace side of the board.

the guy on hc can't help, but synthi on the forbidden forum had one:

Re: fal treble booster from 67

Postby Synthi » Today, 08:52
I bought one ( € 1!) a few years ago, it's a rangemaster clone, but the resistors are different, base resistors are 6k8 to -, and 10k to ground, collector resistor is 4k7 , emitter resistor is 1 k. The input capacitor is 2 capacitors in series, both 10 N. There are 2 outputs, one is the cable, output capacitor is 100N, the other output is the small connector in the top of the picture, output C is 47 N. Transistor is a NTK216. I cannot read the valus of the elco's , I think it's 100 for the big one and 25 for the other ( emitter).

Looking at the picture
I see brown black orange 10K
and maybe under the yellow wire  blue grey? orange 68K
I should note Brett mentioned  68k in this thread

6.8k and 10k as a bias divider is a low input resistance about 4k and then that is in parallel with the input of the transistor ,  68k and 10k is higher about 8.7k and in parallel with the input of the transistor

I simmed two Si NPN 2N2222 versions (10k, 6.8k)  (68k, 10k)
The 68k, 10k divider and 4.7k , 1k has the collector at about 6.7VDC.

thanks gus...
one day i will try to get it right...i still don't understand enough to follow this too well..

but i'm trying, and learning...slowly.

hard to teach an old dog new tricks!!!!

A guess from the pictures and posts in this thread.  I simmed it as a NPN Si transistor because I don't have a Ge transistor model.
I added a simple guitar/cable sim volume and tone control at max.  Voltages in blue are from the sim.



Green input, Blue output

wow, thanks gus!!! what an awesome 50th birthday gift!!!!



thank you, my friend!!!

gonna vero this together and try it gus...thanks for the help my friend!
i will report back...

namaste!

drew up a vero, gonna go build it and try it out...gonna play with some GE transistors and see what happens...

here's the vero:



and a pnp version:



not verified yet, but it looks good to me...gonna build 'em up and will report back.
peace!

and thanks, gus!!

What I posted is a GUESS of how the cap and resistor values are setup.   Other people posted good information in this thread.  I CHANGED the transistor to a NPN Si and made it +9 so one could build a Si version of the circuit.  The sim shows the transistor biased more to cutoff.

All I did was make a sim using information from others posts to check the DC voltages at the Base, Collector and Emitter.

A question is what are the divider resistor values? The picture shows possible values of 10K and 68K, however 6.8K instead of 68k and the transistor being a NTK216 and the value of the cap going to the small connector is in the Synthi part of a post.

Are there different versions one with a 68k and one with a 6.8k?

The low input resistance might be part of the design to load the guitar so the circuit would not be too loud without a volume control.

I have not found information for NTK216 on the web.  I don't have a book with NTK numbers, is it a PNP Ge?

hi gus,

i don't know if it's a pnp ge, but in the pic, it kinda looks like an ac 128 or something... i've just gotten done with another project, so i'm gonna build up the circuit you simmed and socket damn near everything, so i can mess with it.

i think it seems like you're on the right path from my limited understanding.. we'll see what happens. i will write down all the other values people guesstimated and have a play with it.

i really appreciate the help, my friend!
honored!

peace!

ok, i built it...i socketed the power +/- and electros.

didn't even bother with silicon, went straight to the germanium. first thing i tried was an ac128.

LOVE. TUMESCENCE!!!! WOOD!!!

also tried various other ge's, 2sc's, 2n 404's, mp16's, nte whatevers... but the ac 128 is the one.

MAN, what a sound...phat and fuzzy, cleans up brilliantly via guitar knobs, nice natural warm treble boost with prominent octave overtones...

i'm gutting the FAL and putting this in. night and day difference...this thing sounds like the late 60's. it's the only way i can describe it.

so...gus? i think you nailed it bro!!! well done, and thank you!!!