How clean is the Rangemaster?

[nero1985]

im just wondering if its clean (not crystal clean but just good for clean sounds) or if it overdrives by itself, i just want a little boost for my clean sounds that would give me a little bit a of BALLS, also i was reading that the fuzz face has problems with weather and i was wondering if this is something that happens to all GE transistors and what would i have to do to fix this.. THANKS!

[vanhansen]

It is clean but you're not going to get more balls with the RM.  It's a treble booster, which means it will sound like the mids and bass are cut some.  It's better served pushing an already slightly overdriven amp.

Have you built one of the buffers from GGG yet?  They will add a slight boost in there.  Nothing huge like an actual booster but it will enhance your signal across the spectrum.

[alteredsounds]

The couple of Rangemasters I've got arent super clean at all but it depends on your amp.  Marshall's are super easy to push into gain sound with little boost.

There was some posts recently about atmospherics and ge transistors and some way of compensating.

[petemoore]

  I build batches, one had trimpots and sockets all over the Perf.
  The RM's I had were all 'sorta clean', the RM I'm using is like a FF, or nearly so, at least for a less 'Wordy' descript on tone.

[rockgardenlove]

On the clean channel it pushes my amp into a kinda gritty trebly distortion thing.  Sounds nicer on the dirty channel.

[mac]

My RM is clean. It slightly drives the clean channel of my laney lc15r & lc30II at full volume, and pushes the dirt channel to nice overtones playing with the volume pot of the RM and the amp gain.
I never had problems with temperature. Mine has a 4.7k, instead of the 3.9k, that takes care of hFE changes.
One of my favourite diy pedals.

mac

[rockgardenlove]

^I just used a trimpot on that resistor...I think mines at about 4k.