Silicone V.S. germanium

[batbag12]

I am currently building a Treble Booster. I am modeling it after the Rangmaster. I have access to a silicone Transistor right now, but it says to use a Germanium one. I was wondering what the difference would be if I used the Silicone transistor since a OC44 is about 8 bucks plus shipping? Also i was wondering if you had to heat sink a silicone transistor? Thanks for your help. Also one aother Stupid question. I've noticed from other pictures that all the wiring is different colered. Is this for a reason or is it just to keep everything organized? (Sorry for the stupid questions. I am a completely new builder.) :

[tcobretti]

Well, a huge issue is whether the design is for a PNP or NPN tranny.  If you post links to the schematic you are using and tell us what transistor you plan to use we can help.  I built the Brian May Treble Booster which is basically a Si Rangemaster, and it sounds great.

Colored wiring is just for your reference.  I have a spool of brown wire, so for some time all my wires have been brown.

[RaceDriver205]

Id save my money if I was you, try it with a silicon transistor. (no, its not 'silicone'  )

[batbag12]

http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album18/DALLAS_RANGEMASTER This is the schematic I am using. I dont know what transistor I planning on using yet. 

[petemoore]

  That looks like a Pos Gnd Circuit, for use with a PNP transistor.
  2n3906 is an Si PNP, but it might not bias correctly in that circuit.
  Small Bear has tested PNP Ge's for that circuit.
  GEO of course has the Rangemaster Rundown, it's one of the 'technology of' articles.
  Check out EH LPB's bias for an si 'versions' of the Rangemaster.

[stm]

There are some options that might allow using silicon transistors:

1) Choose a low gain transistor like 2N2369 (hfe around 70). It's NPN, though, so you would need to use a rangemaster implementation for NPN trannies and negative ground.

2) Make a piggyback pair with the B-E resistor chosen so it has a gain between 70 and 100. You can use either NPN or PNP medium gain transistors here, like 2N3904 or 2N3906, respectively.

3) Use one of the transistors inside a CA3086 IC (contains 5 transistors in a DIP package).  These transistors look very promising for this purpose. Gain is at most 120, but hfe v/s ic curves are very nonlinear, suggesting that if the collector is biased near 7V it will be nonlinear in a similar manner as the Austin Treble booster is described to be.

4) Same as above, but with piggyback.

By the way, piggybacking transistors introduces a nonlinear characteristic near the collector cutoff which is pleasant to the ear.

EDIT: I found an interesting piggy-back rangemaster circuit at Munky's site.

[nightingale]

Hi,
I think the muffmaster project from http://www.muzique.com sounds really nice. It uses a Si tranny.
hope this helps,
ry

[batbag12]

This is all very confusing.    Are there any kits out there that I can buy to get everything I need to make a treble booster? I have seen the one on build your own clone, but for that money I could just go out and buy a decent treble booster. I think once I get all the parts I will be able to build it with some ease, but getting the right parts is going to be the hard part.

[tcobretti]

Ok.  Bear in mind that I haven't built a LPB or a Rangemaster.  Also bear in mind that I am not one of the smart guys here.

Pete points out that a Linear Power Booster, which was a booster pedal from the 70s, is basically a Rangemaster with an NPN Silicon Transistor.  So, you could very easily build an LPB instead of the Rangemaster and it would be cheaper.  However, it is my understanding that the difference between LPBs and Rangemasters is that the RMs distort ever so slightly because they are Germanium, while a LPB essentially just boosts your guitar's signal into the amp.  Another difference between the two is the input capacitor is smaller on the RM, which will make the pedal more of a treble booster than the LPB.  A fun thing to do is buy sockets so you can try different input/output caps to see what you like.  The big thing about boosters is that they essentally just intensify what your amp does.  So, if you have a solid state Crate or Marshall amp, a Rangemaster may not be useful for you.  If I were you, I would very seriously consider making a Silicon Fuzz Face instead.  It is slightly more complex, but a much crazier pedal.

Here's the LPB
http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album18/EH_LPB_BOOST_VERO
Fuzz Face
http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album17/SILICON_FF_VERO

Another point I've seen Pete make on other threads is that almost the most fun part of this process is building the pedal on a breadboard before you solder it together.  Breadboarding allows you to experiment with different values, different transistors, different 'whatever you can think of' until you fine tune the pedal you want.  You will learn a ton without ever breaking out the soldering iron.

After building about half a dozen pedals on stripboard, I have decided I freaking hate working with stripboard.  I want to love it because of all these great layouts everyone has done, but every pedal I've built has taken me hours to troubleshoot beacuse of how tight it is to work on.  If you are not a very competent solderer, I would learn to read a schematic and use perfboard.  I taught myself to read schems so it can't be that hard, and perfboard is much, much easier to work with.

Another good solution is to buy Printed Circuit Boards for your first couple projects until you get a feel for the simpler aspects of pedal building.  You can buy the PCBs from various places (www.generalguitargadgets.com, www.tonepad.com, www.muzique.com, www.olcircuits.com, and a bunch more) and then buy the parts from Steve at www.smallbearelec.com.  Steve's a regular on this forum who stocks the stuff we need and his prices are very resonable. 

Remember that you rarely save money building pedals.  You will likely spend $30-70 on every pedal you build, and when you factor in time you aren't saving money.  I would say the two things that you DO get from building pedals are the ability to customize and the ability to build pedals that are no longer made.

And, yes you should heat sink every transistor you solder, Si or Ge.  However, the right way to do it is socket it so you can easily swap in other trannies later if you wanna mess around.

Anyway, good luck.

[MartyMart]

After building about half a dozen pedals on stripboard, I have decided I freaking hate working with stripboard.  I want to love it because of all these great layouts everyone has done, but every pedal I've built has taken me hours to troubleshoot beacuse of how tight it is to work on.  If you are not a very competent solderer, I would learn to read a schematic and use perfboard.  I taught myself to read schems so it can't be that hard, and perfboard is much, much easier to work with.

Don't want to thread hijack, but after around 150 stripboard builds I have to "defend" it some
I've only had to "de-bug" a handful and of those perhaps 2 or 3 were "pigs" and that was all MY fault
it's NOT a fault of the "stripboard" medium at all !!!

..... there lies your answer 

MM

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

MartyMart, I think it's a personality thing. Personally I'm happiest with stripboard, like you. Maybe it's because I'm clumsy, maybe it's because I'm short sighted.
Ideally, everyone would try all the various ways to build a board & see what felt best to them.
As for the original poster, if you are a raw beginner, I'd be thnking about a premade PCB unless finance is incredibly tight. Even witha guaranteed working layout PCB, there's enough scope for you to put the transistors the wrong way, make wiring errors etc. We were all beginners once.

[JimRayden]

After building about half a dozen pedals on stripboard, I have decided I freaking hate working with stripboard.  I want to love it because of all these great layouts everyone has done, but every pedal I've built has taken me hours to troubleshoot beacuse of how tight it is to work on.  If you are not a very competent solderer, I would learn to read a schematic and use perfboard.  I taught myself to read schems so it can't be that hard, and perfboard is much, much easier to work with.

I think it has been mentioned around here before. Layout is not a replacement for a schematic. It is highly advisable to be able to read schematics before you even consider poking anything with the iron. Layouts are merely suggesting diagrams of how the schematic could be assembled. It's quite logical that if one can't read schematics, debugging becomes quite a struggle.

Some new guys around seem to think of layouts and schematics as being quite the same thing, the first one is just simpler to follow while building. Actually, schematics show electrical connections whereas layouts are for construction reference only. Besides, schematics are not hard to understand. Just a few symbols to remember, with black lines as electrical connections. Plus, after you learn more about the components, the schematic symbols become very logical as they are just simple childish drawings of the components' actual construction.

-----------
Jimbo

[Doug_H]

I think it has been mentioned around here before. Layout is not a replacement for a schematic. It is highly advisable to be able to read schematics before you even consider poking anything with the iron. Layouts are merely suggesting diagrams of how the schematic could be assembled. It's quite logical that if one can't read schematics, debugging becomes quite a struggle.

Some new guys around seem to think of layouts and schematics as being quite the same thing, the first one is just simpler to follow while building. Actually, schematics show electrical connections whereas layouts are for construction reference only. Besides, schematics are not hard to understand. Just a few symbols to remember, with black lines as electrical connections. Plus, after you learn more about the components, the schematic symbols become very logical as they are just simple childish drawings of the components' actual construction.

-----------
Jimbo

If this isn't in one of the sticky FAQs at the top, it needs to be.

Good point!

Doug