Q for Joe D. -->Range master "Vulcanized"... I

[Phorhas]

Well, i  my renewed Rangemaster messing-arounds I tried Vulcanizing it, i.e use Joe's Diode Compression thingy. I A/Bed it with a dpdt swith and that what I got:

Soundwise it was a smoother, tight, rounder tone with a bit less output (Vc was about 6.6v and without it Vc was 7.2v - on a 9.3V batt) pretty cool add-on for clean situations or just subtle gentler boost for fatting things up...

Is that what it was supposed to sound?

[petemoore]

Sw's are so nice. I get them cheep cheep free cheep sometimes.
 They are not hard to use, I find them worth the drill, and two wires [SPST].
 I put one in near front position, before I even know what exactly I'm gonna do with it on a nice build. get these nice plastic cheep ones from the bargain bin, I like to switch the end Cct rolloffs, add something under emitter/source, extra diode, input cap, or feedbacker loop [pins 1 and 7 of dual OA] on an extra pot.
 It's nice to have the switches that do a little bit of a certain thing. Let highs out, add/loosen bass and boost, clip different, more bass and boost, go balls out to the rails [feedbacker].
 The thing about having the switch in there already is that it can also be used to test mods A/B kwik style. Can always find another excellent use for that cheepo SPST....

[Phorhas]

Yeap... is not hard to versityle.... such a word game... I kill me

[Marcos - Munky]

Cool to see your review. I like to vulcanize some things too.

[Joe Davisson]

Yeah, the gain is lower. Sounds like a cool mod!

More:
The collector voltage should be close to 1/2 supply voltage (4.5v). The output will be less regardless, depending on the tranny's gain.

It really doesn't work right with PNP/germanium transistors. Haven't hammered that out yet. It's best made from the non-magical 2n5089 and 1N914 or similar parts.

The diode forces at least some nice harmonics into the sound, if not driven too hard. It acts like a gate which passes low-level signals, but closes up on louder ones. So anything could benefit at a cost of output.

Make sure the resistors on the diode are large (> 1M)...

-Joe