Sharing the culmination of months of work (while not building amps & playing). Thanks to talking story with Jimbo of days of yore in all our glory we both had a couple of Fender amps about the time as Mesa Boogie was just making the scene. And in case you're wondering...? Yes, Mr. Major was once only a blonde Bassman with long hair and a gleam in his eye.
I was playing through a black Tremolux piggyback with 2x10"s which also sat on top of a 2x12" Bassman cab - my wannabe mini stack. But in order to achieve our tonal gain bliss we BOTH plugged into Electro Harmonix's LPB-1s. Jim of course had to one-up me by stacking two of them.
So I pulled mine out from the old days and looked inside. Suddenly I remembered I had to remake mine since it all became unsoldered and fell apart inside back in the mid 80's and sat until the mid 90's when I found a shop that allowed me to take one of theirs apart and copy the circuit. So I remade mine but found that I'd also replaced the transistor with an NTE "supposed" equal. But it was not I found out prior to this project.
The tranny was a much lower gain than the usual 2n5088 used in most. I found I had also tried to get it so exact that I'd used multiple resistors to get the right values to what I'd drawn. The result wasn't that good from back then so now fast forward to the internet days with all the info available to us and decided to get it to where it should be.
Well...I'll just say that these are still very crude units that have a lot of shortcomings to put it nicely. So while talking with Jimbo - I utilized a lot of techniques & knowledge I've gained since and the results came along to make a ton of difference. This pedal has gone through many many revisions with feedback along the way from Jimbo, my bandmate, and also Ed C I've finally found the final magic and end product.
This pedal provides anything from a basic transparency with a slight boost to entering into the medium overdrive territory. It embellishes with a mid boost in just the right ranges to liven up and sweeten any amp, speaker, guitar, or other pedal. The Gain control adds the characteristic increase we all know and love in much the same way as bypassing a cathode resistor does giving you that added frequency boost along with it as it's dialed full up. The Clip control is fairly obvious except that it's characteristics are not typical to those found in others since it comes on smooth, sustains well, and adds another dimension to the mix as well as much more diversity overall. With the Treb control you add or remove just the right amount of high end due to the Gain as described and is also helpful when stacking other pedals. If a Strat or Tele is extra ice picky it shaves off just the right amount or with a Les Paul it will add enough to really bring it out of the darkness. This can give that hard to describe super sensitive lively strings kind of feel.
This could easily be used like those "always on" compressor pedals where it can be set to be very subtle (or not) and you forget that it's on until you turn it off. Use it as a standard boost, a driving lead boost, a rhythm crunchy driving boost, whatever your heart desires? It will do a great job of keeping the original guitar and amp tone intact as well as stacking nicely with any other pedals also.
As with all of my other pedals, I would be more than happy to make one for any of my Hoffman brothers at a reasonable discounted price. Out of respect for Doug I will not list prices, I do not sell boards or kits, etc. and please remember they are made by myself and warrantied for life under normal use, just PM me with any questions. Thank you-
Topic: Linear PRO Boost+ (Read 7593 times)