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Took this round to a mate's place and we tried it out through his Gunn amp. We first tried it in conjunction with the Cupcake and Doubleflush.

Then, thinking that the other pedals might be choking it somehow, I said "Hey, let's try just that into the Gunn with boost full up."

So, up goes the dial, out come the cables, and we whack it straight into his channel 2 (the blackface-ish one.) Hit the first chord... dead amp. Nothing comes out. Not even hiss or noise.

Not sure why, but we then tried it in Ch 1 (presumably to see if lightning strikes twice.) Wow. Just... wow. The Rangemaster on it's own with the tap wide open pushed his amp into overdrive on it's own, with the amp volume down. The only other time he'd heard the amp's natural overdrive, he'd been in hearing loss territory. (The Gunn runs two KT88's, quite hot -- he burnt several sets before getting it cooled down a bit by a tech.)

It might be a simple little circuit, but this box can be deadly cool!

Thanks... I really didn't want to bother trying to make my own vactrol with a LDR and LED, so I solved the problem by throwing money at it. The Balance knob seems to be a Depth for the trem wave.

I've just finished my Cupcake, but the Sustain knob works in a very nonlinear fashion. (I suspect I may have cooked the potentiometer.) I want to test it some more before I put up any pictures. And in an example of outstanding 'eyes bigger than my stomach', I ordered a Lowrider PCB. The worst that can happen with these, I figure, is far, far less worse than what could happen soldering together a 50W JCM800 clone.

I ordered a few board at once, was all. I testfitted some parts in the LaVache box last night, and my rough measurements were very off. Dang it.

Okay, it's all boxed up and ready to roll. The battery doesn't actually fit in there, I just couldn't be bothered stripping the connector out of the circuit. I couldn't find a better place to put the top labels, as you will see...

This thing has a LOT of mucking around potential in it.



And perhaps its my noob showing again, but I got tripped up by the 'Build It Rock It Box It' thing, since I found that I couldn't see a good way of bolting in the power adaptor. Wound up cutting the wires off, bolting it in lightly, soldering the wires back on, then cranking it down.

The Rangemaster is in the top right, and to the bottom left... the La Vache... with two stompswitch holes

That's tomorrow night's boxing and rocking (order negotiable.)

I'm not offended at all! I built that because I wanted something that could do clean (Low Input), low volume roar (Master Volume), and which could also bellow with the taps open. I only use it clean at church, with my phaser pedal and (now!) the Rangemaster

I got the Dymo labeller initially because I really, really like the way that Ken Fischer used them on the back of the legendary Trainwreck Express amps, and I wanted to get one of those labellers before they stopped making them. (I'm surprised they still do!) And you're right about this being addictive. The only part I really hate so far is drilling the enclosure.

I was doing a bit of testfitting earlier with the battery to mark out how much flange I'd have to grind off to get the lid to fit, and moved some of the wires that I had had just floating around under the switch. Floating around in the space where the battery goes, where I measured it at a tight fit initially.

Anyone see where this is going?

I moved the wires to go along the bottom of the switch, rather than along the side, and now the lid fits, with the battery in place. For want of one millimeter's width of wire...

I've marked up the Cupcake enclosure to be drilled, just have to measure out the other ones now then I'll drill them all at once. I'm torn between putting the Boost on the La Vache on a stomp or not. What does La Vache translate to, anyway? It sounds Italian...

I have a working Rangemaster! I tested it out with a spare shonky battery, the MG15 (the speaker cab is at church atm) and my SSS strat, and it made noise 

Not a horrible lot, though.

Rather than start jumping to conclusions (this thing is supposed to be good for 20dB of gain!) I got out the multimeter, and started with the battery of unknown provenance. 30mV... ai corumba, I think I've found my problem.

But once I get a new battery...

Look out neighbours!



Honesty compells me to admit to a flub, though. I left a space under the switch for the battery so it could fit in neat and nice at the bottom of the pedal -- and forgot to allow for the flange on the lid. Gaaaah. I'm going to hacksaw or grind the flange off the bottom 20mm of lid at some point. Rather than mark up the outside of the box, I testfitted parts inside it to see how much room they took up, and marked edges and centrelines with a Vivid. Once done, I lined masking tape inside, copied the markings, and transferred the tape (carefully!) to the outside for a drilling template.

Okay, so this morning I found a 9V with some charge left at church. (I have a bag of 2.1mm sockets for power adaptors, but the Rangemaster is a MINUS 9V unit, meaning it doesn't play nice with plus 9V effects on the same pedal. I thought it best not to tempt fate.)

This sounds very glassy, and also very trebly. It's also very easy to boost it too far! I like the glassy effect it does! It's also very trebly -- I'm going to solder up the T/M switch at some point. This switches between just treble boost (as in the stock version), and a more treble to midrange boost. It sounds absolutely great through my JCM800 I normally keep at church (since it and the cab are a nuisance to carry around), not so hot through the MG15 solidstate practice amp.