Kansas City Prairiemaster

[Timko]

I first started building pedals 5 years ago this winter with Joe Gore's Tonefiend projects.  I quickly moved to more complex pedals than those simple layouts, but I always knew that I wanted to come up with a combo clean boost and treble boost.  Earlier this year, a stranger walking by my house heard me playing guitar and knocked on my door.  After some discussion he asked if I'd be willing to build him a Rangemaster style circuit.  At the time I was starting to get burnt out on building PCBs, and laying something out on Verobard sounded like fun. 

I tried a lot of different combinations of treble boosters.  The first version of this pedal used Jon Patton's Fallstaff Overdrive, but it didn't have the sound I was going for. 
After I found someone in a Facebook group selling lower gain PNP transistors, I did some research and came across the Sziklai layout for a Rangemaster.  I ended up putting an AMZ stupidly wonderul tone control at the end (as well as a bypass switch) with a 50K-A pot that thins out the tone a bit.  I found it's really useful when you turn down the input cap control.  The clean boost is based off the MXR boost, but I added a FET buffer at the beginning that's always on, and used AMZ's wiring suggestion for modding a tubecreamer to be buffered bypass.

Also, thanks to Madbean for helping with directing me to some resources to help with an incredibly annoying switch pop.

The pedal name and graphics have been done for nearly 10 months now.  I'm glad to finally have a circuit to put in the box.

[gordo]

That looks so "heartland".  Kinda farm machinery antique and cool at the same time.  Really nicely done.  This one needs an audio.  And what a cool tale of a passing stranger diggin your playing. 

I have the guts to an old Dan Armstrong Red Ranger that I used for years on the road to get my Marshall to give it up.  I had it rack mounted.  I had a dream about it last night so I'll take this as a sign that I need to revisit the old beast.

[nzCdog]

This looks great!  Love that etch

[thesmokingman]

90s dod style control labels ftw ...

[midwayfair]

A+ enclosure, seriously.

[Timko]

Thanks for all the kind words!  I am really proud of the design, and really proud of what I learned during the process of laying the circuit out (most of it the hard way).  The bad news is that I have somehow lost the email address of the guy that originally asked me for this pedal.  I'm hoping he emails me out of the blue.

Here's a quick sound sample I recorded last night on my iPad. 
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4OYZoMpKh6/

Some Johnny Marr Chords (from 'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore') with the neck pickup a Johnny Marr Jaguar, running through a 1965 Ampeg Rocket  II. Controls are set as such:

Rangemaster Input - 11:00
Rangemaster Boost - 11:30
Rangemaster Output Tone - 1:00
Rangemaster Output Tone Bypass - Off
Clean Boost - 11:00

The clips are as such:
Clean
Clean Boost
Treble Boost
Clean & Treble Boost

The amp is set up such that the clean boost begins to drive the pedal into overdrive.  The combination of the treble and clean boost has more bass than the crappy speaker picks up.  I'll try to do a more proper recording sometime soon.

[gordo]

Tasty Ampeg tips it in.  Very nice.  Would love to hear that combo wicked up a bit.  I'd love to get my hands on an old Reverberocket too.  I've repaired a bunch of them and the variants and always figured anything with an "Accordion" input rules.

[oip]

this is fantastic!

[Timko]

Tasty Ampeg tips it in.  Very nice.  Would love to hear that combo wicked up a bit.  I'd love to get my hands on an old Reverberocket too.  I've repaired a bunch of them and the variants and always figured anything with an "Accordion" input rules.

That combo stays clean for a very, very long time.  Of course, the Johnny Marr Jaguar has vintage spec pickups, so they're a little underpowered, but even with something more powerful, the amp isn't breaking apart anywhere left of noon.