Rangemaster Treble Booster Kit from Vintage Pedal Workshop

Here's a nice video demonstrating the construction and use of a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster Kit clone sold by the Vintage Pedal Workshop (VPW) in the UK. The treble booster was originally a 1960s effect that tightened up distortion sounds by emphasizing higher frequency sounds.

The VPW Rangemaster Kit by Vintage Pedal Workshop allows the builder to construct an authentic high-quality Rangemaster Treble Boost Unit and includes all the hard-to-find components with a custom-made enclosure, carbon comp resistors, Cliff UK input jack, Switchcraft jack plug, premium axial electrolytic capacitors and a high-quality UK made Bakelite control knob. The Germanium transistor is selected to work with the included components and sound great. The kit includes a wiring diagram, photos and assembly guidance notes. Check out the video to see the point-to-point wiring in action.

Background on the Vintage Pedal Treble Booster Kit

A few historical tidbits might be of interest relative to this kit. Treble boosters were made popular by leading guitar players of their day such as Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Rory Gallagher and Brian May to overdrive darker sounding amplifiers (usually British tube models such as Marshall Bluesbreakers and Vox AC30s) to create a tighter distorted sound than the amp alone. Treble boosters typically cut low frequencies resulting in more treble/high midrange to sound "tighter." The Dallas Rangemaster was one of the early and popular models of treble booster. Today it's a hard-to-find vintage pedal because its sound is still highly desireable. The original Rangemaster was not a pedal but a box meant to be placed on top of the amplifier. The circuit used a single OC71 or OC44 germanium transistor. By the 1980s the original style treble boosters had become obsolete due to the popularity of overdrive pedals, but in recent years some guitarists have come to again appreciate the simplicity of the original, and this kit is a faithful reproduction.