D*A*M Forum

I'm kind of new when it comes to treble booster/rangemaster types. I've had an Analogman, BSM, Cornish TB83 clone, and a Pigdog.

I was wondering about the Pigdog specifically, how much volume boost and "gain" are available/should be there.

When I engage the pedal (have boost set to max) there is a significant boost in volume, same as some clean boosts I've had set to max and there doesn't seem to be much "crunch" available either. This is sort of in contrast to the other treblebooster/rangemaster types I've had where there has been a volume jump but not nearly this amount. The other boosters seemed to provide a little more gain as well.

Is this normal or is something perhaps wrong? Asking as I have not had first-hand experience with an original rangemaster so don't know what the "norm" is.

I’ve got two treble booster type pedals: a DAM Red Rooster and a Pigdog Treble Twin. The Pigdog seems to be able to push the volume quite a bit more than the Red Rooster on either the Ge or the Si channels. Not sure if this is helpful. Both pedals sound great and are keepers. I’m interested as well on how they compare to a vintage Rangmaster.

- Heiko

It's perfectly all right! Hope that helps :)

Rangemaster was designed to push your amp hard as an always on effect. The dirt doesn't really come out from single transistor itself, in a sense, but from interaction with an amp. To my knowledge Driver uses the same big output cap as og Rangemaster. I guess that other builders simply don't see such huge boost necessary in today's world, as it was intended back in a day.

Not to make it about semantics but I think it might be more clear what is going on if we deal with some terms. Guitarists often use the term gain when we mean distortion. This comes from preamp or PI pots in amps with master volume controls.

In fact almost nothing labeled "gain" on any audio gear is really varying gain. Usually what they do is attenuate a signal after an amplifier, which means you can kind of look at the combination of the preceding gain stage and the pot together as being a variable gain control... even though it isn't exactly that.

So the amount of signal increase in a Rangemaster (or whatever pedal) is the gain.

Some Rangemasters (and other boosters and fuzzes of all kinds) are definitely more distorted than others, distinct from the amount of gain that they are providing at the time. Since those are independent qualities, this explains what you noticed in comparing different units. Personally, I like a RM with subtle distortion and a modest boost. On the other hand, my Supa Rooster has a bit more distortion, even at unity, and I love it, it's just more of a specific flavor that I wouldn't necessarily use in every situation.

I've had several RM types and I much prefer the two-knob variants like the Red Rooster/Driver/Sugarboost/etc. They all have their differences even though it is the same or similar circuits. Cap and resistor values being equal, I believe a fair amount of differences comes from individual transistor characteristics and their biasing.

The biasing itself can alter the character of the pedal by fairly wide range, well illustrated by a Pigdog Driver Comp with the Tune knob. Headroom, clarity, added grit, compression all come into play when adjusting the bias.