Favorite In-Guitar booster?

Started by superferrite, April 18, 2012, 04:29:58 PM

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superferrite

Bringing a guitar back to life (thanks ultrakd!), and thinking of popping a boost inside.  Got lots of room and a battery compartment.

Any favorites?  I use a Fuzz Face a lot of the time, so it would be a nice kick in the Face.
I think I have a DOD250, a SparkleBoost, and a Gus Boost in the box already...

Any opinions?
Psychedelic Garage Metal

Mark Hammer

If they are normal pickups, I don't recommend a boost of more than 4x or so.  That will certainly push things into overdrive easily enough when you want it, but not so much that you will be unable to get a clean tone if you want to.

Jdansti

I've been thinking of putting a Tillman in mine. I currently have the circuit in an enclosure and I really like the extra body it produces.
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R.G. Keene: EXPECT there to be errors, and defeat them...

chromesphere

I recently built the alembic stratoblaster, sounded nice, really small footprint too. Would fit inside your guitars cavity if use a trim instead of a pot too probably.

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=81559.0

Paul
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Earthscum

Quote from: Jdansti on April 18, 2012, 05:41:20 PM
I've been thinking of putting a Tillman in mine. I currently have the circuit in an enclosure and I really like the extra body it produces.

That's what I was gonna suggest. +1  :icon_biggrin:
Give a man Fuzz, and he'll jam for a day... teach a man how to make a Fuzz and he'll never jam again!

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Richard6

I've messed around with a lot of on board boosters, including the Stratoblaster. I have found that it made my humbuckers sound like single coils, however. That's probably because the circuit preserves the treble content more than I like. But, it could be the sound you are looking for.

Le québécois

Quote from: Jdansti on April 18, 2012, 05:41:20 PM
I've been thinking of putting a Tillman in mine. I currently have the circuit in an enclosure and I really like the extra body it produces.

+1 that what I use. To my ear the extra body is some compression (tubish like) and small treble boost (I can't tell if this treble boost is only due to lost of cable tone sucking with the preamp) but it's there.  

Toney


Renegadrian

I have a Stratoblaster in one of my guitars, but I am not so pleased about it...it does its job, but there are better ckts imo...
Tillman would be a good choice, else I'd say the clean boost here http://www.jer00n.nl/pics/opampbooster.png, fairly simple. You can omit the volume at the end...
Done an' workin'=Too many to mention - Tube addict!

superferrite

Thanks, everyone!
Don't think I had the Tillman layout.

I'm leaning towards a Rangemaster after listening to the pickup I put in there (a Gibson 490).  It's sweet and a little fat, and could use the added overtones for leads.  And I love a RM before a fuzz.
Psychedelic Garage Metal

amptramp

The nice thing about a Tillman is that you can put the FET and the gate and source circuitry in the guitar and use a separate box for the drain resistor and coupling capacitor.  This allows a 2-wire hookup that means you don't need any battery or power supply in the guitar - it can be in the first box the guitar output goes to.

Earthscum

That's brilliant, Ron. Think about it... Positive ground FF, you just use a 10k anti-pop resistor. It's already set, and a SPST could pull the fet out for plugging into anything else you normally do, if it's even an issue.
Give a man Fuzz, and he'll jam for a day... teach a man how to make a Fuzz and he'll never jam again!

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amptramp

I have a couple of some very tiny cast 1590-series boxes that could take a Tillman amp front section (as I described with the drain circuitry in an external box) and a right-angle plug, so you could build the amp into a cable.  You could use any guitar that allowed a side entry plug (not sure if a strat would have room), but most others would.  This would let you set up any guitar with a Tilman amp so you could A/B test it with the amp cable and a normal cable just to see what happens to tone and noise.

Le québécois

Quote from: amptramp on April 19, 2012, 09:22:41 PM
just to see what happens to tone and noise.

+1
in my guitar the Tilman preamp = more noise (I can live with it in tube amp but somehow it's very unpleasant in solid state amp (jazz chorus, and peavey 112) by creating a constant background shhhhhhhhhh).
You can also install a push pull dpdt pot in the guitar to bypass the preamp at will. This is handy when your battery is dead and you have no replacement in the middle of a gig or to avoid the shhhhhhhhh in solid state amp).