has anyone heard of hawk boosters?

[unidive]

It was the type rory gallagher used in the mid 70's

       I think they were made in new jersey

    it would be interesting to see a schematic...maybe even the unit itself

   anyone ever own one of these?

[RickL]

I'm pretty sure I've got one of these. A little sheet metal box that plugs into the guitar (or amp, I can't remember which), similar to an EH LPB-1?

I just spent 15 minutes trying to find it with no luck, but it could be buried in one of about 15 boxes of pedals. If I run across it some time I'll take a close look at it and post.

From what I remember it's just a simple one knob booster. In fact I thought it was an LPB-1 clone. I don't remember it having any special sonic charactoristics, but all I did was plug it in to confirm that it was working. I think someone gave it to me because they heard that I like old pedals.

[Mark Hammer]

Hi Rick,

I seem to recall Hawk made a couple of different boosters, one of which was a straight linear booster, another of which had a couple of broadband boost presets (T/M/B), and many of which were supposed to clip onto your guitar strap or belt.  As such, they would have to have been light to stop from falling off.  I don't recall ever seeing floor units with stompswitches from them.

[brian wenz]

Hell Hello--
   RG  used the Hawk when he was playing through a  Fender tweed Bassman amp and the Rangemaster with the Vox  AC30.
Brian.

[Dan N]

Mine is stashed away in a box too. 3 switches, 2 sliders. 2 9volt batteries power a dual(?) opamp. Has 1 or 2 inductors. I think mine was not working correctly. One of the switches had no effect. I'll post here if I find it.

Made by Harry Kolbe.


Edit- I found a guts shot:

http://users.rio.com/senorris/junk/hwk.jpg

I did measure the inductors. The values are in the box with the unit... Melmusic.com has a 3 slider version in their weird stuff pages.

[Russ]

I've got one, mine is the three-switch, three-slider version (with three inductors).
One of the switches functions to turn the batteries off and on, one is a moderate gain boost, and the other is a radical gain boost.
Strangely, the three inductors in mine are painted over with some type of paint (one red, one blue, and one black). I assume this is to disguise their values.
It's a cool pedal, though fairly noisy. I'm a huge Rory Gallagher fan, and Brian's right- Rory used a Hawk through a tweed Bassman.
I'd love to have a schematic of it, but I've never been able to find any info on Hawk boosters other than an occasional thread (I think there's a couple of threads in the archives).

Russ

[unidive]

I've got one, mine is the three-switch, three-slider version (with three inductors).
One of the switches functions to turn the batteries off and on, one is a moderate gain boost, and the other is a radical gain boost.
Strangely, the three inductors in mine are painted over with some type of paint (one red, one blue, and one black). I assume this is to disguise their values.
It's a cool pedal, though fairly noisy. I'm a huge Rory Gallagher fan, and Brian's right- Rory used a Hawk through a tweed Bassman.
I'd love to have a schematic of it, but I've never been able to find any info on Hawk boosters other than an occasional thread (I think there's a couple of threads in the archives).

Russ

yes, I assume its pretty noisey....on the audio for the irish tour dvd I notice in a lot of the songs (not all, sometimes he plugged right into the amp) there's quite a bit more than usual 60hz hum from his stratocaster..I bet its the hawk..which as I'm told is actually a hawk 2

someone with the capability to play dvd's on their comp should take a still during during the "jam" segment, on top of Rory's amp you can make out a grey, unpainted box...which I'm sure is the boost

I'm hoping to get a hawk sometime, it always struck me as a really unique sounding box..plus I wouldn't mind borrowing my friend's tweed bassman and seeing if I could make "the sound"

I'm hoping they're not too expensive

[R.G.]

I'd love to have a schematic of it, but I've never been able to find any info on Hawk boosters other than an occasional thread

All that's really necessary to have a schematic of it is to provide clear photos of the top and bottom side of the PCB and a wiring diagram. It would already be done by someone if that earlier photo set didn't have the felt or whatever pasted over the bottom of the PCB.

[unidive]

whats up with the inductors anyway, what are they doing to the sound?

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I presume the inductors are just part of a tuned circuit (at audio frequencies). Early EQs often had coils, now people design the coils out, because of expense & size.

[Dan N]

Found it. Here's a not so pretty plan:

http://users.rio.com/senorris/junk/hawkstuff.gif

The inductors are in henries. I forget if H or h makes a difference.

Oh yea, it's straight ahead 18 volts.

[R.G.]

First opamp stage is gain of 0.8db (essentially unity), switchable gains of 14 and 24db with the two switches, which are cumulative.

Treble rolloff starts at 2.6kHz (1.5K and 0.047) and feeds a two-hump resonant EQ, with humps/notches centered at 110Hz and 220Hz.