Booster Club
If you’ve decided you like the sound of
your amp breaking up, but your guitar isn’t
driving it quite hard enough to give you
the grit and sustain you seek, you’re a candidate
for a booster pedal like the Electro-
Harmonix LPB-1 (street $39,
ehx.com), an
MXR Micro Amp (street $69,
jimdunlop.com), or a Fuchs Plush Pure Gain (street
$179,
fuchsaudiotechnology.com). These
pedals are designed to increase the output
signal of your instrument without coloring
the sound.
A pure booster pedal will have no tone
controls or drive functions, but many
booster pedals offer the option of desirable
tone coloration or extra drive functions to
expand their usefulness. The Keeley Katana
(street $199,
robertkeeley.com) serves up
unadulterated boost, but if you pull up on
the Volume knob it adds extra drive. The
Xotic EP Booster (street $116,
xotic.us)
has only a Volume control, yet also aims to
color your signal in a manner reminiscent
of the old Echoplex tape-delay units used
by Eric Johnson and Jimmy Page. It also
offers internal switches to boost bass or
treble frequencies. Many other boost pedals
also offer overdrive options, leading to an
overlap with effects labeled as overdrives.
One kind of coloring boost pedal that
remains somewhat misunderstood is the
germanium boost. Germanium transistors
were employed in many of the early power
boosters and fuzz pedals used by the classic
British guitarists of the 1960s. One of the
most famous was the Dallas Rangemaster
Treble Booster. Even today, debate rages as
to whether a germanium transistor-based
booster was ever used by Eric Clapton on
the seminal Bluesbreakers “Beano” record,
but there’s no doubt that driving an amp
with such a device will bring you significantly
closer to the legendary tones of the
British Invasion era.
If you choose to use a germanium
power boost like the Analog Man Beano
Boost (street $175,
analogman.com),
65Amps Colour Boost (street $229,
65amps.com), or Keeley Java Boost (street
$229,
robertkeeley.com), there are a few
things to keep in mind:
- These are boost pedals: They will not
impart distortion to a clean amp at
unity gain (meaning the output signal
of the pedal is the same level as the
input signal). To generate distortion,
you need to be pushing the amp with
the pedal. This means the output of
the activated pedal will be significantly
louder than when it’s bypassed.
- They will impart a “British” sound—even to “American”-sounding amps.
So if you’re looking for Robben Fordstyle,
Dumble-like smoothness, they
aren’t suitable.
- As with any boost pedal, germanium
boosts sound best if the amp is already
overdriven a little when the guitar volume
is maxed.
- A germanium boost will impart its character
any time it is on, even if you roll
off your guitar volume and play clean.