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I'm thinking about making a rangemaster pedal from scratch (not a kit) and I have a few questions


Enclosure size? I'd like to make a little joke and reuse my old Screaming Bird Reissue
What transistor should i use?
Are there any mods that are particularly good?
Is there anything i should do before i dive in?

I've never built a pedal without a kit before, so is there anything i should know?

well it might be possible to use everything in the screaming bird. including the board. as long as its not SMD. google SMD and you'll see the parts are as small as rice. open your pedal up and see if it has SMD. this could be a very cheap project. like $1 cheap. if your want the OC44 transistor thats already been tested and working, you can get them from smallbear electronics. the OC44 is vintage correct but they are like $8 or even $10. you only need one. you need a soldering iron and it helps to know how to solder. there is a lot of information in the sticky's here and on DIYstompboxes.com that is for beginners. the most popular mod is to put a larger input cap on a switch to get a mid boost or full range boost. madbeanpedals.com has the PCB for the rangemaster but you will need to buy all the parts somewhere else. mouser or caps n such have the box caps you need. tayda has cheap resistors. if you remove the old board in the screaming bird, you can sell it. safely removing components from the bird may not be a good first project. the madbean board is pretty easy to work with if you have a small enough tip on your iron. if you have any more questions, I'll try to help you out.

I opened the screaming bird up to steal the 3PDT switch, i have quite a bit of soldering experience. It is indeed SMD. which makes me very sad. I'm thinking about just replacing the transistor with a germanium one for shits and giggles. But that might not work. Thank you for your other input. :>

EDIT: The OC44 is PNP, is there an NPN equivalent. I'm not so worried about it being super-vintage-correct as i am about it working with my power supply i already have.

Well even if it is smd, im like %99 sure the one transistor is a 2N5088 npn silicon, negative ground. You can flip the power supply and the electrolytic caps around at the same time that your installing the pnp. It will work on a dedicated one spot or a battery. Its just posative ground and probably biased in a half assed way but it might sound good. You never know.

Problem is you can't daisy-chain PNP-based pedals as far as i know. You can apparently fry them. I likey my onespot, even though i know it can't be super good.

there are simple circuits that can make positive ground pedals to negative ground pedal

you need to buy another one spot for the positive ground pedal. if you have more then one positive ground pedal, you can daisy chain them but they all need to be positive ground on that one spot. connecting them with guitar cables is fine. the grounds play nice together on the guitar cable. you can buy a pcb or build on perf/vero for a charge pump. madbean has one called roadrage. runoff groove has one also.

Or... use an NPN germanium... and reverse the polarity of all the electrolytics in the rangemaster.

Infact I think on Fuzz Central there's a schematic for a negative ground rangemaster.

Scruffie wrote:Or... use an NPN germanium... and reverse the polarity of all the electrolytics in the rangemaster.

Infact I think on Fuzz Central there's a schematic for a negative ground rangemaster.

Using that one, actually. Hence asking for a suitable NPN Germanium suggestion.

I believe the kids these days say "TYVM" on the internet? anyway, TYVM, scruffie!

Okay, on to PCBs, Should i just use a standard matrix type, or go all fancy-pants and make my own PCB? (I want to try the PCB...>.>)

Just run it off a battery. Those things sound better that way anyway.
OC45s sound good in a Rangie if you can't get an OC44. I like OC71s myself though.

also the CV7003 is a mil spec OC44. its the same or better than a OC44. try searching for both

A 1590B or equivalent should be ample. All in all, its a pretty small circuit.
Here's one example of a perfboard build in a 1590B:



And the guts:

Urgh. Why do stomp switches have to be so damned expensive? i'm putting the whole thing together price-wise, and it costs more than a powdercoated enclosure. @_@