I got this pedal in as it wasn't producing any sound. It is made by Flynn Amps (Glasgow, Scotland); a company that does wonders on amps but also produce a couple of pedals. This pedal is advertised as a faithful recreation of the 1960's Dallas Arbiter Rangemaster, a treble booster that uses a single Germanium transistor to create volume, overdrive and a treble boost. It is a common pedal that can be heard on numerous songs in both the past as present.
The first commercial treble booster was the Dallas Arbiter Rangemaster. A pedal from the 60's that was battery powered and would be placed on top of the amp. A single OC44 germanium PNP transistor was used to make the effect. No footswitch, just a single slide switch and a volume knob to control the effect. Even the jack cable was attached to the unit so you'd only need a single cable going to the effect. Later direct plugin effect pedals were produced (Vox and EHX for example): pedals that would plug in directly into the jack of your guitar (or bass). Even later pedalboard-friendly pedals were made with a footswitch to turn them on and off. The whole treble boost concept was also altered and pedal companies offered pedals with a more versatile boost, a common mod to the existing treble boosters.
The need for treble boosters came from the fact that the first commercial amps were mostly dark and bassy sounding. Think about the first editions of the Fender Bassman / Marshalls or the first Vox amps (before the introduction of the Top Boost channel). These amps would sound amazing but had a lot of unnecessary low end that would kill the output of the amp and would add a lot of mud when overdriven. The treble booster introduced a way to add some high end to the signal but also add that touch of higher mid frequencies making your instrument stand out in the mix. The magic that happens is also in the low end. The low end is unaffected but as the high end is boosted, the low end becomes less apparant and gives the idea of a less muddy sound. The added volume to overload the preamp of the amp was a nice bonus! A classic treble booster adds up to 24dB of output to a frequency range above the 1kHz.
The circuit
The pedals comes in the common aluminium enclosure and has a single footswitch and a single knob. No DC input jack is available as it can only be powered by a battery. Also no LED on the pedal to see if the pedal is on or off.
When opened you can spot that the circuit is hidden in a small plastic enclosure. In this enclosure the circuit is placed in some form of elastic epoxy material adding dampening and isolation to the medal enclosure. The pedal is true bypass through a DPDT switch and as you can spot the pedal has a positive ground (as the positive lead of the battery snap is connected to ground). This is common for Germanium PNP pedals and makes this pedal not daisy chain-able with a proper power supply.
As you can spot the similarities between the original Rangemaster circuit and this pedal. Added is the high quality Germanium transistor and some power supply filtering and protection. And of course the standard pedalboard format is really helpful!
The fix
When the epoxy was removed the problem was clear; the emitter leg of the transistor went loose inside of the heatshrink/ isolation on the legs. When I re-soldered this connection the pedal worked as it should've
The sound
The sound is exactly as you should expect from a Rangemaster like pedal. The added bonus of the high quality components and transistor is that this pedal is dead quiet (except for some minor hiss when the volume is boosted). There are no popping sounds when the effect is selected (although I would expect it as the input cap is floating) and the knob works noise free. The pedal works wonders with the volume knob of the instrument taming the high end push on lower volumes and making it more full frequency sounding. The volume knob of the instrument also controls the amount of grit perfectly making this pedal an always-on peda (but only when placed first in the effects chain).
On the clean channel of an amp it adds volume, a touch of grit and that known push in the higher frequencies. The touch of grit sounds a bit a-tonal on lower volume settings but adds a lot of harmonies when the amp is slightly pushed, both in gain as in volume. On this setting the effect feels like an always-on effect and turning it off makes you want to change the tone knob on your amp. When you add this pedal to a dark amp it clears the mud and adds a nice touch of overdrive with the volume cranked! On brighter amps though the pedal sound a bit too overwhelming and too much! I didn't like the interaction it had with the 'Bight' switch that was engaged.
Where it also shines is an amp with an overdrive channel. This pedal works wonders with all kind of OD channels and can add that nice amount of grit to make your solos or riff work stands out. The Tubescreamer is known for this effect but on my amps the Treble booster just adds that nice extra touch I like on my amps.
I also checked this pedal against my EHX Screaming Tree (vintage), a silicon treble booster. And as these pedals do the same kind of thing, the Germanium touch of the Flynn (or other Rangemaster-esque pedals) is a big plus. It sounds more complex, more musical, more usable compared to the Silicon version. The Silicon treble booster is just too neat, too real, too strict. The looseness of the Germanium and the natural sounding overdrive tones just adds 'That thing' to the sound making it a pedal you hardly turn off.
Extra
As these Germanium PNP pedals have a positive ground they sometimes are a problem to work with by using common power supplies. I've been using the Gigrig Virtual Battery now in some of my pedals and this add-on just works. I've now even placed one inside of this Flynn pedal to make it work all the time! When properly set you can't determine the effect to be powered by a (good) battery or a PSU.
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