Dallas-Arbiter Rangemaster Treble Booster

One knob, one switch. Can't get any easier. Switch it on, dial it up till you get the tone you like.

Amazing Sound! More subtle than I thought it would be, but after awhile you can't live without it. You can hear many, many artists used this effect. Immediately, it brought to mind the guitar tone of Jeff Beck/Chris Dreja of The Yardbirds on 'Shape of things', nails that solo's tone!! Mine is not very noisy at all when you are quiet. It is truly an amzing effect! Using it with a Blonde Showman 12 and it sounds like heaven!

So far so good. Not sure if I will gig with it. I know that is how Brian May lost his in 1975, at a show, and if he couldn't find a replacement and had Pete Cornish make him one, they must be hard to find. Backup, are you kidding? I have heard these sell for as much as 4K!, Backup indeed, from that price!! I wonder how many are left in functional condition?

There seem to be a wealth of Pedal makers making copies of this little box. Haven't compared any, yet. That will be interesting as there are so many copies. I have heard Analogman makes the best one.

For Rock and Roll, it is truly a gift from above. For the 20 odd years I have been playing in bands, this takes the cake on cool. I am going to take steps to make sure it never does get stolen (knock on wood!!). I can't find anything lacking on it. The pot kind of crackles when it turns, but I have heard all of them do that. I do wish there was some way to remote activate it, maybe an effects loop(?), I will surely try it all. Brings out harmonics and sometimes octaves, like ghosts in the notes. Amazing that all that tone can come from one tiny little OC44 transistor! I love everything about it. I hate that they are as rare as rare can be. My favorite thing is plugging into it. Makes me want to play and play forever and forever. I could never get tired of this tone. Yes, Nothing IS perfect, but this comes damn close!

Your amp needs to have a good basic tone (valve) and then the RM will reward but you need to be able to crank the amp so IMHO it is useless to use it for bedroom Brian May worship.

When I had one, I used an AC30. I haven't used it in 25 years now. I always regretted parting with my AC30 :=(
It was noisy but that was a function of the amp as well. The variable pot was scratchy to say the least (still is) but I believe that that is inherrent in the design. Basically once set, you shouldn't need to adjust so it's irrelevant. The by-pass switch smacks seven bells of s**t out of your speaker at the sort of levels that you ought to be using it, but the purists chant quietly to themselves about the OC44 germanium transistor so if you were to put a cap across the switch to stop that, it would probably affect the tone. Likewise the gain knob which I think from memory was part of the transistor bias--don't touch, just live with it!

No problems, the battery went flat, there's barely anything to go wrong anyway.

You're kidding!

I knew that my hero (then) , Rory used one of these but even back then in the late seventies but they were like hen's teeth even then.
I've been playing for 34 years now. I play most anything from flamenco to blues to typical fast rock "noodling" to fingerstyle esp. with altered tunings to classical and taking in 5 string banjo and mandolin
Imagine my joy when I found my RM on a high shelf in a friend's mother's garage, all dusty and he gave it to me. Doesn't happen often does it?
This would be irreplaceable at today's prices. I wouldn't bother.
Love the sound through a valve amp. Hate the scratching and mega thumps.

I have a Rangemaster Treble Booster but have not used it for 30 years as I cannot get a battery for it. I recall that it uses a 4.5 volt U2 size battery with a snap on terminal on each end, slightly larger than the PP9 9volt terminals. I would love to start using it again. Does anybody have any ideas to help me?

Sixties rock & roll in England.en

ifound that the unit sounded best plugged into a marshall or vox amp turned up 3/4 to full,with the boostset 3/4 up.

noisy but tolerable .this particular unit sounded exactly like queen's we will rock you, or any guitar sound on any judas priest record.

needs natural bypass or loop selecton.
very dependable.

I've seen 2 different units.one had an oc44 transistor,and the other used an oc71.the oc44 was DOA,so I replaced it with a NOS oc76 transistor and it sounded identical to the other one.

It's incredibly simple to use - Plug it into your amp front end and then patch your guitar/effects chain into the single jack in the front. The single knob just alters how much output is available to overdrive your amp. A slide switch on the front removes the effect.
The low rating on ease of use as opposed to simple to use reflects modern conveniences as opposed to simplicity. The Rangemaster was current at a time (circa 1965) when there just weren't many effects. It was intended to sit on top of an amp and plug into the amp with the attached plug coming out of the back. The bypass was a slide switch, not a stomp switch. Clearly, the maker viewed this as an enhancement to the front end of the amp, not a selectable modifier to the guitar, so it is a slight mismatch to modern styles of use. If the thing were true bypass and stomp selectable, I'd give it an EOU of 10.

The RM is fairly well known in Europe, although it's almost a secret in the USA. It's a treble booster, and in this case the gain is about unity at the lowest guitar frequencies and ramps up to full boost at about 1-2 kHz, above most note frequencies, but dead on top of the string harmonics, so a guitar sounds sparklier, more alive, with the RM. In many ways, it helps compensate for the natural fall-off in response of pickups at higher frequencies. It's a natural presence enhancer for the bare guitar.
I tried it out with a Strat single coil and an SG into my tube-version Vox Berkeley. Great sounds from both guitars. At lower settings of "Boost Set" the tone was enhanced over the bare guitar slightly, a bit of "liquid" quality added. At higher settings, the thing could be made to really pound the input tube for a really sweet overdrive sound. Even at maximum boost, the thing did not cook the guitars into mush, as the native qualities of each axe could still be heard.
I think the low boost enhancement of sound comes from the somewhat ideosyncratic biasing of the single germanium device inside the box. It appears to be sitting at a bias point that adds just a bit of asymmetrical nonlinearity to even very soft notes. The nonlinearity builds up as you hit notes harder, with a bit of touch sensitivity that adds a lot of interest even to nominally "clean" notes.
The Rangemaster has a respectable history of users. Public record has artists as diverse as Rory Gallagher and Tony Iommi using them. Brian May's tone is reputed to have depended on a Pete-Cornish clone of the Rangemaster into a quieter version for overdriving an AC-30. There are many other anecdotal indications of artists using the RM.
May's special low noise rebuild brings up one of the two only real negatives about the box. It's a treble booster, so it increases any hiss you have in yout signal chain, as well as adding a bit of its own. I'm a techie, so I immediately messed with the innards to try to track down the source of the hiss to see if it was reparable. It seems that the hiss in the unit I tried is about half and half the old germanium transistor and the carbon composition biasing resistors. The germanium device is crucial to the sound, but any RM unit that needs rehab'ed should really consider metal film biasing resistors to cut the hiss. It's not a killer, just noticeable, and I'm spoiled.
The other hitch is that the "bypass" is not true bypass. It merely switches the output cord (no output jack, remember) between the input jack and output of the effect. This leaves the input hooked up all the time, so there is some "tone sucking", even with the power to the works turned off, which the "bypass" switch also does. An external true bypass switch box would be a nice add.
One other hitch. The "boost set" knob crackles when it's turned. This is a reflection of the fact that the simple design leaves DC across the control and any imperfection in the control makes a crackle as its turned. Of course, it was really designed to be an amp front end, not a floor mounted twiddle knob, so this is probably a neutral, just don't turn it during a song.

It's very solidly built. The owner of the unit I interviewed has owned it for a long time, no breakdowns. I have corresponded with at least one Rangemaster owner that bought his in '66 and used it continuously on gig ever since, no trouble at all. Thirty two years without a hitch is pretty solid.

There isn't any. "Dallas-Arbiter" may still exist as a trademark that someone bought, but the current owners certainly wouldn't know beans about this beast. The original principals of Dallas-Arbiter are long gone.

I love the sound. It adds a lot of interest and a bit of overdrive to a tube amp. My personal taste is for very subtle distortion, just a bit to punch up the bare guitar sound, and the RM does that very well indeed. My personal preference for my own playing is not to particularly copy anyone (as if I *could*), so I can't really say that it's anybody-in-a-box in particular. The tone *is* very reminiscent of several sounds I've heard, including some early Jeff Beck and a Gallagher platter that a friend loaned me. Still thinking about that Brian May thing...
It's a fine addition to any electric player's arsenal - a bit of punch, some up-front presence, while remaining senstive to your own guitar's sound and your touch on the strings. I'm sincerely wishing I could keep the one I tried out, but it has to go back to the owner.
I will look for my own Dallas Rangemaster. It's good enough for me to spend some effort, do some digging, and find one. When I do find one, I'll adapt it to true bypass and do something about that pot crackle.

Very easy; one knob and one switch. This is the elusive box that Clapton used on the seminal "Bluesbreakers" album. This overdrives(about 10db boost) and adds top end(not too much) to the input of your amp. Was made in the U.K. in the mid sixties by Johnny Dallas who later went on to form a partnership with Ivor Arbiter know as Dallas-Arbiter.

I bought this from the orginal owner in the U.K. who bought it brand new in the mid sixties after seeing Rory Gallagher using one. It uses a germanium transistor(OC 44) which needed to be replaced as that type(germanium) only are stable for about 15-20 years. After replacement it's very quite. If you're looking for that EXACT tone that Clapton got on the Mayall/Bluesbreakers album, well this is what he plugged into his Marshall combo(that was loaded with Alnico Celestions and GEC KT-66 output valves)to achive it. Of course, having a Les Paul or McCarty PRS is mandatory. It does the one thing well and that is overdriving the front end of the amp with a little extra top end to cut through.

The circuit is very simple; 3 resistors, 4 caps, one pot, one switch and one germanium transistor powered by a carbon 9v battery. point to point wiring. If it hasn't broke in over thirty years, I don't think it'll start now. It's in a nice little metal box(2"x5"x4")with a hammer gray finish

They've been out of business for 20 years

I'd get another one just for the for fun if you can find one. I've been looking for one for years and lucked out by a friend of mine in England finding it for me. It really nails the front end of a Marshall and gives you sustain and harmonics that aren't really there with other overdrive/boosters type boxes/pedals. I would believe that it's due to the use of the germanium transistor as they add a unique gain and harmonic content that hasn't been around since the sixties. It really suprised me when I first turned it on and is very musical. It's Clapton(era `65-66) in a box provided you have the right guitar, strings(Rotosound pure nickels) and amp.