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I have seen Si transistors operated in reverse beta mode in a precision synchronous rectifier where the extremely low Vce,sat is highly beneficial.

In the right circuit, they can impart a smoother tone, fewer high-order harmonics. And then there's the MOJO factor.

Once you've played thru one, you'll know. It's possible that retuning the tone stack and CONTOUR circuit could produce a better tone, but after a bit of fiddling I got frustrated and concluded that there had to be a better way. Keep in mind that this is not a modded Shredmaster. That may have...

I did end up adding a FAT switch. In the middle position, it's just like v1.2. In the down position, it fattens single coil pickups for a more balanced tone. In the up position, all of the bass gets thru for a nice thick tone, even on a Tele's bridge PU. No need to turn up the BASS knob when...

Ok, I'll admit that it needs a better name. HamishR & I were playing around with the Marshall ShredMaster, trying to make it into something a little different. You'd think that a pedal with "shred" it its name would be a high-gain pedal. Not the case with the ShredMaster. For us, the best...

What? They don't have Led Zeppelin records in NZ? ;)

Are you talking about disconnecting C5 or shorting C5 on the Ge Filter?

I'm the one who should be apologizing. I meant E, not C. I confused myself with the E-C swapping. Post #10 has been corrected. That's a good start, give it a listen. Then look for a transistor that makes Q2-E closer to 4.5V.

It might be e-b leakage & reverse HFE. The other thing it could be is the shape of the emitter I/V curves. When running transistors upside-down, it's all voodoo. Particularly so with Germanium in my estimation. My gauge of transistor goodness in this circuit is the most gain & volume while...

I'm liking this circuit! Getting the transistors right is key. Anywhere around +4.5V is good for Q2-E. Q3, you really need to try a few different ones. The one I have now has Q3-E around +2.8V, but it's not just about bias. It has to sound good, and not be too compressed at low gain...

I went back and rebuilt this breadboard with some different transistors. I don't know exactly how this is supposed to sound over the range of knob settings. Yes, there are demos, but they don't run the full gamut of knob combinations. The circuit performance is very sensitive to the two GE...

I have no preference for internally or externally compensated opamps in this (or most) circuits. As long as the opamp has low enough noise & distortion and enough bandwidth to not trash the signal, then it's acceptable for a clean boost in my book. I simply chose the LM308 because it is low...

Reversing the power polarity is very risky because sooner or later, someone will hook up the wrong polarity power adapter to a pedal that lacks reverse polarity protection.

That's right, because the standard for pedals is center ground. If the body of the power jack is connected to the sleeve, you will short out the power. I made this mistake the first time I bought a power jack. Boss really F-ed this one up for everybody.

Be careful increasing the value of C5. If C5 gets too large then Q1 can saturate.

Here's the final version. I'm done with this. It sounds good but doesn't do anything that some of my other boost pedals do. From the previous rev, I increased R2 to add a little more bass and increased R6 for a little more brightness. One could put a switch in parallel with R6 to turn the...

Most excellent! I knew we'd get it working.

Mmmmmmaaaaaaybeeeeeeee. I'm going to experiment on my breadboard and see how different it sounds. It's only a few dB and it's at the top of the human hearing range, so we'll see.

While studying this circuit, I noticed an interesting "feature." C5 & R7 provide a 7dB boost at 10KHz. I believe it is there to compensate for treble loss in the cable. This circuit was designed to be installed inside a Strat. 500pF to 1nF of cable capacitance between the guitar & amp (or...