Transcendence Boost

[Alan W]

Build Rating

5.00 star(s)

I have the Holy Fire from Creation Audio; with a 48v power supply, you’d expect it to be pretty clean (before you add overdrive or distortion, there’s a knob for each). And it is—it’s been my benchmark, along with a Siegmund Micro Tube preamp, of just how transparent a boost could be. So, I had high expectations for this pedal. I play mainly clean, especially since building an Allen Encore Amp kit a few years ago.

The Transcendence will most likely become a permanent pedal for me; I’ll know more after having a chance to put it in my chain and playing at volume with it a few times—but, for now, I’m awfully impressed!

This is my first build report, since the other pedals I’ve been building the past few months are still unpainted and not labeled yet. (But being enjoyed immensely.)

A few weeks ago I found a box of old Dynaco knobs in my attic, and remembered a polished 1590 Hammond box I had, that I had polished without fine sanding, for a cruder look, for a pedal I can no longer remember, that would be a good match for this pedal. I wanted the one knob lower down on the box, and between that and the lower box dimension, needed to minimize the build height, so I put the taller caps on the underside. I love having a very neutral boost that can run off 9v!

 

[Flashheart]

Nice work. I love the enclosure too.

 

[EGRENIER]

Excellent work ! Creative use of small space ! Love it !

 

[negru_tudor]

I have the Holy Fire from Creation Audio; with a 48v power supply, you’d expect it to be pretty clean (before you add overdrive or distortion, there’s a knob for each). And it is—it’s been my benchmark, along with a Siegmund Micro Tube preamp, of just how transparent a boost could be. So, I had high expectations for this pedal. I play mainly clean, especially since building an Allen Encore Amp kit a few years ago.

The Transcendence will most likely become a permanent pedal for me; I’ll know more after having a chance to put it in my chain and playing at volume with it a few times—but, for now, I’m awfully impressed!

This is my first build report, since the other pedals I’ve been building the past few months are still unpainted and not labeled yet. (But being enjoyed immensely.)

A few weeks ago I found a box of old Dynaco knobs in my attic, and remembered a polished 1590 Hammond box I had, that I had polished without fine sanding, for a cruder look, for a pedal I can no longer remember, that would be a good match for this pedal. I wanted the one knob lower down on the box, and between that and the lower box dimension, needed to minimize the build height, so I put the taller caps on the underside. I love having a very neutral boost that can run off 9v!View attachment 29939View attachment 29940

Lovely build & thank you for taking the time to write about your experience with it.

I was currently doing some reamping & noticed my reamp box needed a couple more dB so I started looking for a clean (cleanest) boost & stumbled upon the Transcedence & your post.

The literature has it listed as a pristine clean (hifi) boost which is what I'm looking for but would love some input into validating that. Did you ever run a sine sweep through it & A/B if it uniformly amplifies content between 20Hz - 20KHz?

 

[Harry Klippton]

Not sure how I missed this build report before but that dynaco knob is excellent and pulls the whole build together

 

[Alan W]

Lovely build & thank you for taking the time to write about your experience with it.

I was currently doing some reamping & noticed my reamp box needed a couple more dB so I started looking for a clean (cleanest) boost & stumbled upon the Transcedence & your post.

The literature has it listed as a pristine clean (hifi) boost which is what I'm looking for but would love some input into validating that. Did you ever run a sine sweep through it & A/B if it uniformly amplifies content between 20Hz - 20KHz?

Thanks. I’m not sure how long it’ll be, but just this past weekend I sent this pedal, along with 3 other drives, up to a friend’s son in Alaska, to see if one of them is what he’s looking for, (no access to any stores where he is…) My guess is he’ll be about a month with them, before I get them back. So, it’ll be a while before I can do this for you. I don’t have a true spectrum analyzer, but can throw it in front of an oscilloscope.

If it’s not ruler flat, it’s still closer that any of my other drives. But, I’m listening to it through a guitar amp, and I’m sure if that were tested, it would be sort of flat between 120 and 8K—I’m totally guessing here. None of my guitar/bass equipment was designed as “hi fidelity”; I’m not aware of any that is, until you get to recording equipment. I can play my fretless 5 string through it, and don’t feel like the bass gets thinned out when it’s on, and it does the same with the little bit of upper neck work it gets sent through it from a guitar.

The OPA chip used is that flat, and more extended by several octaves in both directions, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to look at the schematic and see reasons that it has lost some of its fidelity, due to either circuit topology or limitations of the passive parts around it.

To my way of thinking, with guitar pedals, and specifically boosts, small dips, etc. in the freq. response are not the main flaws that keep it from being “transparent”. Compression, and the way that both the front and trailing edges of the envelope sound when you pick a note, are at least as important. What does overload sound like? How much overhead is there? What is the transition to overload?

It’s not perfect. It‘s closer than my other pedals in these regards though. I hadn’t been using it the past few months, first relying on a Nordland OCR clone (Aion board), then later a Pot and Kettle, Cattle Driver, or (currently) a Champ Stamp as my cleanest boost. But before shipping them off, I spent a few nights trying to compare them all, just as clean boosts*, and the Trancendence was highly competitive. To my ears, (at least this is my current thinking), if you can keep it from overloading, it’s about as good as you can expect from a pedal. I think the dynamics, or possibly the feel, of a pedal like the Champ Stamp, might be better—(but it might be “flaws” that make that the case). I’m coming to really appreciate the smoother break up transition that transistor based drives have; op amps seem to have a harder edge to the transition, that make it more noticeable.

* in my testing of all of these I had them in a post other drives, compressors, and equalizers position, and generally had at least something on before them, so they were being fed a buffered, usually slightly amplified signal. And, none of my guitars have pickups that are above medium output, probably low wind Lollar p-90s being the hottest.

 

[steviejr92]

Not to derail whats going on but i just noticed @Alan W "Profile A" is more proper than the other profile letters....

Just an observation...

 

[Alan W]

Not to derail whats going on but i just noticed @Alan W "Profile A" is more proper than the other profile letters....

Just an observation...

I’ve been fucking with that A for about a month; just a few days ago made the most obvious changes to it. I liked the stealthy anonymity of it…

Good eye!

 

[steviejr92]

I’ve been fucking with that A for about a month; just a few days ago made the most obvious changes to it. I liked the stealthy anonymity of it…

Good eye!

Dude thats killer I love it! I honestly thought that was part of the site!

 

[iamjackslackof]

Gorgeous build! My favorite clean boost by far as well. What kind of DC jack is that? Never seen one like that before.

 

[Alan W]

Gorgeous build! My favorite clean boost by far as well. What kind of DC jack is that? Never seen one like that before.

Switchcraft. I had a stock of these from an earlier pedal building era. They need to be insulated from the enclosure for typical pedals. But, they are tiny and threaded on the outside, both of which I love. Unfortunately, they’ve gone up in price. Kobicomm also made them, but I don’t see them listed on either Mouser or Digikey anymore.