Akashic Guitar effects circuit lookup
RANGEHEATBOOST

Enclosure not stated · 3 knobs

Tagboard Effects

Catalinbread Naga ViperVerified

Based on the Catalinbread Naga Viper· 10 other boards clone it

Category
Boost
Controls
Range · Heat · Boost
Build
Vero· 9×8· 2 cuts
Layout
Verified · Tagboard Effects marks it as built and working
Tags
Booster, Catalinbread

From the post

I like the small ones, they only take 5 minutes, and I bet it isn't much longer than that until someone verifies it! :o)

Info from Catalinbread about their original:

The Naga Viper is a booster in the grand old tradition of the Dallas Rangemaster "Treble-Booster". The Rangemaster has been used by many influential British guitarists including Tony Iommi, Brian May, Marc Bolan, and KK Downing and Glen Tipton of Judas Priest. These guitarists, while completely unique in their styles, share the Rangemaster secret of boosting their cranked tube amps into a juicy, harmonic-laden rock tone that always cuts through the mix.

The Naga Viper is our version of this famous circuit and it enhances the classic circuit with the addition of two extra controls - Range and Heat. The original Rangemaster had just one control - Boost. The Range knob is a continuous control allows you to go from classic treble-boost to a full-range boost and anywhere in-between. The original could only function as a "treble-booster". The Heat knob gives you control over the gain level, unlike the original which was fixed at maximum gain.

Why a "treble-booster"? Well, it is not like merely turning up the treble control on an EQ pedal. Besides enhancing treble response, it adds its own subtle harmonic distortion and gives you a lot of "push" to really saturate the front-end of your tube amp. But remember, the Naga Viper has a Range control that allows you to dial in exactly what frequencies get boosted.

The traditional way to use a treble-booster is to plug it straight into an already cranked and overdriven tube amp like the Marshalls, Laneys, and Voxes the British guitarists used. Since the amps were already cranked up, a full-range boost would result in a muddy sound with no definition. That is why we want to boost "treble"!

But in this modern era of electric guitar, many guitarists use overdrive pedals that emulate the sounds of cranked big amps into their smaller combos. The Naga Viper is carefully voiced to allow you to boost your "amp-in-the-box" pedals too to get those famous juicy, saturated sounds at "reasonable" volume levels! In particular, the Naga Viper was made to go with our Dirty Little Secret MkII and CB30 overdrives.

Schematic

This is a board layout, a drawing of where each part goes, and the post may link the schematic it was drawn from. Open the layout at Tagboard Effects. No KiCad fragment has been drawn for this circuit yet.

Parts list 14 rows

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Check before you build · 1 value the reader of this layout was not sure of
  • 40u electrolytic at the right edge beside the Input wire: reads 40u, an unusual value, could be 10u with a malformed first digit
RefValueNormalizedTypeNotes
Resistors 3
×18K28.2kread from the layout by eye
×168K68kread from the layout by eye
×1220K220kread from the layout by eye
Capacitors 7
×168n68nread from the layout by eye
×110n10nread from the layout by eye
×13n33.3nread from the layout by eye
×11n1nread from the layout by eye
×147p47pread from the layout by eye
×140u40uelectrolytic; read from the layout by eye
×147u47uelectrolytic; read from the layout by eye
Transistors 1
Q12N2222A2N2222Aread from the layout by eye
Potentiometers 3
RangeA500KA500kPotentiometerread from the layout by eye
HeatB1KB1kPotentiometerread from the layout by eye
BoostB10KB10kPotentiometerread from the layout by eye

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