Oddbird Audio

I'm a designer and builder of guitar effects pedals, amplifiers, and other pro audio gear. Recently I've recruited a graphic designer, and we're currently hard at work launching two flagship designs - the Butter Booster, a modern take on the classic treble booster, and the Desktop Pre, a re-imagining of the classic 5F6-A frontend. Check back soon, follow along on Instagram @oddbirdaudio, or head over to Reverb for the latest.

The Butter Booster is my version of the classic Dallas Rangemaster. It features a hand-machined and finished enclosure, durable Switchcraft jacks, and a minimalist PCB layout optimized for low noise and consistency. This design accepts a standard polarity (center negative) DC 9V power adapter, and includes simple voltage regulation to ensure consistent bias and tone regardless of the input voltage. All switching is carefully designed to be pop-free, and this pedal is true bypass.

There are three tone presets, plus both silicon and germanium modes, resulting in six different tone combinations.

Transistor Modes

• Germanium (Ge) has identical gain and bandwidth to the vintage transistor

• Silicon (Si) has the same gain, but increased bandwidth for more articulate attack

Tone Settings

• Traditional (T) is the vintage corner frequency for the original Rangemaster bite

• Modern (M) drops this an octave giving added mid-range presence

• Baritone (B) is down another octave for extra lows and a deep, chewy growl

This pedal achieves its tone via a single modern-production silicon transistor. In my testing, I found selecting a transistor with the right non-linear gain characteristics to matter much more than whether it is Ge, Si, NPN, or PNP. With the proper component selection, any silicon transistor can be made to sound virtually identical to germanium, although the opposite is not necessarily true. I'm currently working on an article called "Secrets of the Rangemaster", where I intend to go into much greater detail on exactly why this is.

For now, suffice to say that the benefits of silicon are numerous - well-defined gain, low leakage, low noise, low dependence of gain on temperature, and good consistency across batches. I'll confess, even though I know all of these things to be true, I still find Ge to have some mystique. However, mystique is hard to quantify, and I'm here to be scientific! The Butter Booster is designed to deliver optimal and consistent performance, by using reliable modern components to capture vintage tones.

The JTM-45 is virtually identical to the 5F6-A, except for two things - higher gain preamp tubes (12AX7s vs. the Bassman's 12AY7s), and alterations to the tone stack. Marshall also wrapped the power amplifier in 3x more negative feedback to tighten up the feel, but this isn't quite as relevant when discussing the pre-amplifier section.

My goal was to emulate both of these amplifiers in one unit. To create psuedo dual-channel behavior, the gain and tone characteristics of two Soviet 6N2P valves are modified at the flip of a switch. The Clean setting is similar to the bright channel on the Bassman. The Crunch setting is reminiscent of JTM-45 normal channel, which omits the the bright cap for smoother overdrive.

It's still a work in progress but next up on the list! There's much, much (much) more to write on all of these projects. As development continues I hope to share as much as possible. Stay tuned. And if you'd like to keep in touch, see below.