BLAMMO! Electronics releases Voltage Booster pedal

October 5, 2022 · 2 sources

BLAMMO! Electronics has released the Voltage Booster, a transistor overdrive and boost pedal based on the Colorsound Power Boost circuit¹². Delicious Audio reported the release on October 5, 2022, describing it as the Portland builder's take on one of the first overdrive circuits, which the maker says was originally created around 1968 by Gary Hurst¹².

The maker says the original circuit used a three-transistor preamp design and a two-band Baxandall EQ, and that early units ran at 18 volts while later models ran at 9¹. The Voltage Booster offers both voltages through an internal charge pump on a toggle switch that doubles the operating voltage internally¹². The maker lists the pedal's transistors as original BC184L on its product page and as original BC184C in its feature list¹; Delicious Audio gives BC184L².

The pedal adds a relay-based true bypass switching system, which the maker says quiets the click and pop of standard 3PDT footswitches and is rated for three times as many cycles, along with beefed-up power filtering and a polarity protection diode¹². A master volume control mod is intended to allow overdrive and distortion sounds at lower levels, which the maker describes as a drawback of original units¹². The PCB was redesigned to fit a compact enclosure¹².

The Voltage Booster is listed at $169.99 and is handmade in Portland, Oregon¹. It sits among the maker's boost pedals².