BSM Heritage Crunch Treble Booster

The BSM Heritage Crunch Treble Booster is a stand-alone stompbox from the German maker BSM, built around a single idea: a treble booster that can also produce a moderate overdrive of its own. BSM described it as "not only a booster and a kind of moderate version of the Supreme, offering an outstanding fine crunch tone", aimed at players who want "some crunch without the typical mid-honk sound"¹. It was introduced after the BSM SUPREME special overdrive as BSM's second stand-alone stompbox¹.

What the crunch control does

The pedal's central control is the crunch knob, which sets the gain or crunch amount¹. BSM's own description of the circuit is that it offers "an outstanding 16dB variable crunch", a high gain potential for a booster¹. Turned up, the pedal adds its own crunch on top of the treble boost; turned back, it changes character entirely. BSM states that "when turning back the 'crunch', using the pedal as a clean booster" is possible, and elsewhere that "you can also use it as a linear clean boost pedal when rolling back the gain"¹⁴.

The volume control plays a part in the tone as well. In a 2021 news item, BSM wrote: "With the boosters volume control you can balance between FET and Triode crunch in very fine steps"⁵. That gives the player two ways to shape the response: the crunch knob sets how much gain is in play, and the volume knob fine-tunes the balance between the two crunch characters.

Where it came from

The Heritage Crunch is not a design from scratch. BSM states it is "based on the concept of the successful 'RW-F' Treblebooster", and that it "was conceived especially for customers who seek more than just a distortion-free booster, with overdrive above a certain gain setting"⁶. In other words, it sits between BSM's straight treble boosters and its full overdrive pedals: above a certain crunch setting it overdrives, below it, it behaves as a booster.

Its relationship to the BSM Supreme is close. BSM called the Heritage Crunch "a kind of moderate version of the Supreme"¹², and it followed the Supreme as the company's second stand-alone stompbox¹. Players comparing the two can read it as the Supreme's circuit concept in a gentler form, with the crunch control deciding how far toward overdrive it goes.

Using it with an amp

BSM positions the pedal as a front-end tool for amplifiers rather than a loop device: "The 'Heritage Crunch' Treble Booster is inserted between guitar and amplifier, not into the FX loop"¹². The maker also describes where it works best: "This not only works perfectly with older amps sporting only mid-gain but also in front of a clean transistor amp"⁴. The idea is that the booster's treble lift and crunch push the amp's input stage into its own breakup, which is the traditional role of a treble booster, and the crunch control lets the pedal contribute some of that saturation itself.

For players new to the type, a treble booster is one of the simplest boost pedals: it lifts the high end into the amp so the guitar cuts through, and the amp does much of the work. The Heritage Crunch adds the overdrive option on top, placing it in the same family as other overdrive pedals while keeping the booster's basic behavior.

In practice, BSM's guidance for the pedal comes down to three points:

• Insert it between the guitar and the amplifier, not into the FX loop¹².
• Use the crunch control to move between clean boost and moderate overdrive¹.
• Expect it to work with older mid-gain amps and in front of a clean transistor amp⁴.

Power and practical details

The unit runs on a 9V battery with a current consumption of approximately 4mA, and BSM notes: "The negative pole of the battery is ground"¹. The maximum output voltage when the strings are struck really hard is 2V¹. BSM directed questions about the pedal to info@treblebooster.net or its contact form².

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