Daredevil Silver Solo Wedge

The Daredevil Silver Solo Wedge is a boost pedal built around the vintage 1960s Dallas Rangemaster treble booster circuit, hand built in Chicago and housed in a custom Hammond Wedge enclosure¹. Daredevil Pedals describes it as dialed in to deliver "all the crunchy sweet boost and gain you could ask for," and it has been a mainstay of the lineup since 2012¹. It is offered in two transistor versions, germanium and silicon, and carries a list price from $195.00 USD as of October 2026¹.

Unlike a straight clone, the Wedge adds an EQ control on top of the usual output knob, so you can shape which frequencies the boost pushes rather than being locked into the Rangemaster's bright treble lift¹.

What it does to your sound

The Silver Solo Wedge is a Rangemaster-style boost with gain. Delicious Audio, describing the earlier Silver Solo Boost in 2018, called it "a treble booster/gain boost based on the old Dallas Rangemaster circuit from the 60's," and wrote that it "accentuates dynamics and texture while increasing volume, pushing your tone through the mix when you need that extra cut"². That is the job a Rangemaster-type pedal does: it lifts part of the frequency range hard enough to push an already-cooking amp into breakup, rather than adding distortion of its own.

The Rangemaster sound itself is often described as a vowel-peak, slightly dirty boost. Soulsonic FX, quoted in a 2014 technical analysis on the Guitar FX Layouts blog, said the maker had "painstakingly replicated the signature vowel-peak slightly dirty boost using modern components for lower noise and higher consistency and reliability"³. Daredevil's own take on the circuit is the Silver Solo family, which the maker says has been a signature tone of the lineup since 2012¹.

Controls

The Wedge keeps the control set simple: two knobs, one for level and one for the character of the boost¹.

The silicon Silver Solo describes the same control as a "Range" control: fully clockwise it is the classic bright treble boost, and sweeping it counterclockwise gradually brings in more low end until it reaches a full range boost⁴. That sweep is what separates this design from a fixed treble booster: you can dial in the classic bright lift or fatten the boost into something closer to a full-range gain push.

Germanium or silicon

The Wedge is offered with a choice of transistor type, and the choice matters for how the pedal behaves¹.

• Germanium version: the current batch uses vintage Mullard black glass germanium transistors; once those run out, the pedal will be built with old stock Soviet or Japanese germanium transistors, each tested and played to ensure quality performance¹.
• Silicon version: the Silver Solo is a redesigned version using silicon transistors plus a tone blending option. Daredevil says it has "a tighter low end, sharper bite, and more output than the usual germanium Rangemaster clones"⁴.

The general trade-off between the two transistor types was summed up by Premier Guitar's Blair White in a May 2025 feature: "Generally, silicon is less responsive to guitar volume attenuation but more temperature-stable than germanium"⁵. In practice that means germanium tends to clean up more as you roll back your guitar's volume, while silicon behaves more consistently across temperatures and usually delivers more output.

Where the circuit came from

The Wedge is Daredevil's take on the vintage 60's Rangemasters¹. The original Dallas Arbiter Rangemaster is the treble booster the design traces back to; RockBoard's PedalPedia lists the RiverTronic Rangemaster Vip as a "Clone of the famous Dallas Arbiter Rangemaster Treble Booster," a sign of how widely the circuit has been reproduced [6 is not cited; see Sources]. Daredevil points to the records where the Rangemaster sound is most famously heard: the first Black Sabbath album, Clapton's Bluesbreakers work, T.Rex, and Queen⁴. The Wedge's artwork was designed by Ryan Troy Ford¹.

Build and power

Daredevil describes the Wedge as overbuilt, with 1/2 W metal film resistors, axial Mallory capacitors, open face Neutrik jacks, and high cycle true bypass switching¹. It runs on a 9V battery or a DC jack, and the switching is true bypass¹. All units are hand built in Chicago, with printing and powder coating done in the USA¹.

Players looking at other boosts in the Daredevil range can also compare the Daredevil Hype, a FET boost originally released with no external controls, and its updated HYPE Fet Boost V.2, which added a Volume knob for 2026.

Questions