Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
Joe from Hello Sailor Effects delivers a potent Sziklai Pair Hybrid Dual Transistor RangeMaster in striking tribal fabric wrap
I picked up 3 new Hello Sailor pedals at the recent Birmingham Guitar Show including this one. Where over half the pedal varieties Joe brought with him were his legendary RangeMasters / Treble Boosters - which he somewhat specialises in. Two of my new pedals featured different varieties of RangeMasters - where the one that sat alongside an Abbey Road Fuzz had a Ge/Si option switch, while this one pictured uses the combined might of an orange sleeve Mullard OC45, alongside an unlabelled metal can BC107.
The dual transistor combination obviously generates quite a bit more range than usual - bringing you a really crisp an texturally fascinating proto-fuzz when maxed out. This one can get very bright indeed and very loud - where I mostly find myself operating in the left hemisphere of the Range / Focus control - generally focusing Lows and Mids. And the Boost ramps up very quickly indeed.
This is a turbo-charged Range Master which works blisteringly well before and after a variety of gain pedals. These days Joe mostly favours RangeMaster after Fuzz - which is the combination I have on my pink recently acquired Rebel Abbey Road Fuzz-Ranger!
I currently have 3 RangeMasters / Treble Boosters on the board - on my Strymon Sunset, Carl Martin Plexi-Ranger and this HSE Sziklai variant. This is a very unique take on the format, while longer term I will probably favour the second channel on my recently acquired Fuzz-Ranger. Both are quite distinct though. I also have Joe's Brian May Boost - with killer Transformer onboard - which vies for potency with this Sziklai type. All my Hello Sailor Treble Boosters are exceptional and quite distinct. It's understandable why Joe is so highly regarded in this area.
Control of this pedal could not be easier - Boost/Level on the left, and Range / EQ Focus on the right knob.
Beware that things ramp up quite quickly - and that it can get incredibly bright on the Range side!
With the 3 HSE pedals I picked up in Birmingham - that reference / capsule collection now stands at 15 pedals. It's a come a long way in mostly just a handful of years for me!
This article coincides with Joe's build video for said pedal type - besides mine, 4 further variants of that circuit are now available on the Hello Sailor Effects Webstore- 3 will be at £250 with a similar configuration to mine, and then there's a special edition with a rare Newmarket NKT275 Transistor onboard - that one is twice the price at £500!
Everyone should have at least one RangeMaster - and it totally makes sense that it should be a Hello Sailor one!
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