Mozztronics | BB-1 Big Boost

A boost pedal is often the last thing to be added to a pedal board, but never underestimate what it can do. It can drive long cables without treble loss, it can slam the front end of a valve amp for serious dirt, and it can go ahead of a distortion box to kick the distortion up a notch or three.

We looked at what was around, and decided there was room for a boost pedal, but it had to…  a) get full boost from a standard 9V power supply without an internal switch mode supply or charge pump power supply to boost the internal voltage    b) not require 18V power    c) have an inbuilt always on buffer so as to reduce loading on the guitar and drive long cables without tone loss   d) give more than 20dB of boost    e) be clean even at or close to maximum boost.

We think we did it !

There is one main control on this pedal,   BOOST,   which goes from 0dB boost to 27dB boost. We added a CONTOUR switch, so the boost signal can be full range, or with a slight bass cut at around 160Hz. We use a similar technology to that used in class G power amps inside this beast so we can get the massive clean output we wanted.

We included an always on “full range” buffer so if the pedal is used at the end of the pedal board, we can drive long cables back to an amp without loss of tone, or if the pedal is used at the start of the pedal board, it will buffer the guitar so as to maintain high impedance loading on the guitar to avoid loss of tone.

To minimize circuitry in the signal path, when the boost is switched off, only the buffer is left in circuit (we don’t just reduce the boost gain to 1), so the boost circuit is true bypass, even though the buffer is always on.

Mozztronics uses the industry standard Boss style 2.1mm center negative 9V DC socket for the power supply connection.