The Six Components That Shaped Rock History
One of the most revered guitar effects since the six strings were amplified through a speaker, originally only available for a relatively short period, the Rangemaster was quickly usurped by silicone transistors and amp development.
But the beauty of this little circuit of just six components cannot be understated and the marketplace it helped to spawn is now a monster with pedals, even enabling your guitar to make animal sounds!!
Origins.
In the 1960s the amplifiers were mostly British made: Marshall, Vox, sound city (later Hiwatt) and Laney. All beautiful powerful tube amps, but they had a problem.
Without the benefit of a master volume when at high volume driven hard by ever improving pickups, they tended towards a muddy bass/mid heavy sound. As blues turned into rock and hard rock and the volumes desired went to ‘11’, a need for a nice, crunchy sound without the mud was desired,
Enter the Rangemaster.
In essence, the effect is more of a preamp, not really a guitar effect in a modern sense of the word, it’s designed to be on top of the amp, always the last thing between guitar and the amp - an "always-in” device.
What does it do?
The simple yet highly effective circuit uses a transistor (traditionally Mullard OC44), to amplify the signal as a whole, while an input capacitor restricts the low frequency.
The resulting signal hitting the amp is boosted by around 40/60%, all mid and high frequency, driving the amp hard without the muddy dark tones. This provided the crunchy, punchy high gain sound we now associate with Rock and Metal.
The Tony Iommi connection.
One of the most famous users was Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath who loved his Rangemaster right up until the mid 80s, much to the distain of his sound guys, at gigs in particular where it would pick up all sorts of sounds and signals and even taxi radios!! Sadly it found its way into a skip in LA, having never been reverse engineered, to our knowledge.
Very early in his career the device he had was modified by someone in Scotland, what the chap did no one knows, in essence he turned it into more of a boost with a slightly thicker sound and a little less noise than the original unit (only a little mind).
This beautiful interaction between an SG and a Tube amp made for really a quite unique sound and without doubt a sound that shaped Black Sabbaths music in the early days. A sound that has been chased ever since homebrew builders started to build their own.
There were other lovers of its germanium crunch, Billy Gibbons, Rory Gallagher, some say Eric Clapton was a fan but that’s never been confirmed. However, the very few number of effects available in 1966 mean it’s likely that many players used them at one time or another.
The fall of the Rangemaster.
The original Rangemaster was noisy and that cannot be understated. It would pick up and amplify any stray signals around, even making the pickups almost microphonic.
Part of the reason for this is the OC44 is not an audio transistor, it’s an RF transistor. So stage sounds, cable static, radio signals… anything and everything, this could make it a very hard effect to work with, the guitar volume knob became the guitarists friend having to roll off during passages where it wasn’t being played.
Sadly for the Rangemaster as amps improved and master volume control was added this allowed the player to use the amps drive more effectively without tonal loss, additionally fuzz and overdrive and indeed a whole array of effects were being developed so as quickly as it was a popular tool, it soon became obsolete.
Released around 1966 by the early 70s they were gone. However players like Tony Iommi continued to appreciate the warm beautiful crunch it bought to the table and in recent years the originals have become the stuff of legend - commanding £2000 and above, if you’re lucky enough to find one!
Up Next:
In my next blog I will go into more detail about our own version of the Rangemaster and my own particularly unique insight into the Tony Iommi sound.