The 100th Circuit Build!

A handful of years ago I first heard the name César Díaz while watching a rig rundown for Warren Haynes. César Díaz was a guitarist turned tech; his name mostly being associated with Stevie Ray Vaughan as his amp tech. After doing some research on the Díaz amps I found he also did pedals, the first of these that caught my attention was the Texas Ranger. This was César's take on the tried-and-true Dallas Rangemaster treble booster. The circuits are approximately the same, but with a switchable input capacitor that allows the player to dial in the amount of bass they want. For quite some time now I've wanted to build a Texas Ranger, the main problem was I didn't want to mess with the rotary switch. Instead I added a toggle switch to a Naga Viper clone, which wasn't a very well thought out mod, and called it the Texas Rattler, my take on César Díaz's take on the Dallas Rangemaster. Essentially it's the same idea, but the Naga Viper uses a potentiometer to blend between tone caps, while the Texas Ranger uses a rotary switch, and mine just kind of, well does whatever it does.

Recently I went through a circuit build spree and decided I finally needed to build a Texas Ranger clone. In my previous post I acknowledged my lack of ability to create a layout from a schematic, so I used a layout for a Dallas Rangemaster and just swapped the parts values over. I had my layout looked over by the DIYPedals community on reddit and once it was approved I decided it was time to get to work. I was scared of things not working out very well, so I ordered a handful of varying transistors from Tayda Electronics, just in case. I know from experience that most of them work and sound essentially the same, but sometimes you need a BC108 or a 2N2222a for the cool factor, you know? Oh yeah, I also bought an Alpha rotary switch. I'm not half-assing this build.

The build was fairly easy, except nobody, myself included, found the error in my layout until it was literally staring me in the face, but we'll get to that in a little bit. The build went together nearly perfectly, but it seemed a bit out of bias. In the end I settled on a 2N2222a as the transistor of choice and then I went to work on getting the bias correct. I initially tacked on the 4.7k resistor and tested the voltage, getting 7.7v, which was a tad too hot. I went all the way down to 2k, which gave me 6.7v which was still a bit off. I read that the suggested resistor was a 2.2k in the forum post where I found the schematic, which brought me up to 6.98v. Close enough! After giving it a listen I decided that was the resistor I would settle on. Now all I needed to do was solder it in.

And that's when the mistake became glaringly obvious. I had placed that resistor over the solder hole for the input wiring. Yep! Nobody had noticed that mistake. It happens, so I'll have to figure out what to do when I go to put this circuit in an enclosure, but otherwise it works. Well, I mean it functions. You remember the rotary switch I was so worried about? Turns out I should have been, because it's backwards. When I soldered in the capacitors I tested it on my component tester and it worked exactly as the switch should, but once it's in the circuit it's backwards. It makes no sense. I had to painstakingly desolder the lowest and biggest caps and swap them around, which fully remedied it! With the 2N2222a and the correct bias this circuit now sounds great!

I'm super glad I finally decided to build this circuit. I'm even more proud that I created the layout for it, even if it did have a huge mistake, and it's just swapped component values on a Rangemaster layout. I'm completely stoked at how good it sounds, even if the lingering doubt that it sounds anything like a real César Díaz Texas Ranger haunts my thoughts while using it. Although I have to say, my main concern was the low setting (100nf input), but after listening to a demo of both the Texas Ranger and the Texas Twang clone mine sounds really close to the youtube demo I heard. Mostly I'm glad this is my 100th circuit build. If I found a real César Díaz at a thrift store I would certainly pick it up, but I can't afford one on the used gear market. For now, such as with all of the clone pedal circuits I've built, I'll enjoy it for what it is.