TS-9 and dual Mini-Booster
Look what I found! On the left is my vintage TS-9 and on the right is the original prototype of the dual mini-booster. I was digging in a box of old parts looking for some vacuum tubes and ran across this is in a dust-covered box. The homemade pedal was created around 1980 and was my first experiment with using a mini-booster driving a mini-booster to simulate tube-type distortion.
Don’t you love the handwritten labels for the pots? Obviously the knobs have been robbed from this pedal and used on another project long ago.
I actually used this box on stage in some of the bands I was playing with in the 80s and it shows quite a bit of wear on the top surface. The red footswitch appears to be actuating a jfet switching circuit so it’s not really true-bypass.
I was going to plug it in and strum a few chords but it had a twenty-year-old battery in it that had corroded onto the battery snap and turned it green. I guess I’ll have to replace the 9v connector before I can test drive it again.
The dual mini-booster was the predecessor to the Mini-Tubes, Booster 2.5 and many other similar jfet designs.
I suppose if I keep looking through the old boxes in my storage bin, I’ll find the original 27-year-old mini-booster!
Jack,
Super cool to find something like that. Maybe you could tell us again how the mini-booster got its name!
Aron
Not long after I made the first booster using this circuit, I took it to my girlfriend’s house and she immediately fell in love with it. She was a keyboard player and used it to fatten up the sound of her Mini-Moog, so I adopted the name Mini-booster for the circuit.
She later decided that she wanted more distortion from it (being a Jan Hammer fan), and I made one of the dual versions for her also. They’re probably in a dusty attic somewhere now…
Thanks for stopping by!
regards, Jack
I knew I remembered it correctly. Yes, I remember you telling us about this. What a great memory to share. The Mini-Booster has been a great building block for many DIY pedals. I still have my original “Marshmallow” (SP?) preamp boxed up. As far as I am concerned, THE FIRST true amp circuit moved over to our stompboxes in an intuitive way.
Thanks for all of your help over the years! I wish you much good luck in the future!
Aron
I just updated my site with a History of the Mini-Booster that includes some more info about the circuit and its pre-Internet origins.
-Jack