“Wait, you put chilli on that?”
– everyone
Your amp is gonna love you for cheaper!
(even the small one!)
Attention!
On this page, you’re browsing and buying a B-stock unit!
Hard to take a picture of it, but the artwork is dark grey, as opposed to white on regular units. When looked at at an angle, some blue / orange glimmer seeps through, but it’s hardly noticable. Two of the three units listed here have their back panels’ mill scale removed partially and tinted blue, which makes them look like they’re made out of torn denim. Third one has a regular black (dark grey) back panel with black artwork. 100% perfect working order, brand new, fresh off the assembly line. Same guts as regular hot rod units.
“Freerange” is a handmade germanium preamplifier. The HotRod version has one amplifying stage more than the regular version, which gives it far more gain. The HotRod puts more “fuzz” in the original “preamplifuzzer” but retains the soul of the original—old-school, NOS germanium magic in a wooden/steel enclosure.
Under the hood, it sports three amplifying stages, built around vintage, New Old Stock germanium transistors. The first stage has no controls—I pre-set it so it boosts the other two stages in the best way I could find. Each of the following two gain stages can be independently set to work as a treble booster, a full-range booster, or a clean(ish) amplifier. The two stages are connected in series—what leaves the first one is further amplified by the second one.
The central knob controls a 6-position rotary selector switch that allows you to choose between different capacitor configurations. The switch selects different values for the capacitor between the first and second, and the capacitor between the second and third stages. Changing those capacitors allows different frequency ranges to enter and leave the second and third amplifying stages. Turning it to the left will result in more treble and less low end being fed into the inputs of the two stages. Going to the right will result in more and more bass frequencies flowing through the circuit. The two boost mode controls and the central range selector switch offer you a very wide tonal palette. You can make your tone warmer or clarify it with some high-end sparkle if it’s too muddy. Or you can do both, setting the rotary switch to the right and flipping one of the boost controls to the “treble” position.
You can make your single-coil guitar sound beefier, or give your humbuckers a bit of that Tele twang. Give your speakers a bit of extra low-end oomph if they’re too bright, or clear them up if they’re too muddy.The HotRod version is way gainier than the original. It shines when you need to fuzz that amp out. It can easily turn your 5W bedroom amp into a screaming, feedbacking monster. If your main intention is to color your already powerful signal, you’ll be better off with the regular version. If you’re looking to add a dirty channel to your one-input, low-power amp—this is the toy for you. I’d advise against using the HotRod version to get cleanish sounds and keeping its gain capabilities for special occasions. Higher gain means a bit more noise, and with ultra-low gain settings, the noise-to-signal ratio might prove a bit higher than in the low-gain version. That’s no concern in higher-gain settings. Your guitar tone will easily drown that noise out.
“Freerange” can be powered with a regular guitar pedal power supply. It needs 9V, fed through a standard center-negative 2.1/5.5mm jack. You can use up to 15 volts to power it up. The more voltage you use, the more volume and headroom you’ll have at your disposal—at the price of a little more noise.
Demo video:
picture gallery:
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