Studio & Live '75 Special Booster

BSM “Studio & Live '75” Special Booster

BSM designed a new private stock booster just for the favorite taste of the company‘s mastermind. It was intended in first place to emulate the sound of the 1975 studio recording “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow”, second to achieve Ritchie’s early Rainbow live sound that can be heard on the Nov. ’75 bootlegs, e.g. Bacon Theatre, NYC. Furthermore the unit was designed to get this sound from any stock “Bright” input found on classic Marshall amps.

The story goes that Blackmore recorded the first songs on the road using different studios and without his personalized Marshall Major amps; just his guitar and the AIWA reel-to-reel with the studio’s own Marshall amps. Ritchie used Purple’s support act “Elf” (with Dio) as backing band and kept the recordings secretly away from his employing band.

Nowadays it would definitely be a good idea to have either a built in master-volume amp wise or an external power-soak behind to modify the resulting heavy volume. If you want to achieve the sound as closely as possible, use the “historical correct” pickups from the ’68-’74 era or the new substitutes on a maple neck ash-body Strat. The booster has been designed especially having these details in mind. Enough for theory! As it turned out in the end the “Studio & live ‘75” would fulfil all this, but even more. If you have found your personal settings (out of endless possible combinations) and have the right attitude, you can use it for all classic Blackmore sounds from the late 60 ́s until nowadays if you use a matching amp behind it.

The basic sound can be described as crisp but there’s always an attractive little dirty noticeable break-up, even in the clean position.

At the left there’s a 2-position mini lever switch for “top boost”. In the down position you’ll get nearly the pure and very massive AIWA preamp sound. The upper position emulates a tad of Martin Birches studio filtering, which is mainly a high pass function. You will have the most flexibility using either the booster’s high-pass or maybe the pure AIWA sound with the high-pass function built inside your amp (like in Ritchie’s Majors) or even without any high-pass, resulting in a very, very huge fullrange AIWA sound!

On the right there’s a gain pot that enables you to dial in every possible gain stage from nearly clean Ritchie’s typical 1975/76 stage level up to crunchy gain. The overall sound is juicy, dynamic and pearly brilliant if you use mainly the bright input of your amp. Of course you can experiment with normal inputs as well. A good amp setting to start with would be Bass # 2, Mid nearly full, Treble #5, Presence #0 and Volume #8.

The magical tone of the “Studio and Live ‘75” Booster is achieved by the interaction between guitar pickup, booster and amplifier. The Booster should be connected in the signal path directly behind the guitar. The “Studio ‘75” is powered by a 9V battery or external 9V power supply with a current consumption of approximately 300uA. The average output level is 7 dBm, the maximum output voltage is 5V, when the strings are struck really hard.

Note: The negative pole of the battery is ground. All BSM Boosters work true bypass when switched off.

Marshall, Marshall Major, AIWA and Strat are registered trademarks, which BSM is not affiliated with!

Booster Image: Studio & Live '75 Special Booster

Mark Zyk played his Studio 75 booster:

If you have any questions concerning our products, especially the BSM Studio & Live '75 Special Booster, our tech-head and mastermind Mr. Bernd C. Meiser would be happy to talk to you. So don't hestitate any longer and send him an email to info@treblebooster.net or use the contact form to contact him.

Reviews

Hallo Bernd, habe den Studio '75 eben direkt mal laufen lassen. Echt der Hammer! Ich benutze aber die untere Position, also nicht den Top Boost, sondern nur den AIWA-Sound – das war das was ich wirklich haben wollte. Der Sound ist kristallklar, klingt aber richtig fett und hat ordentlich Sustain. Das ist die Magie, danach habe ich gesucht. Ich kann nur danke sagen! Gruß
Mirko
der Studio '75 ist echt Magie. Bin begeistert, danke, Die Kombination mit Mesa Boogie ist ein wahres Genuss. Schöne Zeit wünscht
Milan
Zum Booster "Studio '75": was für eine Bombe !!!! Genau das Teil wonach ich gesucht habe. Hut ab. Konnte das ganze Wochenende nicht davon lassen. Spielte pur in einen JTM45 Klon - mit einer SG. ;) Zur Strat kam ich noch gar nicht weil ich es schon so geil fand. Lieben Dank und weiter so! Danke für das Endgeile Gerät. Meine 3 weiteren Booster landen jetzt bei eBay: Das will was heißen! Greetz, Marc
Marc
Hallo Bernd, habe heute den Booster bei Mark abgeholt und zu Hause sofort ausprobiert. Der Studio '75 ist der Hammer, der Sound ist super und die Töne stehen mit dem VOX-Amp einfach genial. Ich habe nach den 2 Stunden bei Mark direkt nochmal 1 Stunde zu Hause drangehangen und hatte superviel Spaß mit dem Gerät - momentan üben wir Stargazer, das passt perfekt. Demnächst ist dann mal Man On The Silver Mountain dran, das wird sicher auch viel Freude machen. Vielen Dank nochmal, dass ich eins der limitierten Stücke erhalten konnte. Schöne Grüße, Winny
Winfried W.