Carl Martin PlexiRanger Overdrive + Boost

The sound of a distorted classic Marshall amp from the ’60s and ’70s has become a staple in rock’n’roll and a source of infinite inspiration for pedal makers all over the world.

Danish effects designer Carl Martin has built some of the most successful Plexi-style pedals and unveiled a new one called Plexiranger which combines a Distortion channel and a 15db Boost, each with its own footswitch. The boost circuit is placed first in the chain, and it’s a custom silicon circuit inspired by the vintage Treble Booster (aka Rangemaster).

The two channels feature also independent EQ sections, with a simple Tone control on the Plexi side and a super useful parametric EQ (Range + Freq) on the Boost side. This can work as a clean boost when the Range knob is down to zero, or a colored boost when the Range knob is up, pushing treble or mids depending on the position of the Freq knob.

A two-way toggle switch place on the top gives you two ways to tame the muddiness with a Low Cut Filter (off in zero position).

All in all, the Carl Martin PlexiRanger seems like an incredibly flexible Marshall inspired pedal that combines Carl Martin’s reliable history of amp emulations with a very flexible boost section, ideal for tone-sculpting.

Check out the videos of the Carl Martin PlexiRanger, below. We added it to our guide to the Best Plexi Distortion Pedals.

When we look back to the glory days of rock guitar (mid 60’s to mid 70’s), some of the most popular amplifier set-ups were British Marshalls and Vox’s…..often with multi-speaker cabinets.  Players like Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Brian May etc, carved their signature sounds on stage and in the studio with these rigs, and in order to deal with the over-powering bottom end, they made use of ‘The Treble Booster’.  Treble Boosters add top end or higher frequencies to the guitar tone, and depending on how the amp is set up, some much desired overdrive.  As much as companies like Dallas (Rangemaster) and Hornby Skewes (Treble Booster) were solving a bottom-end problem, they had also created a new sound pallette!  Carl decided it was time to re-introduce this sound with the PlexiRanger!  And leave it to Carl to add a gain channel along with the boost channel for a one-of -a-kind fx pedal!