MegaBeat Audio Ghost Booster User manual

MegaBeat
audio
Ghost Booster
User’s Manual
Revision 4
March 23, 2011
GAIN
0
dB
30
INPUT
OUTPUT
Ghost Booster
9V
-
+
MegaBeat
audio
1

MegaBeat Audio Ghost Booster, User’s Manual
1 Description and features
Ghost Booster is a true bypass booster pedal
with big headroom (to avoid saturation),
very high input impedance (respecting your
instrument tone) and gain from 0 dB (buffer)
to 30 dB: broad range which will let you gain
presence on a solo, adjust different stages lev-
els or compensate the change between single
and humbucker pick-ups among other uses.
Some characteristics:
•True bypass to avoid tone-loss
•Adjustable gain from 0 to 30 dB
•Powered by 9V battery or adapter
•Easy access battery holder
•Very high input impedance and very
low output impedance
•Completely hand-made by MegaBeat
Audio: from design and PCB’s to
painting and assembling
•Power filtering to reduce noise
•Reverse polarity protection
•Neutrik jacks
•Utra low distortion and low noise high
performance audio operational ampli-
fier
•Great dynamic range
2 Knobs
Gain Knob With this knob you can adjust
pedal gain from 0 to 30 dB.
3 Audio Jacks
Input Jack Signal input. Connect here
your instrument or the output of the previous
device on the signal chain.
Output Jack Signal output. Connect to
your amplifier or the next device on the sig-
nal chain.
4 Power
Pedal can be powered with a battery or an
adapter. In both cases, pedal has a power
filtering that reduces noise and imperfections
caused by it. Thus, you can use an economic
adapter with great results or improve a good
adapter performance.
Power is commuted by input jack, so if this
jack is unconnected, pedal will be off and
won’t use energy from battery nor adapter.
Battery This pedal can be powered with a
9V battery. To replace battery it’s not nec-
essary to dismantle the pedal thanks to the
easy battery holder on the bottom side. Al-
kaline batteries are recommended.
Power Jack (9V) This pedal can be pow-
ered with a 9V DC adapter. Polarity is
center negative as indicated on the pedal.
Don’t connect a wrong polarity adapter even
though pedal is protected and nothing would
happen.
When an adapter is connected, battery is dis-
connected automatically to prevent it from
discharging.
5 Led & Footswitch
Led shows pedal status. ON indicates that
Ghost Booster is acting and OFF that pedal
is on true bypass, that is, input is connected
directly to output and not to pedal circuitry
to avoid any tone-loss.
Pedal status is changed by footswitch.
6 Setup Examples
Depending on effects order, different results
can be obtained. Several positions of Ghost
Booster on the signal chain and the approx-
imate results are shown below. Anyway, the
best way is trying until you get your personal
desired sound.
Tone-loss prevention If you want to ob-
tain the characteristic tone-loss prevention1
of Ghost Booster, it’s better to connect your
1Ghost Booster doesn’t make up sound or adds any equalization, it just respects your instrument tone with more
fidelity than many pedals do.
2

MegaBeat Audio Ghost Booster, User’s Manual
instrument directly to pedal before signal
gets modified or deteriorated going through
other pedal or device.
Buffer At 0 dB position (without increas-
ing volume) it acts as a buffer achieving a per-
fect Impedance Bridging: useful to keep the
tone completely, even running long cables or
between pedals causing tone-loss problems.
Before distorsion Placed before a distor-
tion effect, it will increase the volume a little
but distortion increase will be the most no-
ticeable effect. You can also improve tone
if instrument is connected directly to Ghost
Booster
After distorsion Placed after a distorsion
effect, it will increase volume with no dis-
torsion variation. However, if after Ghost
Booster you connect an amplifier on a satu-
ration channel, distortion produced by pre-
amplifier stage could increase, making vol-
ume gain smaller. In case you don’t want to
increase distortion, you can use effects loop
explained below.
Effects Loop If you connect Ghost Booster
on the amp effects loop, it will add gain in a
transparent way avoiding saturation thanks
to pedal’s big dynamic range.
7 Technical Specifications
•Gain (adjustable): 0 - 30 dB
•Input impedance: 1 MΩ
•Output impedance <10 Ω
•Dynamic range >13.8 dBu
•Current draw (on) ≈20 mA
•Current draw (bypass) ≈10 mA
•Dimensions: 124 mm x 93 mm x 55
mm
•Weigth (without battery) = 280 g
8 Warranty
MegaBeat Audio provides an excellent war-
ranty for 2 years. Should any of our
products fail, contact us by our website
(www.megabeataudio.com) and we will re-
pair it with no cost for you2including com-
ponents and labour and shipping costs.
9 More info
You can find more information, demo videos
or contact us at our website:
www.megabeataudio.com
2If failure is not caused by an improper use.
3