Gainster / Red Snapper

Project originally developed by Menatone since 1996, the Red Snapper (sold by $179,00) is an overdrive/booster pedal derived from modifications in the basic scheme of Tube Screamer. Tube Screamer is one of the most famous overdrives and also the most cloned of all the world, it is characterized by have higher compression and mid hump. But this emphasis on mid frequency is somewhat unpleasant for the most of listeners who prefer a flat equalization...

And that's what the Menatone did, they changed the circuit of Tube Screamer to maintain the purity of the sound, without over compression and with no increase in the mids... and as a result created a pedal really good!

And how in this world everything is copied, Clark Amplification, famous for making replicas of amplifiers, decided to copy the circuit of the Red Snapper and rename it as Gainster (sold by $ 380.00) ... and how the world is not fair, Gainster ended up with more notoriety than the Red Snapper... and the 'brand' Gainster was loaned to Barber that produced the Gainster for a wile (sold for $139.95), but soon the production rights were "confiscated" by Clark Amplification.

Here you can see some videos of these pedals...

Menatone Red Snapper
Clark Gainster  
Barber Gainster

Respectively, the pedals produced by Menatone, Clark (with a huge box) and Barber

The both pedals built by Clark and Menatone were made by connecting point-to-point, on the other hand those produced by Barber wore printed circuit board. The IC's used seem to be variation... they use JRC4558, TL072, LF353 ... In the Barber pedals was added an internal trimpot as an additional adjustment for bass frequency, this trimpot was exteriorized in the latest Menatone's pedals with the "hi cut" control ...

A friend of mine bought one Barber Gainster recently, and it uses the JRC072 as IC, and there are some changes like add a protection against polarity inversion in the supply path, and different values on the input and output capacitors (both 100n in Clark's circuit and they became 330n, 68n) and in the tone capacitor (47n in the clark's and 56n in Barber's).

2006's Barber Gainster with some changes from the original Clark Gainster

Comparing Barber Gainster with my clone (that is a clone based on the original Clark Gainster) I notice that my clone have a few more gain... is more drive like and the Barber is more booster like... although I prefer mine... if you like the Barber's sound is just change the capacitor by those that I said above.

 Here there is a comparison made with a very low sound quality camera

I renamed my version as Hipster, I used the LF352, and the circuit of milleniun 4049, I preferred to leave the bass control as a trimpot, as well as the Barber version. 
The finish was the same of my Peach Fuzz clone, in the graphics I decided to keep the same idea of the Gainster.

My Gainster PCB, details of the circuit.

My Gainster external finish.