I've been looking at THIS BYOC kit pedal for sometime, and finally ordered one yesterday. Unlike many of the BYOC kits, it's not really a direct "clone" of any one vintage pedal, though the basic circuit is derived from the revered Dallas Rangemaster treble booster of the late '60s. The really cool thing is that it has three switchable transistor boost modes: a germanium boost (the Rangemaster portion) that introduces some signal distortion, a "linear" silicon boost that's fairly clean, and an ultra-clean full range MOSFET boost. Additionally, the germanium boost mode has an associated 3-way toggle switch that selectively boosts the highs, the mids, or the entire audible range. The power LED even changes color between the three boost modes. Nifty! It's not a cheap kit at $95, but that seems very reasonable, given it's sonic flexibility.

Until I finally bought a boost pedal (the inexpensive & simple, but very effective Behringer PB100), I didn't have a real appreciation for how tonally useful these devices are. They are capable of MUCH more than just making your volume louder, though they certainly do that well! You can use them to push a clean amp tone into overdrive, to make an OD or distortion pedal sound even "dirtier", to emphasize a certain range of the tone spectrum, and more. Definitely a very useful device to have in the old tonal arsenal!

I'll post back here again when I've received the kit and built the pedal....